Night music with Bon Iver

Traveling south tomorrow. Be back soon.

Cookiecutter

A new study from researchers at the University of Florida details the first known attack of a cookiecutter shark (Isistius brasiliensis) on a live human.  The victim, a long distance swimmer, was attacked in 2009 while swimming the channel separating the islands of Hawaii and Maui.  Previously, cookiecutter bites have been found on drowning victims and assumed to have been post-mortem. 

The cookiecutters jaw and tooth structure is unique, and the resulting wound is a nasty one.  The bite scoops out a a golf-ball sized chunk of flesh and leaves a deep, round wound. 

Researchers believe that cookiecutters use their bioluminescence to hide among schools of squid.  When large fish like tuna are attracted to the squid, the small sharks attack.

Some computer animations..

Björk

For some time now, my daughter has been trying to enlighten me to the gifts of Björk, the Icelandic singer-songwriter whose music, and voice, are among the most distinctive out there. I've resisted. The voice grates on me a little.

But, I may have to try again. Her new album and her tour promoting it are named Biophilia, after E. O. Wilson's theory regarding an evolved bond between humans and other organisms. The show features narration by naturalist David Attenborough, Björk's childhood hero.  Any artist that is inspired by these two guys deserves another listen.

Teaser for the album...

Release the Kraken!

Photo by Jeff Gage, University of Florida

More squid news.  A 25-foot giant squid, Architeuthis dux, found off of Florida, is now in the collection of the Florida Museum of Natural History in Gainesville. A group of fishermen found the animal about 12 miles off Port Salerno.

Admittedly, even the giant squid doesn't impress greatly when in this state.  So, take a look at one the few encounters with the real,  live beast.

A graphical look....

...at percentage changes in state appropriations, by year, in Alabama and our neighbors.  We were doing OK at making up the gap for a while.  Not any more.

Rising cost of an education

Our economic mess has impacted just about everyone, including college students.  Today, the U.S. Department of Education posted information on education costs at Universities around the country.  If you follow the link "College Affordability and Transparency", you'll find information about the most and least expensive institutions of various types.  For example, you can find out that tuition and fees at Penn State will cost you $14,410, while one of the lowest tuitions for a four year public institution can be found at Great Basin College - only $2,010 compared to the national average of $6,397.

A more interesting link is the one that carries you to the "State Spending Charts."  Here you'll find data on changes, since 2003, in state and local appropriations, tuition costs, and government grants.  The national data shows that appropriations increased slightly from 2003 through 2008, then declined dramatically (-7.0%) between 2007-2008 and 2008-2009 with the tanking economy.  It's worth taking a few minutes to take a look at how that national average compares to individual states.  A few states actually showed increased appropriations during the time frame - Ohio, for example, showed an increase in appropriations of over 6%.  A few states are noteworthy in the tremendous decline.  Alabama, of course, is one of them.  State and local appropriations per fulltime undergraduate student in the Heart of Dixie declined 22.2% between '07-'08 and '08-'09. 

Maybe Miss Alabama's level of understanding of biology isn't all that surprising, after all.

Arribada

Photo from USFWS

Good news from Mexico.  7,000 Kemp's ridley sea turtles on a nesting beach.

Chasing the red devil in the Sea of Cortez

I talked today to my zoology students about cephalopods, and shared with them this video of William Gilly and his work with Humboldt, or "jumbo", squid.

And then found this. Gilly is currently in the Gulf of California (as the Sea is more commonly known) on board the research vessel New Horizon on an NSF-funded project studying the big squid. Since this site takes its name from a quote in Steinbeck's Log from the Sea of Cortez, it seems appropriate to follow the expedition. 

In this case, I do wish they all could be California girls...

Not a big proponent of beauty pageants.  They remind me of a visit to the local livestock market.  But the recent Miss USA pageant certainly produced some interesting moments.  Most notable?  One of the questions posed to the contestants - "Should evolution by taught in schools?"

The fact that most of the young ladies waffled is understandable - a young woman trying to become Miss USA is in the same intellectual boat as a politician hoping to be elected to the State Senate.  Make it sound like you have an opinion, but don't say anything that you might have to answer for later.  Still, Miss California (the eventual winner) was among the few contestants who came fairly close to the mark.  



An excessive number of "you knows", but she is, after all, from California. And you don't have to "believe" in evolution, any more than you have to believe in gravity. It just is. Add to that the apparent confusion of evolution with the origins of the universe. Still, for a 22-year model, it's not bad. The best answer, of course, would be something like, "What a stupid question. Of course. You can't understand biology without an understanding of evolution."  Probably not getting that at a beauty pageant.

You'll certainly get a lot of "teach both sides."  You can see all the responses here.  Count the number that suggest that a treatment of evolution should be balanced with the "other theories", or that students should be exposed to "both sides of the story."



Sorry, kids.  If you want your science teacher to "teach" the science of intelligent design, you're out of luck.  There's nothing to teach.  "We should teach other theories."  Like what?  It's science class, girls.  Not theology, not philosophy.

And then, alas, there's Miss Alabama, You saw her leading off that last clip. Madeline Mitchell from Russellville and the University of Alabama, has a strong and completely misguided view.

“I do not believe in evolution, I do not believe it should be taught in schools, and I would not encourage it.”

That's Madeline Mitchell, senior at the University of Alabama majoring in elementary education.  Madeline, who graduated from Russelville High School in 2007.  Well, take a look at this, Madeline.  These are figures from the most recent Program for International Student Assessment indicating where U.S. 15-year olds stand in science in relation to students from other nations.  The figure shows the top ten nations, and the U.S.  Notice the gap between Australia in the 10th spot and the U.S.  That's to represent the gap between 10th and 23rd. 

Are we willing to accept this?  Well, in certain circles, the answer appears to be yes.

Let's hope that Madeline will be able to make a living modeling lingerie.  Maybe she can land a gig on a soap opera. Anything to keep her out of the classroom.  If that sounds mean-spirited, I'm sorry.  But I take science education seriously.  Madeline doesn't.

Today's irony - Miss Georgia - "We're smarter than ever these days."

Just as I suspected...

Obviously, the minor problems associated with burning of fossil fuels are nothing compared to the global threat posed by alternative energy sources.


In The Know: Coal Lobby Warns Wind Farms May Blow Earth Off Orbit

Kids could drink that water and get wind in their brain.

Transmutation on Tuesday

Wherein we talk evolution, or cases thereof.

A new paper from Stuart Newman, a development biologist at New York Medical College, is generating some heat in an already torrid arena - the one that looks at the evolution of birds and of flight.  The most notable features of birds, of course, are feathers and wings and the flight that they allow.  Not far behind, though, is the prodigious musculature that drives those wings.  In some birds, the pectoral muscles alone make up 20% of the mass of the animal. 

This seems simple enough to explain.  Flight isn't easy.  I routinely offer a free A to any of my vertebrate zoology students who can open the second floor windows of Bibb Graves Hall and take off.  No one's claimed it yet.  On the surface it seems clear that, as birds developed flight, they gradually developed the powerful musculature to drive it.

Newman has another idea, and it's related to genetics (as, it seems, everything is these days).  It appears that the dinosaur ancestors of birds lost the gene to produce uncoupling protein-1 (UCP1).  This gene is required  for the ability of "brown fat" tissue to generate heat.  In newborn mammals, it is the heat generated by this tissue that provides protection from hypothermia.    Newman suggests that, following the loss of this gene, the ancestors of birds had to rely on increased muscle mass to generate the needed heat.  He thinks that this increased muscle mass enabled them to move to an upright, bipedal posture.  And, he further believes, it was this upright posture that enabled the anterior appendages to be modified for extravagances like flight.

Let your love shine

OK, let's extrapolate the heck out of this.  There are some 2000 species of fireflies in the world.  In some, the females fly; in others, the females are wingless.  These flightless females sit on the ground or a twig and attract males with their luminescence.  It's the strategy of the male, though, that's interesting.  Biologists from Tufts University examined 32 species of fireflies.  They found that, in species with flying females, males provide sperm supplemented with protein that helps the female produce more eggs.  In most species with wingless females, the male provides no nutritional bonus.

What's motivates the different approach?  Perhaps it's just not necessary.  Could be that the flightless females don't need the extra energy. but their flying counterparts do.  Or maybe the males are just pissed off that they have to get up and go to work while the missus sits home and watches firefly Oprah.

The only good shark is a live shark

This sounds like a good thing.  But is it?  Research published in Current Issues in Tourism demonstrates that sharks are worth more alive than they are dead.  Austin Gallagher and Neil Hammerschlag from the University of Miami examined ecotourism businesses from 83 locations around the world and found that sharks, in addition to their ecological significance, can provide a significant boon for local economies.  They were able to value a single living reef shark at $73 per day, while the same shark dead might have a one-time value of $50.  Worth noting - shark-driving tourism produced more than $78 million in revenue in 2007. 

Obviously, it would be a major step forward to convince local governments and businesses that a swimming shark is more valuable to them than one reduced to fins and jaws.  My major concern with shark ecotourism are those operations which put humans AND sharks in harm's way by feeding animals as a means of providing photo ops for their Mike Nelson wannabe clients.  I'd love to believe that a tour operator could make a decent living by providing an opportunity to view sharks in the natural habitat, without catering to the guys who think that their penis size goes up if they're in a photo frame with a tiger shark.

Borneo's cool

Any place that has 24 species of carnivores, including animals like the Sunda stink badger, the the Borneo bay cat (pictured), and the hairy-nosed otter is OK by me.

Taz

Genome sequencing has come a long way since the Haemophilus influenzae, the first bacterium to be sequenced, had its hereditary pants pulled down in 1995.  Since that time, nearly 200 organisms have been sequenced.  Certainly most would point toward Homo sapiens as the most significant of these, I'm going with the Tasmanian devil.

Interesting, and disturbing, sidebar to this story is the devil's extinction threat rising from a contagious form of cancer known as Devil Facial Tumor Disease.  The concern that low genetic diversity might be related to the spread of the disease was one factor motivating the genome sequencing project.

Mentoring on Monday...

...wherein we talk about that most peculiar species, the student.  The topic for a while is going to be grad school.  The specific topic for today will be, finding one.

Quite simply, if you want to be a practicing biologist in this day and age, you will almost certainly need to go to grad school.  There are exceptions - I know some very good, very successful biologists who stopped at the baccalaureate level.  They're few and far between and, almost without fail, they've only been able to actually DO biology after years of grunt-work.  It's just too competitive out there for a student to have any realistic expectation of finding a job in the field without a Masters or Ph.D.

So, let's start with the premise that you've decided you want to go to graduate school in biology.  What strategy will allow you to be successful?  While, admittedly, there's sometimes a lot of luck involved, I think the following protocol will stand you in good stead.

Start early.  Once you've made the decision that you want to be a biologist, begin to narrow down your options.  What is it about biology that fascinates you?  Read, watch videos, talk to your professors.  How do you want to spend your days when the preparation is finished?  What do you want to be when you grow up?  Describe the adult, hard-working you, and describe him/her fully.

Once you've identified the biologist you want to be, find others that are actually doing that now.  This is an important part of the process, and may have a lot to do with where you spend the next few years.  So, put some effort into it.  For example, let's say I've decided that I want to work with the ecology of squid (a particularly sexy choice).  How do I build an opportunity to pursue this in graduate school.  That's going to involve a little searching, and there are a couple of strategies.  The best, and most direct, is to find researchers that are actually doing what you want to do.  Get into the literature and see who's publishing in that area.  I like to use Google Scholar, and do an "Advanced Scholar Search".  This allows you to create a finely tuned search for particular topics with delimiting variables.  For example, I might enter into the search window "cephalopod ecology", and I might limit the search to papers published between 2008 and 2011.  When I conduct this search, I get a return of some 3,700 papers, sorted by how well they match my search.  I'm typically able to read the abstract for any of them, and (on our campus at least) the full-text of those to which our University library has a subscription  I find, for example, an article in Reviews in Fish Biology and Fisheries written by Gretta Pecl and George Jackson examining potential climate change effects on inshore squid species.  Unfortunately, when I examine the paper, I find that Drs. Pecl and Jackson are both at the University of Tasmania - probably not an ideal option for our typical Small Southern student.  However, a little further down the page, I find a 2008 Ecology paper by Rui Rosa, Heidi Dierssen, Liliana Gonzalez, and Brad Seibel looking at diversity patterns of cephalopods in the Atlantic.  On inspection, I find that Dr. Dierssen is in the Department of Marine Science at the University of Connecticut while Dr. Seibel in the Biology Department at the University of Rhode Island.  A quick check of web pages reveals to me that Dr. Seibel is an associate professor whose lab specializes on the physiology of animals in extreme environments, while Dr. Dierssen is an assistant professor at Connecticut where she heads up the Coastal Ocean Laboratory for Optics and Remote Sensing.  She also has an interest in biogeographical distributions of marine organisms, which is probably her interest in the cephalopod work.  So, I now have the names, addresses, and email contacts for two people who are actually involved in research in the area that interests me.  The ball is rolling.

I should say that, for many students, there are geographic or financial limitations on where they can go to grad school.  If that's the case, you may need to define your interest in more general terms.  Let's say, "ecology of marine invertebrates."  Now, go to the departmental pages for the schools in your state/region.  Look at the faculty interests, and find out who matches best with you.  The fit may not be as perfect, but at least you can find someone near you who's doing work that is potentially interesting.

Next Tuesday - making contact. 

The B word

Know your candidates.  Michelle Bachmann declared her candidacy for president today, and a disturbing number of folks in my neck of the woods actually think she's a viable candidate.  I vote largely on the basis of science and education policy.  So, as a public service.

Bachmann on evolution

Bachmann on climate change

Bachmann on stem cell research

Bachmann on environmental issues

Bachmann on education

To summarize, it would be difficult to construct, part by part, batshit-crazy idea by batshit-crazy idea, a more perfect anti-science, anti-education candidate.  She out-Palins Palin.  I would be tempted to wish for a Bachmann nomination, with the thought that she would be easy to defeat in November of 2012.  However, my faith in my fellow Americans is not as strong as it once was.  Like a rampaging rogue elephant, she needs to be stopped in her tracks.

Bunny huggers?

Not quite sure how to react to this news, in which an English politician disparages those who would insist that developers pay for archaeological excavation before starting development.  It's certainly another depressing illustration of the strategy of dismissing those of us who wish to protect what we have (be it historical artifacts, pristine habitats, or endangered species) as somehow silly or juvenile.  On the other hand, it's a bit refreshing to see that such inanity is not limited to the U.S.  Our brothers across the pond can be assholes too.

Coming home

Some good news.  The New Zealand population of southern right whales, hunted to extinction in their home grounds over a century ago, have found their way home.  Researchers have determined that at least seven whales are now migrating from the sub-Antarctic waters now used by the species to the coastal waters of New Zealand.  They expect more to follow.

Eye evolution

Nice slide show from Scientific American illustrating a variety of eyes found in the animal kingdom.

Deniers, prepare your rationalizations

Neodenticula seminae, a diatom that went extinct in the North Atlantic about 800,000 years ago, is back.  It's drift from the Pacific has been made possible by the melting of polar ice in the Arctic.