Insect Ecology Lab @UNBC
Only one link this week, as the holiday draws to a close.
Taking Down the Tree – by Jane Kenyon
With something more than caution
I handle them, and the lights, with their
tin star-shaped reflectors, brought along
from house to house, their pasteboard
toy suitcases increasingly flimsy.
Tick, tick, the desiccated needles drop.
Thanks, today, for the shout out from Terry McGlynn. He also posts a ton of great weekend reading links (and is typically more punctual than I am) at Small Pond Science.
Without further ado, here are my weekly half-dozen picks:
We don’t know enough about earwigs
But what the PhD student found particularly surprising was the fact that a “fine sort of mist” was continuously present in the air space around the earwigs.
“It’s like a cloud surrounding them and protecting them against microorganisms,” she said.
We don’t have to assign papers, and we should stop. We need to admit that the required-course college essay is a failure. The baccalaureate is the new high-school diploma: abjectly necessary for any decent job in the cosmos. As such, students (and their parents) view college as professional training, an unpleasant necessity en route to that all-important “piece of paper.” Today’s vocationally minded students view World Lit 101 as forced labor, an utter waste of their time that deserves neither engagement nor effort. So you know what else is a waste of time? Grading these students’ effing papers. It’s time to declare unconditional defeat.
Ecosia is a search engine that donates 80% of its income to a tree planting program in Brazil. By searching with Ecosia you can help the environment for free!
Is it really rude to be “that guy” with the smart phone?
Last weekend in the New York Times, Sherry Turkle wrote about putting our lives “on pause” in order to tweet, text, or take a selfie: “When you get accustomed to a life of stops and starts, you get less accustomed to reflecting on where you are and what you are thinking.” A few months ago, also in the Times, Nick Bilton wrote that we’re all so busy capturing moments, we’re not living in them.
This is a false choice. You can live in the moment and capture it.
Laughed until my side ached (via Nikki Reimer)
When a phisher contacted Vancouver writer Steven Galloway to tell him he’d won a truck and $100,000 in cash, the bestselling author of The Cellist of Sarajevo decided to have a little creative fun at the scam artist’s expense. Notorious prankster Galloway teased the phisher — who was impersonating one of Galloway’s contacts — by promising to provide his Facebook password and $5,000 in cash. He recorded the exchange until the scammer eventually gave up, and then Galloway posted all 26 pages of their hilarious and absurd conversation on Facebook.
Requiem for a nest – by Wanda Coleman
following her nature she flitted and dove
for whatever blades twigs and mud
could be found under the humming blue
and created a hatchery for her spawn
not knowing all were doomed
My family is probably one of the few that still receives the morning newspaper delivered to the front door. My winter morning ritual consists of braving the cold for a couple of seconds to bring in the paper and then settling down to read it at breakfast with a hot cup of tea. For some reason – likely masochistic tendencies; perhaps also because it gets my brain going – I always first turn to the editorial and letters section.
Yesterday, I was presented with this letter to the editor, and I’ll admit that it got me a bit riled up. The basic premise of the letter seems to be that contemporary conservation efforts are misguided because they seek to manage crises rather than just simply “letting nature take its course.”
Here is a relevant snippet from the letter:
As the numbers of these endangered species increase it will cause a rapid decline in their food supply ending in the long, slow death by starvation. This is also going to happen to the seal populations of the Atlantic as the environmental movement demands the removal of their major predator man [sic].
There have been 90 million species that have inhabited this planet, 99 per cent have become extinct, pushed out of existence by newer more complex, more adaptable species. This process is now seen as being unnatural and declaring every species that nature is pushing into extinction must be labeled endangered and saved even if it requires the destruction of those more complex, more adaptable species for doing what nature intended them to do.
It’s hard to know where to start with this, as there are a number of problems (including a misunderstanding of evolutionary theory and history which I won’t bother to touch on here) even within that small block of text.
Many, if not most, conservation efforts these days revolve around species and ecosystems that are highly impacted by humans. In fact, it is difficult to go anywhere on earth anymore without being able to quickly find evidence of human impact. Some people have begun to call the current geological epoch the Anthropocene in recognition of the fact that human activity is leaving an indelible mark on our planet that will be detectable for eons to come. As such, many, if not most, species in crisis are in that situation due to ongoing and systemic causes such as habitat loss, pollution, or overhunting – not because they are being supplanted by “complex, more adaptable species.” This means that even the most wildly successful conservation programs rarely accomplish a return to previous levels of species numbers, let alone burgeoning population levels that lead to mass starvation. In most cases, conservationists are working within much-reduced species geographical ranges and in degraded habitats. The reduced size of the remaining land base and the deteriorated habitat are not usually capable of sustaining previous population levels.
So, let’s talk seals, since the letter writer brought them up. “Man” is, indeed, currently a major predator. But until recently humans were not capable of killing them in numbers substantial enough to have any real impact on their populations. That has all changed, of course. The fact of the matter is that humans have been the cause of the decline and demise of many, many sea mammals through combinations of hunting, overfishing of prey, or pollution. Our exploitation of these animals needs to be regulated, not simply allowed to continue carte blanche. (Note that I am not opposed to hunting – even seal hunting – but such activity needs careful monitoring.) Since seals, and many other sea mammals, reside near the top of their respective food chains, small perturbations at those levels can cause cascading effects to other levels.
Sea otters are a great example of what can happen if we do not regulate our activities. These cute sea mammals were hunted to near extinction during the fur trade over much of the Pacific coast. Sea otters eat lots of sea urchins. Sea urchins eat lots of kelp. Extremely low numbers of otters mean high numbers of urchins and much reduced levels of kelp. The heavily urchin-grazed areas that result are called urchin barrens and are obviously radically transformed from their normal state.
Thus we humans, novel predators for sea otters in terms of evolutionary time, end up having rapid and dramatic effects that reverberate deep into the ecosystem and end up returning to bite us back. In this case urchin barrens become non-productive zones for fisheries or other activities that humans value. The only way back to some semblance of normalcy (in the absence of the return of healthy populations of sea otters or other urchin predators) would be expensive and labor-intensive work that is not feasible across vast stretches of territory – e.g. removing urchins by hand.
The reality is that conservation programs require a great deal of thought, research, and often back-breaking effort. Beyond that, such programs also require consultation not just regarding the ecology and other biological aspects of the situation, but also in terms an often-tangled complex of cultural, economic, and social parameters. This is because humans are now an integral part of virtually every single ecosystem on earth, and humans are highly invested in the natural world around them, whether they realize that or not.
When we see situations of one species supplanting another, as the letter writer alludes to, there is an off chance that it is a “natural” occurrence. But more often than not it is due to choices that we are making or have made in the past. Many such situations are due, for instance, to species from other geographical regions being transplanted into a new region by humans. Not all exotic species find a foothold, but when they do the consequences can be enormous. Ask anyone in the southern USA about kudzu.
One could argue, as the letter writer seems to be doing, that we should throw up our hands and sit back and let outcomes be the outcomes across our planet. “Damn the torpedoes!”
But, while our impact on nature is massive, we also rely on the natural world to sustain us – from the air we breath to the water we drink to the food we eat.
In the end, it’s hard to fault the public for not fully understanding the intricacy and massive effort behind conservation efforts. When we see letters like this that are obviously wrong on a number of levels, at least part of the fault lies with those of us who should be communicating with the public. But letters or articles like the one that I read with my morning tea yesterday also require responding to errors in a public fashion, which is what I hope that I have at least partially accomplished here.
Feel free to add your thoughts in the comments or elsewhere. There are many other things that I could have said, and I hope that my discussion here has been accurate. I look forward to hearing what others have to say.
A few days late, but not a single dollar short… because it’s free, as always.
The hazards of field work (via @Cerabilia)
Eventually, I was able to flick the latches and dislodge my backpack which enabled me to shoot out from underneath the boulders, and was taken down a few more rapids, getting hammered against the rocks. Finally, I saw a log sticking out of the bank, grabbed it, and shimmied up it to the shore. I woke up on the ground about two hours later. It was dark, and I didn’t have any gear – no light and no radio – nothing. Just me.
Tardigrades (via @Mozziebites)
Tardigrades have been experimentally subjected to temperatures of 0.05 kelvins (–272.95 degrees Celsius or functional absolute zero) for 20 hours, then warmed, rehydrated and returned to active life. They have been stored at –200 degrees Celsius for 20 months and have survived. They have been exposed to 150 Celsius, far above the boiling point of water, and have been revived. They have been subjected to more than 40,000 kilopascals of pressure and excess concentrations of suffocating gasses (carbon monoxide, carbon dioxide, nitrogen, sulfur dioxide), and still they returned to active life. In the cryptobiotic state, the animals even survived the burning ultraviolet radiation of space.
Schekman said pressure to publish in “luxury” journals encouraged researchers to cut corners and pursue trendy fields of science instead of doing more important work. The problem was exacerbated, he said, by editors who were not active scientists but professionals who favoured studies that were likely to make a splash.
One of my favorite winter poems, by William Carlos Williams
Thus having prepared their buds
against a sure winter
the wise trees
stand sleeping in the cold.
If I told you that I had never had a cup of Tim Hortons coffee, what would you conclude about me? That I am a left-wing, pacifist peace monkey because I do not drink the brew that fuelled our soldiers in Afghanistan? That I am a pretentious yuppie whose knowledge of Italian actually extends no further than Vente and cappuccino? That I condescend to the hard-working folk of our rural communities who are the backbone of the country? That I am, in a word, un-Canadian?
I am teaching a graduate course in the winter semester. The course is called NRES 704, and it’s a typical “graduate seminar” course. In fact, that’s the course title – Graduate Seminar.
The course description is as follows:
The purpose of this graduate seminar is to develop and sustain an interdisciplinary approach to graduate education. Students will be given the opportunity to present ideas pertaining to their research proposals, or the overall research design, methodology and results of a thesis or non-thesis project. The seminar will encourage interactions, mutual support and sharing of ideas to assist in the advancement of each student’s research program at UNBC.
As you can see, it’s a pretty broad mandate. And from what I can tell, there’s a fair amount of variation in how it’s taught as there seems to be a revolving door of professors who teach it from semester to semester.
Along with the fairly traditional and useful components in a course like this – having students attend weekly departmental seminars, present their work in class, and also attend and participate in the annual graduate student conference at UNBC – I plan to include a weekly blogging assignment (stay tuned for details) and to spend quite a bit of discussion time on the shifts (and non-shifts) in scholarly communication.
Here’s where I’m asking for your help. I have published a draft schedule of topics, along with links to articles that should inform our discussion at this link. I would love it if some of you would take a look at my topics and links and make suggestions. Suggestions such as other topics or subtopics to include or links that would be particularly useful are very welcome.
In the latter case, if you have written something that is pertinent to a particular topic, I’d love to hear about it so that I could consider putting it into the mix for class discussion.
I’m really looking forward to teaching this class. I suspect that the way I’m planning on running it will make it into something that’s not really your grandpa’s graduate seminar course… or at least I hope it isn’t. And I’d love to have feedback to make it as relevant and interesting as possible.
(Note: I’ll be updating the web page linked here as I receive comments, etc.)
(Another note: As I mentioned in the comments below, I figure that I’ll have about a half-hour to “cover” any one of these topics. I’ll be looking for pre-reading from the students, and then some active discussion, hopefully providing some tools/ideas/topic for further investigation.)