The other day I went for a walk along my favorite coastal Maine trail and heard a recurring comment from many hikers I passed; "It's too bad there are so many pine trees that are dying." There were a number of theories purposed as to why there is this great die off of trees which ranged from: "I guess they can't handle the salt water" to "they must have that bug like we do back home."
As I walked I tried to figure out just why people kept thinking that the pine trees were dying. Then it dawned on me as children we are taught, by well meaning elementary school teachers, there are two types of trees deciduous trees which loose there leaves every fall and evergreens which keep their leaves (pine needles) year round. However, most teachers fail to tell us that even though evergreens keep their needles year round they do in fact loose 50% of their needles each fall leading to that thick carpet of dead pine needles under every pine tree each fall. To conserve resources pine trees do in fact loose their needles. Once the lost 50% regrow in the spring the tree will loose the other 50% of its needles and begin to regrow them. So each year pine trees loose and regrow all of their needles.
Plus this time of year the tamarack trees put on one heck of a show by turning a yellowish gold and dropping all of their needles at once. Tamaracks are the only truly deciduous pine trees in North America.
Have no fear they pine trees are not dying they are merely getting ready for winter. Get out there and see of you can find some tamarack trees in your neighborhood.
I was watching a nature related show a few months ago on PBS and it got me to thinking about ways animals attract a mate and help to ensure the survival of their species.
Each year while I worked in Yellowstone National Park I would indulge in some wildlife voyeurism starting with the bison in late July through September. Bison will chase, bellow/grunt (to hear some audio click here), headbutt other males, and try to push the object of their desire as far away from other males as possible. They even go so far as putting on some "cologne" to make them selves smell more desirable. This involve peeing on the ground and then rolling in it.
Wallowing Bison in Yellowstone National Park
Elk also spend a fair amount of time making themselves smell better to the opposite sex and they also grow these massive antlers which do nothing but scream look at me look at me.
Me and My Elk Rack
Heck even the little peacock spider has a flash dance to attract a mate. It really is quite impressive and if you have never seen it you need to check out this video. How can anyone say no to dancing spiders?
I feel however there is one animal who gets a bum deal when it comes to ways to attract a mate. The musk deer.
They are primitive deer (family Moschidae) and unlike white-tailed or mule deer (family Cervidae) musk deer do not have big flashy antlers which scream look at me look at me. They have fangs which can go up to about four inches long over the course of the animals life. They are used much in the same way elk or other deer use antlers to fight off other males during the breeding season. Talk about some close quarter combat! Sadly these deer are endangered in much other their natural habitat due to poaching. The musk glands are prized by perfume makers and also used in Asian medicines. A quick search of the internet found the price can be as high as, well lets just say it is way more then I make in a years time. Sadly the commercial uses of the musk glands may lead to their eventual extinction. Want to know more check out these links: http://www.livescience.com/48585-fanged-deer-sighting-afghanistan.html http://www.untamedscience.com/biodiversity/vampire-deer/ http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2004/09/0907_040907_muskdeer.html https://forcechange.com/15049/musk-the-deadly-truth-behind-the-common-scent/
There is always that one person in your family who like to tell you stories of the good old days where life was really tough and they had to walk through snow clear up to their nose in the winter and you don't know how easy you have it. Our memories at best can be faulty at best and everything seems much worse depending on your perspective. The winter of 2014 my coworkers tried to convince me was the coldest and snowiest winter ever to which I laughed. "I was alive in 1976 and you we were buried up to our eyeballs in snow" I told them all.
Winter of 2014 snow pile.
Now we can all stop playing "you never had it so bad" and help keep track of the "changes" we think we see and we all get to claim we are working with NASA!
The iSeeChange app (yes, another app) lets you document the changes you see around you. Got a favorite flowering tree which you swear bloomed three weeks earlier than it did last year. Then grab your phone snap a pic and then post your observations and then as others in your are make postings or observations. Some where a group of data nerds will start looking for patterns in observations and help us all try to make sense of how climate change is alerting the world around us.
So, if you have a weather gauge in your back yard or are just obsessed with proving to all of your fields that your allergies, snow shoveling, bugs in your back yard were worse than they have ever been during the history of your existence then you can look at what others in your area are saying or log your observations and see what the scientist think.
Oh by the way if you're a science teacher this would be an awesome way to work on that climate change lesson plan and do a little citizen science.
More information:
http://www.mnn.com/earth-matters/climate-weather/blogs/you-can-help-nasa-track-climate-change-your-phone
The good people at NPR recently reported on an app for your smartphone or tablet with some cool side effects. The average Joe or Jane on the street could help to locate species which has been described hundreds of years ago but never photographed or you could help uncover a totally new species. HOW COOL WOULD THAT BE?! (The complete story can be found here.) Think about it if your like me you photograph all sorts of cool things that you have no idea what is for instance:
Slime mold in spore stage according to a botanist friend of mine.
Or this still as yet unidentified stuff.
Anyone out there who knows what this stuff is please let me know. It looks wet yet isn't and a friend ruled out it being a type of lichen.
On the iNaturalist.org website you can see what kinds of cool things people have spotted in your area; post pictures of cool stuff you've seen and can't identify, or search through some of the online field guides posted there. Even look at posts from around the world. Think about planning your next vacation based on something you saw posted on the app.
This new app got me thinking about an article I read in the New York Times a few years ago about mapping roadkill to better understand where and what types of animals become pancaked on asphalt in California and Maine. (To read the article click here.) Maybe someone should create a road kill app, so we can all become more aware of what is lurking along the countries roadsides and urge highway managers to consider creating more animal bridges in areas with high collision rates. Want to check some cool animal bridges click the National Wildlife Federations blog.
So, instead of looking for Pokemon let's take and post pictures of the cool REAL things we see in nature.
Forty-one years and approximately 1,000 aquatic ecology programs and nothing has thrilled me more than standing on the pouring rain by the Big Thompson River this afternoon with a group of AP biology students!!!!! The whole reason for my excitement is one tiny little planarian. If your thinking the word planarian sounds familiar, but you do not know why cast your mind back to either Jr high school science class or high school biology class and a little experiment you may have done where you tried to make a worm grow two heads or two tails.
Need a refresher on what they look like? Check out the YouTube video.
According to most published sources you can find these little flatworms in any body of water, but they are not obvious at first. They are not kidding about that either finding a planarian whose maximum size is .5 inches long is no easy feat. When I turned over the rock under which the little worm was hiding I though it was merely a baby leech until I saw it move in the little pool of water stuck in the crevice. It appeared to be undulating not moving with an accordion like movement. After putting our creature under a magnifying glass I confirmed it was indeed it was a flatworm.
In my excitement I showed it to the students and told them what it was. "We just did experiments on them in science class" one student remarked. "
"Oh, were you making two butts or two heads?" I asked.
"We tried both but they all died" was the most common answer to my inquiry.
Here is the experiment they tried:
Planarian regeneration
For students who are interested, they may perform a regeneration experiment. Have the students use the magnifying glass to observe the planarian in a Petri dish.With a coverslip, the students can then cut the planarian at a certain point(s) to create 2 or more planarians. Over the course of several days, they can monitor the planarians’ regeneration and see for themselves how efficiently the planarians can regenerate lost body parts.
Why does it work you ask? Well, I will let the good people at the Encyclopaedia Britannica explain that for me:
"There is evidence that a special type of cell, a neoblast, is involved
in planarian regeneration. Neoblasts, rich in ribonucleic acid (RNA),
which plays an essential role in cell division, appear in great numbers
during regeneration. Similar cells, apparently inactive, occur in the
tissues of whole organisms (see also regeneration: Biological
regeneration)."
This is what they might have looked like had the students or my planarian lived to regenerate.
SO COOL RIGHT?!! Chop the little guy into three pieces and you would get three new planarians, but cut just part of it and you have a really creepy two headed creature.This same experiment was tried on the International Space Station a number of years ago to see how well they regenerated in zero gravity.
Hiding in the shadows of a body of water near you Frankenstein's pet.
Here is some more weird and funny information on planarians:
This week I will be venting on the people who are messing with my food. Yeah, you heard me hybrid happy people get your grubby hands off my food!! It was with great anticipation a few weeks ago I announced that I would make caramelized sweet potato, garlic & rosemary macaroni and cheese to bring to a potluck dinner. Shopping list in hand I headed to the local grocery store to get the ingredients.
The local grocery store has an interesting way of labeling produce in the fresh fruits and veggies section and have stock clerks who can't tell parsley from cilantro even when it is labeled. I didn't think too much of it when the label on the sweet potatoes claimed "white skinned" sweet potatoes. As they were the only sweet potato in the store I grabbed one and the rest of the ingredients and headed for home. I grabbed my veggie peeler and started to scrape, after the first pass I knew I was in trouble, it was white through and through. I headed next door to ask a friend to verify I had indeed bought a sweet potato which she assured me they were sweet potatoes, but with a much milder flavor. Really I ask you who is a regular sweet potato too strong for? With no other choice I chopped it up and put it under the broiler (I broil my sweet potatoes instead of boiling them like the recipe says). Once out from under the broiler I popped a chunk into my mouth, blech it taste like cardboard. Crestfallen I made the mac and cheese anyway. 24 hours later the "white" sweet potato had tuned an interesting shade of grey which got darker with each passing hour. JUST SAY NO TO WHITE SWEET POTATOES!
Then if that were not bad enough I heard about another gastronomic "delight" which would be hitting the produce isle in the up coming weeks, brace yourselves cotton candy flavored grapes. Say what!
What was wrong with regular grapes? Granted I often think store bought grapes are picked too early which is what makes them rather tasteless, but this is going a little too far. I sadly never say any of these grapes in the store because I was hoping to taste test them with my coworkers. I think we are sliding further down that slipper slope which was started when broccoflower reached our shores. I tried it once but couldn't really make it past the lime green color. While the USDA assures me I can get 90% of my vitamin C intake for the day from eating just one serving if it doesn't look appealing who is going to eat it? Try the famous American classic of Velveeta cheese melted over a little broccoflower and then try to eat it I dare you!
The supermarket is becoming a scary scary place to shop.
This week was all about mysteries my first came via email from my parents a picture of perfectly cleaned off bones which nightly appear on the porch. The bones themselves were tiny about the size of squirrel and since they have a ton of hawks in the area I surmised the hawk had offed a squirrel and then some other rodent was chewing the bones to get the nutrients from them and since the porch is nice and sheltered what better place to have an nighttime snack.
The second one well that got the whole office buzzing and even made it into our Morning Report which goes out to all staff members so we know about major things happening in the park. I first heard about the "thing" while working in the visitor's center one afternoon, the exchange when something like this:
Visitor: "Have you guys figured out what the thing is up at Cub Lake?"
Me: "I haven't heard about anything unusual up there."
And with that the visitor walked away giving me nothing more to go on. I gave it no more thought until Tuesday of this week when Leslie walked into the office reporting that she had pictures of the "thing" sent to her by a group of visitors. "I saw Maria's photos of it last night. It's so gross." came a comment from across the room. Intrigued we waited for the files to open and this is what we saw.
"It's so ugly it's cute." I offered as we all stood around trying to figure out just what the heck it was. The visitors who emailed the pictures reported it has short silvery looking hair and a white patch around it's nose. Are our ideas ranged from the just plain goofy, prehistoric rat, to the slightly more sensible, mutant squirrel. We were all stumped and the photos were emailed to the Park's resident mammal researcher. In a few days we had an answer as to what it was just not why it looked the way it did.
The thing it was reported was a hairless marmot. While creepy looking the researcher determined it was acting quite normal in foraging, movement, and curiosity. She also reported there was no explanation as to why it was hairless and that staff were to pass along any other information they got from visitors. We also found out that this is not the first report of hairless marmots in a National Park. It appears Yellowstone National Park had an outbreak of hairless marmots back in the late 1980s and the cause of their hair loss was never proven.
For now our fine hairless friends, yes it was determined there is more than one, will be a creepy curiosity along the trail.
