Return to the Ponds

The sun was in a teasing mood and inviting us locals to try a restorative walk. Before I had traveled two hundred yards, it was back in hiding and remained there for the rest of the afternoon. I did the polite thing and pretended not to notice. First, I checked the river. It was higher than ever and running very fast. One of the benches along the bank had disappeared; either it is hiding underwater or has been swept away.
Although the pond level is still high, and may still be rising slowly, the cloudiness has fallen. The birdlife now seems to be returning with pairs of geese occupying prime sites on the banks and islands. The cormorants are back in place and drying out after fishing activity. The heron may not have done so well though as it has taken to a log instead of the bank. Contemplating the benefits of a vegan diet perhaps. 

Maybe though, he is feeling more fortunate than Gena from Dnipropetrovsk in the Ukraine. Poor Gena, while posing for a photo-shoot, yawned on being asked to smile, and then accidently swallowed a cell-phone dropped into her mouth by the would-be photographer, a Mrs. Golovko. Gena, an immigrant crocodile from Africa, is refusing to answer any more calls and is complaining that the ringing in her stomach is quite putting her off her food. Gena is currently eschewing favorites like live quail as they have been injected with laxatives. She is convinced that the photographer’s (Ms. Golovko) hurry to get her sim card returned with her contact list is just a passing fancy.
(Source: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-12257335 )



Micro-farming


There was a plethora of items in the media this morning on communication and cooperation in various species of wildlife. Very humbling for us humans as we usually assume that we invented everything. The most unexpected gem shining from the spoil was the letter to Nature (1) by Brock et al. They have been up to their armpits in the social amoebas known as slime mold. These characters live on bacteria and when the local supply and demand has gone critical, they gather together into a fruiting body – somewhat like their version of the Mayflower – and sail off on the prevailing currents to pastures new. BUT (and note that it is a big ‘but’) a third of the immigrants are farming specialists and carry enough bacteria with them to start new gardens and so prosper in their new world. One is left to wonder if the other two-thirds are lawyers.

Further up the food chain were items on communication of information within a group. Prairie dogs, for example, have a high-pitched squeak and thanks to NPR, I learnt that there is richness in those squeaks that we humans miss. Not surprising, as I have never learnt prairie dog and most foreign languages come across as a sonic blur to my untutored ear. Computers with microphones are much more adept at analyzing the noise. Prairie dogs apparently tell their friends and family the difference between a triangle and a circle. More exciting than that though is that they described people by their shape, or at least height and width, as well as by the color of the tee shirt that they were wearing as they paraded through the colony. There was no translation of the bulk of the chatter though so we don't know what they thought of the designs.

We were also reminded from a different station, that capuchin monkeys get teed-off and refuse to cooperate in monkey psychology tests if they get consistently short changed. Also that crows have great face recognition and ill pass on to their kids which nasty guy is likely to mess with their nests. There were items about chimps and baboons and one about sharks probably being color-blind (so they won’t be put off by the sight of blood?), but I wonder why there is such an element of surprise when these observations are published – shark items apart of course. Cooperation and communication are vital characteristics for species survival. Even animals that prefer to live alone get together for a good time occasionally, just like the rest of us.

Ref:
1. http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v469/n7330/full/nature09668.html

Pondering the Depths


Bufflehead Flotilla

The morning chill is making my eyes water as I hike to the coffee pot this morning. The pond level is at the highest that I’ve seen it so far. The connective routes from sub-pond to sub-pond are now much broader. The islands have shrunk and some trees have their lower half submerged. A very turbulent inflow has turned the water universally brown with fine particulates carried in from the river.

The wildlife are very quiet this morning with a few disconsolate looking geese staring out across the water. The odd one finds the energy to honk in a half-hearted manner as I walk past. A small flotilla of Buffleheads are continuing to tough it out, but otherwise most of the ducks, geese, heron et al have moved off. Where to? The river is very high and turbulent and even more cloudy, so that wouldn’t be good. As I watch and wonder, a sole cormorant swoops in to waterski to a halt; the call of her home log being too strong to ignore for long, perhaps. With a drier spell of weather predicted, the river level should drop and maybe the ponds will have more excitement to offer.

Designer Genes


An interesting result of a genetic study carried out by Prof. Fowler and colleagues, which is published in PNAS (1), indicates that our genes influence our relationships. Assortative mating so that we tend towards the same set of genes doesn’t sound to surprising but taking it to the extent that we like to share genotypes with our friends seems surprising, at least to me. DRD2 is the beasty that sorts us out apparently. When I read that this is the one that is also associated with a tendency towards alcoholism, I began to see that the popularity of bars takes on a deeper meaning and singles bars must have an even deeper significance. The CYP2A6 genotype was shown to exhibit heterophilly, that is these are people that we wouldn’t like to hang out and drink with.

We need an iPhone App that stores our genotype information and can compare this with others in the same space. Bluetooth technology has a 30-foot radius and would be ideal. Think of the time and money that this would save, we would just have to give the bar a quick scan and our App would give us the probability of having an interesting evening. It would rate the bar on the percentage of the denizens that were boozy soul mates compared to the percentage that were going to tell us boring stories about work or their brother in law’s sister’s dog. Until the App is here, I guess I’ll have to rely on my old standbys of pheromones and non-verbal communication.

A real challenge comes with our Facebook friends. Should we publish some genotype information along with our favorite films and music? Would prospective employers want to compare your genotypes with others that would be in the same team as a compatibility check? Setting up ‘tiger teams’ in the workplace is well established, but are we going to see ‘metagenomic teams’, or better still ‘metagenomic tiger teams’, as the newest fad from the business consulting world?

Whilst sitting here, comfortably in my metagenomic world, I begin to worry about how epigenetics can play into this. If environmental factors can cause genes to become inactive/unavailable due to say modification of a histone tail or the addition of a methoxy group, and this reduction in activity can be passed on for a generation or two, is it possible that I could suddenly end up in a feud with my metagenomic group which could last through to my grandkids time?

Reference:
 1.  http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2011/01/07/1011687108

Collateral Gain


It is always fascinating to see that the collateral changes that we get alongside a planned environmental change are invariably unexpected. Ella Davies in the BBC Earth News today reports on the re-introduction of beavers in Poland. Now we have known, from the work of University of Alberta scientists carried out several years ago, that beavers are good for frogs. Beaver ponds are good homes for tadpoles and I’m sure that over a glass of wine in a bar, I would have been rash enough to predict that. But that beavers are good for bats would not have been on my list. I’m sure it was a surprise to the researchers at the University of Gdansk who spotted it.

Of course we have to climb the causal tree to find out why. Water of course is good for insect populations, so that might be it. But, surprise, the bats that hunt over water (such as Daubenton’s bat) aren’t favored. The reason? These bats use the water surface to reflect their hunting sonar to light up insects and the still water of the beaver ponds get a duckweed blanket giving a stealth surface that hides the insects. The favored bats are those that hunt high up among the trees. The thinning of the trees means fewer small branches and twigs making it easier for these species of bat to locate and catch insects.

It is a little over eighteen months since beavers were re-introduced to Knapdale in Scotland, so it is too early to see wildlife synergies, but a fine time to look to see if they develop. The UK’s bat population is in a pretty dire state and an army of beaver conservation volunteers would be a very cheap way to give them a hand up without increasing the tax rate. Also I’m sure that the current citizenship of Inverness wouldn’t do what their 17th century ancestors did – namely to hunt the beavers for their fur and eat their tails as a substitute for fish
 ( http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/scotland/glasgow_and_west/8187637.stm ).