Trumpeting The Coming Of Spring


A cool, grey morning, but with the promise of spring close, almost close enough to reach out and touch. The winter colors of dark red and green are changing to bright yellow and pink as daffodils and prunus species start to flower and raise the mood.

 While admiring an extensive daffodil collection in full bloom, the information that their trumpet controversy has been settled last week (1) came to mind. In the nick of time for St. David’s Day, when some of the Welsh wear their daffodils with pride, Prof. Scotland settled the issue that the trumpets are a new organ and not related to the petals or the stamens. Most lowly flowers have only four organs, but the daffodils have five, which makes then special. Perhaps this new distinction will have encouraged the rest of the Welsh to eschew wearing their rather odiferous leeks in favor of their more aristocratic flower. It is now four days past the big day and I can find no reports on any of the news outlets on this important issue.

Heronry Startup
The geese are spreading out and it won’t be long before they start to get broody. No sign of the ospreys yet. Last years nest is still the same pile of twigs as ever sitting ready for some new clutter. The herons though, are getting on with it and have the start of their heronry well under way with four birds and two nests in the uppermost branches of a stand of very tall trees. Penthouses are still popular amongst the beautiful people.

1. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-oxfordshire-12598054

Tread Carefully


The Brazilian rain forest would seem to be an ideal place to reside if one were a carpenter ant. Not only is there lots of dead and rotting wood to fashion city galleries from, but the range of exotic and rare hardwoods available, would make wood artists and makers of musical instruments green with envy.

Living quietly in the jungle, however, has its dangers. Whilst trotting about the forest floor on their daily business they can pick up fungal spores. It is much more serious than our human athlete’s foot. Hughes and Evans (1) have identified four new species of the fungus that infects specific variants of our ant buddies.

It is called the “Zombie-Ant Fungus” for good reason Infecting the ants, the fungus releases chemicals, which kill the ant and then it has the temerity to sprout a stalk with a fruiting body from back its host’s head. This would be bad enough, but the chemicals that are killing the ant, are slow acting, mind altering drugs which cause the ant to wander around and finally clamp its mandibles onto the vein on the underside of a leaf in a death grip. A devilish plan that enables the fruiting body to sprinkle its spores widely over the forest floor and so catch the maximum number of unsuspecting ants. Whole colonies can end up decorating the underside of bushes. A sight terrible enough to put any self-respecting ant off her dinner.

Carpenter ants are widespread globally and an Asian family, Camponotus saundersi, can get very excitable and insist on having the last word. They have large mandibular glands that run along their body and when sufficiently irritated, their head explodes, spraying the contents of the glands over all and sundry. Their tormentors are covered in a sticky concoction of toxic chemicals leaving no options for negotiation or apology.


1. http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0017024

Beneath The Surface


The shrimpophiles amongst us have spent the past year worrying if the Gulf shrimp population is going to recover from the last year’s oil spill disaster. These gourmets of decapods are well aware that not all shrimps are equal and those from the Gulf are particularly plump and delicious. However, life in the shrimp world has other matters of moment than whether or not they are ready to be turned into Southern Fried Shrimp, Cajun Shrimp or for the special occasion, Coconut Shrimp. Today’s BBC News headlines just two of these (1).

Firstly, the good news is that Dr. Jamieson of the U of Aberdeen has given his name to a shrimp, Princaxelia Jamiesoni, in honor of their first meeting. The shrimp is two and half inches long, white and lodges on the bottom of the northwest Pacific, and was generally minding its own business before being thrust into the limelight.

Next we turn to an invasion of shrimp from the dark side – the Black Sea is their base and they go by the name, Dikerogrammarus villosus, which is enough to strike terror into us humble hunt and peckers, let alone any entrant in a Spelling Bee. Brigades of these warriors have marched along the bottom of the Danube, down the Rhine and then sneaked rides across the Channel. The have spread across the UK from Cambridgshire in the east to Cardiff in the west. At an inch long, they are formidable opponents that slaughter the peace loving native freshwater shrimps and insect larvae, gorging on some and leaving the bodies others to rot where they fall. The surface of the reservoir or river may look peaceful, even idyllic in the early spring sunshine, but the sun’s reflection merely serves to hide the mayhem from our view. Isn’t it always so when we view things at a distance?


1. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science_and_environment/

Small World


Nanotechnology has been a big buzzword for a few years now, and is viewed by some as an evil genie, which should be stuffed back in the bottle, and by others as a good genie which ensures research funding at a level they could only dream of previously. In reality nature has been dabbling with it long before we had a catchy name that we liked. One of its minor attractions is its ‘emperor’s new clothes’ character of being able to observe an effect without actually seeing what’s causing it. Of course there are expensive units like electron microscopes, with which we can peer at desiccated samples, but nothing as simple and cheap as an optical microscope that we can look down and see things wriggling and dancing about.

Well, we have moved one large step forward this week with the publication by Dr. Wang from U of Manchester and an international team (1) who have given their specimens a liberal sprinkling of little glass beads, which act as super lenses giving them an extra eightfold magnification. So ‘Hey Presto’ and a sprinkling of this magic dust, your humble lab microscope is turned into a state of the art nanoscope, opening up a new world of excitement of watching small things misbehave in real time rather than studying their dried out remains. We shall become nano-behavioral anthropologists rather than nano-archeologists – a very exciting prospect.

Geek notes:
The magic dust is silica microspheres about 5 microns in diameter.
A micron is a millionth of a meter, a nanometer is a billionth of a meter.
The transparent microspheres focus the evanescent light waves that occur at their interface, and the normal lens system can pick up the image with a resolution of about fifty nanometers.
Evanescent wave is a wave component that rapidly looses brightness as it travels.

1. http://www.nature.com/ncomms/journal/v2/n3/full/ncomms1211.html

Getting Down To Business


For most of us, our interest in woodlice or pill bugs decreases after the age of five. They are just there. Under stones or scurrying along the bottom of a wall, we see them as an untidy blemish on our orderly arrangement of nature.  Their vital role in the decomposition of organic material and their important contribution to soil health, is not a topic for discussion at the dinner tables of the chattering classes. I, for one, had given little thought to the social aspirations of the little bugs. But they have been much studied, and a paper by Devigne et al (1), which was published last Friday, looked at their gregarious nature.

Their social networking skills work at long range, and they quickly get the word out that there is a meeting to attend. Dark corners are preferred for large meetings, and like most large meetings, they tend to take a long time to get through the business. Brighter lights result in the quorate rules being relaxed, smaller meetings are held and the business dispensed with more rapidly. There is an important life lesson in there for all of us I think.


1. http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0017389

Cat's Cradle


The current issue of Discovery News introduces us to a pre-print of a paper by Kotrschal et al of U Vienna describing the social interaction between people and their cats. Note that I report it was done with their cats, and not their neighbor’s cats who bury little messages in your newly planted seedbed or regard your new bird table as their personal fast food take away outlet. There were 41 cats taking part that consented to their owners being involved and the depth and nature of their bonding being discussed.

Because food is more than just mere material for sustenance, but also has a role in showing affection the, cat-owner interactions took on a similar character to those of a preverbal baby-parent response. The study then showed that the cats tended to choose the female human over the male because they were more readily manipulated and more responsive. Of course this is not a one-way street, the cats show their gratitude by allotting more petting time to the women. Its not that men were excluded, but just that the cats have sussed out who is more likely to go to the refrigerator and pull out cat food rather than a beer. We men clearly have to get more in touch with our feminine side if we’re going to be considered for promotion in the petting order.

The alignment of goals and objectives is strongest between young active cats who are lucky enough to manage extroverted women. Here a simple flick of an upright tail can illicit the correct response whether it is opening the door to the garden, opening the door to the 'fridge or providing a lap for a nap. Tomorrow morning, when I go to the gym, I will make sure that when my personal trainer tells me to do twenty press-ups to warm up, I will be able to explain to her that I’ve been excused such hard effort and give her a note from my cat to confirm.

A Little Winner


A very exciting result came in from the Osaka Marathon this morning.  After only 2.27 days of fierce walking, the winning margin was a mere one-second. The robot race was decided during the final few laps as the winner, Robovie-PC, took a firm grip on her capacitors and powered on whilst the erstwhile leader, Robovie-PC Lite was dithering around and titivating her transducers, with the result that a comfortable lead evaporated like snow in summer.

Sustenance, in the form of freshly prepared batteries, was available during the race, but chivalry in the form of a hand up to a fallen robo-lady was not allowed and would have resulted in instant disqualification. The racecourse was indoors, otherwise rain showers would have made the carrying of umbrellas essential and this would have slowed the pace.

The winner’s stats are her weight is 2.4 kg and her height is 40 cm. Her other key measurements are a secret between her and her engineer. We would, of course be too polite to pry further. An excellent video of the event can be found at:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-pacific-12589607
where you can see these vertically challenged robo-ladies hurrying along with little 7 cm steps reminiscent of old-time geishas hurrying from one entertainment gig to the next.