It's not all balloons and ponies in bee colonies, despite what you may have learned. Bees are well known for high levels of cooperation but new research in Molecular Ecology says there is a conflict for reproduction between worker bees and Queens, leading some workers to selfishly exploit the colony for their own needs.
The study focused on Melipona scutellaris, a Brazilian species of highly social stingless bees, found throughout the Atlantic rainforest. Colonies contain around 1,500 workers and are headed by one single-mated Queen.
Worker bees are generally unable to mate but are…
Ecology & Zoology
The Cephalopod International Advisory Council is convening in Vigo, Spain even as I write. Yes, I wish desperately that I were there right now! At least I can follow along by wistfully reading the abstract book, which they were kind enough to post.
Let's start at the very beginning . . . wait, the very beginning lists "restaurants nearby to the congress" and now I am imagining tortilla española auténtica and salivating . . . so let's not start at the beginning. Let's skip ahead to the symposium opening and the first invited talk:
Cephalopod embryology: a review, by Sigurd von Boletzky. That…
Rolling Stone began a recent article with this provocative lede: "The first thing you need to know about Goldman Sachs is that it's everywhere. The world's most powerful investment bank is a great vampire squid wrapped around the face of humanity, relentlessly jamming its blood funnel into anything that smells like money." [emphasis mine]
This metaphor, and all its implications, have provoked plenty of discussion amongst economists, politicians, journalists, and the general public. But you know why it provokes me? Vampire squid are tiny, like six inches long, and while they have several…
A couple of weeks ago someone found a "mysterious container" by the road in Atascosa County, Texas.
Authorities in Atascosa County said the container appeared to contain hair and bones. They were concerned that the materials might be human in nature.
After testing in a medical examiner's office, the report came back: the material in the container was from an octopus or squid. Whew, what a relief! But, my interest is piqued. The "tests" remain unspecified. I can imagine two scenarios:
1. Somebody who knows a thing or two about anatomy and zoology pokes around in the container for a couple of…
Proving myself wrong in record time (see comments on my first post, where I claimed I wouldn't be discussing squid recipes), today's squid is served with chiles, lime, and herbs.
Why?
The coincidence was just too good to pass up. Another commenter suggested that squid popularity these days isn't just a flash in the pan--and then a recipe blog in the Village Voice by that very name posts a squid dish!
Of course, I see it as an opportunity to discuss seafood labeling and sustainability. I've noticed the recipe ingredient list never gets any more specific than "squid". But there are lots of…
This is so cool! I can't believe I haven't been hearing taxonomists buzz about this. 3M Novec is a new engineered material that is non-flammable (unlike ethanol) non-toxic (unlike formalin, though Steve O'Shea swears you can drink the stuff) and doesn't leach color. Its only apparent downside so far: it's denser than water.
The Smithsonian is testing it out by displaying giant squid, and according to their program manger, "We had to use pretty creative ways to get the specimens to stay down inside the container." Tantalizing! Did they glue suckers to the glass? Pour lead shot inside the…
The first Squid-A-Day is my very own study organism: Dosidicus gigas, the Humboldt squid! They seem to be mellowing out as they move north; after causing serious media hullabaloo in San Diego all summer, they squeezed only six sentences out of the Associated Press with their arrival in Washington State.
The AP gets kudos for calling Humboldts "large" not "giant" (giant squid are an entirely different species) and knowing that they eat "small fish" not "humans" (as other sensationalist news outlets have sometimes claimed).
However, the statement that "The[y] get sluggish and die in cold water…
Lupins of our lives go back a long time. The Romans spread lupin seeds in their empire. Many of the hundreds of species of the genus Lupinus in the legume family thrive in the Americas. Native Americans in the North and Incas in the South ate some on regular basis. Lupin flowers are also lovely wherever you see them.
Lupins at Lake Tekapo in New Zealand on January 1, 2007. (Credit: Wkipedia Commons)
Researchers from the Fat Institute and the University of Seville delved into the nutritional characteristics of seed proteins of wild populations of Lupinus angustifolius, L. cosentinii, L.…
Is there an "Air Supply" in the bat world? Not really, though they seem to have love songs, say researchers at Texas A&M University and the University of Texas at Austin
So let's look at the mysterious love sounds made by the winged creatures.
Researchers Kirsten Bohn and Mike Smotherman in the Department of Biology at Texas A&M, George Pollak at the University of Texas at Austin and Barbara Schmidt-French from Bat Conservation International (now at Bat World in Mineral Wells, Texas) spent three years analyzing thousands of Brazilian free-tailed (also known as Mexican…
The green of a tree's leaves is from the larger proportion of the chlorophyll pigment in the leaves. As days get shorter, less chlorophyll is produced and green is no longer dominant because yellow xanthophylls and orange carotenes are also present in the chloroplasts.
But why will the leaves of some trees be red in America yet yellow in Europe?
Red autumn leaves result as a red pigment, anthocyanin, which was not previously present, is produced in the leaf but the question for scientists is why trees expend resources on creating red pigments just as they are about to…