zygote daddy

what makes Iowa worth it

Ah, April in Iowa. All of a sudden, winter somehow seems worth it.
   
   

it's no skin off my back. d.w. on the other hand...

It seems like every day some cool new ecological adaptation is discovered. The most recent is written up in this week's issue of the journal Nature, but I found it by way of the BBC. It turns out a species of caecilian (a homonym of Sicilian, but no, they don't live in Sicily) found in Kenya has young that feed by literally ripping the skin off the back of the mother.

Seriously, this one is just too easy.

Mark Wilkinson, the zoologist at the UK's Natural History Museum that documented the behavior, notes the following:

You can draw parallels between skin feeding in these creatures and lactation in mammals, so studying how this form of parenting evolved might shed light on how parenting developed in mammals.

This dude must never have had an s.o. going through a pregnancy. Hell, I've only gone through 11 weeks of one, and even I can tell the parallels emerge way, WAY before lactation ever enters the picture. Of course, there are the freakishly engorged mammary glands, but that's for another post. Well no, actually, it won't be. My mom reads this blog. Sorry, Mom.

What I allude to is this: the zygote is turning into a real asshole.

He/she/they (oh please God, no...) takes every nutrient and ounce of energy d.w. has, and still sends her running to the bathroom to hurl 10 or 15 times a day. Just 'cause, I suppose. Luckily, d.w. has grown so accustomed to the sadistic little one's devious behavior that during the course of normal conversation, she now just pukes mid-sentence, afterward finishing her thought without missing a beat. It is actually quite amusing, although she glares when I laugh too loud.

Pregnant women can be so sensitive sometimes.

DDT and creationism in the Atomic Age

I am a total sucker for old science books, which d.w. just doesn't seem to understand. In fact, she is rolling her big, brown eyes at me as I write this. Old books offer a lot of perspective. I have come to accept, for instance, that everything cutting-edge I am studying now will soon be embarrassingly quaint. It really takes a lot of the pressure off: "So what if I make up data? This won't matter in a couple of years anyway!"

Dude, I'm joking. Really.

Anyway, I bring it up because our local public library's annual book sale was today, and I brought home a stack of lovely, musty old library books. One that will find a place (again, d.w. rolling her eyes) on the new shelf of baby books is Functional Anatomy of the Newborn. Useful stuff, in case we ever want to know the weight of the hatchling's pituitary gland, or the anteroposterior length of the maxillary sinus. By far the best find was a general science textbook from 1950, entitled Our Environment: How We Use and Control It. A few select tidbits:

On physics:

No savage can tell you why a log or canoe floats, but he uses the principle of bouyancy every day of his life if he lives near water.

On chemistry:

Whether or not DDT will prove as useful in the protection of crops against insects as it has in the protection of human beings, time alone will tell. We shall consider this remarkable insecticide in greater detail at a later point in our study.

On geology:

At best a theory is only a guess and should never be taken too much for granted. By contrast, the story of creation as told so beautifully in the Bible gives us the great truths of creation. We should keep that story constantly in mind as we study [geology]. Yet, as we read and reread its simple, inspiring narrative, we realize that it purposely leaves many interesting details for men's inquiring minds to fill in.

On engineering:

Hardly had the steam engine become well-established  when along came the gasoline engine with its invaluable contributions, especially in the related field of transportation. Then came the dynamo and the Age of Electricity. Now we are face to face with the Atomic Age, and no one can yet foretell what wonders of industry its power holds for the world. Perhaps the time may come when we shall be flying around with enough atomic energy packed away in our pockets to keep our automobiles or airplanes running for a lifetime.

And finally, on genetics. Hoo boy:

Some families have been known to science for many years in which immoral, feeble-minded, pauper, vagrant, and drunken traits appear with regularity through several generations. There are others where the descendents were generally of a high type physically, mentally, and morally.

There are thirty-five normal-minded persons to every feeble-minded person in this country. The future well-being of the nation depends upon these normal-minded people. To encourage the recognition of this fact the science of eugenics has developed. Eugenics is the science of improving the human race by better heredity through better parents.

So what insights can we glean from such a, um, perspective? Well, in 1950, apparently only white people understood basic physics and being poor was a genetic disorder. Oh, and scientific theories (like gravity) were really no more than a wild guess.

It does make me wonder though. Are my kids going to think that this decade (whatever the hell it's called: ots? oughts? aughts? oh's? owe's? o's?) is as backward as we the 50's were?

I can only hope so.

while d.w. and the zygote sleep...

Last night the zygote was especially ruthless with poor d.w., and while I slumbered away peacefully, they proceeded with their daily (and nightly) struggle over nutrients. So I didn't feel bad when, upon waking and seeing the brilliant sunshine streaming in through the bedroom window, I decided to play a little hooky and let the two of them sleep just a little longer. Just don't tell my major professor. I owe him some revisions on my thesis.

Anyway, since I feel like kind of a dick stealing other people's photos all the time (except yesterday; the one of the nasty little "wetland" was all me, baby), I figured I might as well pay a little penance and take the ol' picture-taker with me.

 

So my first thought was, "You know, I should probably stick around in case d.w. wakes up and needs me to make her something. That's what a thoughtful husband would do. Maybe I'll start in on the garden." Then I realized that it is only April, and in all likelihood we will have a blizzard next week, especially if I stick anything in the ground. Besides, we're going to put some chickens in the back corner that doesn't get much light, so I'll let them do the weeding for me.

 

So then I thought I might take the kayak (a.k.a. "Finnegan's Wake") out for an inaugural spring run...

 

...but I remembered that I'm waiting on student loans to come in to pay for a couple of parts for the ZygoteCube's roof rack (Note naked ZygoteCube, above).

 

And then it hits me: a perfect morning to spend with my friends Peterson and Conant! The sunshine, the seventy ridiculously amazing degrees, the lack of wind (an eerie anomaly here in treeless Corn Land): now the only question was where, oh where on this magical day would I go? The freedom of it all!

 

Then I remember: I ain't in Cali no more.

 

So I say "To Hell with it! I'm a-findin' me a trail, some trees, and a marsh full of frogs!" This, of course, requires a bit of driving. And I think to myself, "At least I have Terry Gross to keep me company on the drive."

But alas, I forgot it's pledge week! Oh God!

I realize you need six more callers before you stop laying a serious guilt trip on us NPR-philes, but seriously, do you need to gush on about how wonderful the farm report is? Sorry, but I really don't give a crap about boxed beef cutouts. I don't care about barrow and gilt trends. I don't even know what a barrow or a gilt is, but I think hog castration comes into it. And I can only imagine what a boxed beef cutout might be. Oh, and if you mention Asian soybean rust one more time...

 

And so I find it, our little 1,200-acre reminder that yes, trees do exist somewhere, even in Iowa (although they still don't have any leaves on them).

 

I made it! There is nothing like the first frog cacophony of spring after a long, bleak winter. Really lifts the heart, you know? Sure wish d.w. and the zygote were here. After all, she's a lot better at finding frogs than I am.

What's that? Something about foot-in-mouth disease, you say...

 

At last I have found my quarry (either Rana pipiens or Rana blairi; they look the same and I heard both today). Water's a little cold for a soak in my opinion, but frogs have brains the size of a pea.

 

Cover your eyes, children!

 

Ok, ok, insert lame frog prince joke here. I'm from San Francisco. I can handle it.

So at this point, I'm thinking, "Am I really such a hopelessly dorky human being that this is what I do when I play hooky? Yikes. Maybe I should be off home to see if d.w. is puking yet."

no net loss...of golf course ponds

Thanks to the forward-thinking environmental policies of Bush & Co., our children can enjoy increasing acreage of wetlands in the good ol' U.S. of A.

Or something.

Actually, it seems the feds consider any land that is um, wet to be a wet-land. Man, you can just see the gears turning in little Dubya's head, can't you? So natch', with the incredible rates of sprawl being seen across the country, more impoundments are being constructed in subdivisions and golf courses, thereby increasing the acreage of wet land, just as the acreage of ACTUAL wetlands continues to decrease.

It is rather incredible that Bush & Co. can be so openly cynical about environmental policies that they can, with a straight face, announce with pride their environmental achievements while openly raping what's left of our natural heritage.

Every day under King George becomes more surreal than the last...

who doesn't like a hairy crustacean?

Just when you thought nature couldn't get any cooler, along comes this bad boy, 2300m down in the South Pacific. Oh yeah.

evolution is so ridiculously awesome

I think we've finally turned a corner in the evolution "debate". Actually, I should call it the "natural selection 'debate'", because evolution itself (i.e., change through time) has been widely accepted for centuries. Lamarck (or more properly, Jean-Baptiste Pierre Antoine de Monet, Chevalier de Lamarck) was talking about evolution in the 18th century, although his idea of the inheritance of acquired traits now makes him the butt of jokes among biologists.

Can you imagine a worse fate than to be laughed at by biologists? The horror!

Sorry Dad, I forgot Rule 17 for a second...

Back to my point. I think we've come a long way recently, with Pennsylvania and Ohio the most recent states to decide that -gasp!- science belongs in science classrooms. Even the media have come around. Yesterday the Times had an article "dispel[ing] doubts about a theory of evolution", that wasn't talking about a debate over natural selection.

Thankfully, we're past that now.

Rather, the article was discussing two new studies published in that journal-of-journals Nature (Barluenga et al. 2006, Savolainen et al. in press). These two new studies give new evidence for sympatric speciation, where a species diverges into two in the same geographic area. This is a very cool idea. Usually, speciation occurs when there is a geographic barrier between populations (e.g., a mountain range, desert, ocean, etc.) that limits interbreeding, a process known as allopatric speciation. Over time, the genetic makeup of those populations will differentiate enough that they will be unable to interbreed, having evolved into separate species.

Voila! The origin of species by means of natural selection, or the preservation of favoured races in the struggle for life, to borrow a phrase from someone smarter than I.

Sympatric speciation is so cool because it doesn't require any geographic barriers to gene flow (man, they make it sound so technical, don't they?), relying instead on differences in behavior to prevent individuals from breeding (insert lame joke here). Until these most recent studies, it was pretty much just intellectual masturbation fodder, although it has been suggested in other species, most memorably the apple maggot fly. Yummy.

I love evolutionary biology. Good thing I'm a gittin' edji-mecated in it.

a gentle introduction to reconciliation ecology

There is something of a revolution going on in conservation ecology these days. And since neither guns, cocaine nor Marx are involved, I am clearly not talking about that kind of revolution. I refer instead to something called "reconciliation ecology", and it is quietly gaining steam in the arenas of conservation biology, urban planning, and good old pragmatism.

In a nutshell, it is the simple admission that sticking nature in protected reserves and writing everything else off is a fundamentally flawed strategy. Reconciliation ecology is the study and practice of integrating nature into our cities, suburbs, and farms, thereby taking a few eggs out of the nature reserve basket.

This is, of course, not a new concept in much of the world. Rooftop and windowsill gardens have been a staple of European and Asian cities for centuries. But nature conservation in the United States is still informed primarily by the "big wilderness" myth popularized by the Hudson River School. But I think we're coming around.

That is not to say we shouldn't keep making nature reserves, only that we cannot rely on them to preserve the Earth's biological diversity in perpetuity. And besides, relegating nature only to nature preserves means that people aren't exposed to it, and if people aren't exposed to nature, why should they care about its protection?

Just a little something to think about.

 

 

that sneaky "they"

Well, the old man once again snapped me back to reality, reminding me that yes, understanding the ecological consequences of urban sprawl is important.

It is funny, though. Everyone who goes into ecology does so because they like mucking around looking for critters (see right). What they don't tell you is that mucking about accounts for about 0.01% of your time as an ecologist (or even as a grad student), and that most of your time is spent hustling money (i.e. writing grant proposals) and running statistics.

Now, I've come around around on stats, and I think it's pretty cool to see your field work turn into a story about what is going on in nature. And since the results of my study allign nicely with my hypotheses, it makes writing a whole lot easier.

But seriously: everyone who goes into ecology does so because they like being outdoors, and then they stick you with math? What's the deal?

science kicks (my) ass.

OK, so it's thesis-writin' time for me these days. I finally finished analyzing all my data last week, in a caffeine-fueled, carpel tunnel-inducing, soul-sucking marathon in front of my computer. The one stint of 36 solid hours was a bit much, I must admit. So one may question why, in a rare moment of me-time, I am masochistic enough to once again sit down at said computer to make this blog entry. But never mind that.

So here's an example of what I have been up to. I've spent three years in grad school, and it all boils down to a graph that says frogs don't like living in the city. Yep, that's it. Well, that's not quite it. I have graphs and tables for another five species, and then two more main chapters. I'll draw it out to 60 or 80 pages. But essentially, I have figured out (along with several dozen others in the past couple of years) that frogs like living in the woods. Just asking a six-year-old the same information would have been a whole lot easier.

On the other hand, how cool is that graph? To be able to spend warm summer nights tromping around wetlands listening for frogs, and then use those data to calculate something like this, and get paid for it all the while, is simply awesome.

What can I say? Science is pretty damn sweet.