MetaFilter posts tagged with Biology and ecology

Invasional Meltdown

homunculus — Mon, 16 Feb 2009 21:05:54 -0800

What Invasive Species Are Trying to Tell Us. "Walking snakeheads, carnivorous snails, and the superpredator from the reef: The invasion has begun." [Via]

Great white shark dissection

nthdegx — Wed, 07 Jan 2009 08:44:09 -0800

Scientists at the Auckland Museum will be performing a necropsy of a great white Shark between 11am and 1pm New Zealand time on Thursday. Though they will be examining the contents of its gut, they will also, among other things, look at its sex organs (female) and jaw. The necropsy will be viewable on the web from 2pm NZ time (when's that?). Selected trivia from Wikipedia, and elsewhere:

The only difference between a necropsy and an autopsy is that the word necropsy is more usually applied to animals.
Though reminiscent of the scene from Jaws, Dreyfuss's character was supposed to be examining a tiger shark.
Yes those tedious shark shockumentaries weren't lying. Great white sharks can detect traces of blood from 5km away. Apparently they can also detect a half-billionth of a volt in electric fields generated by moving creatures.
The shark was killed by accident when it became tangled in a gill net. It's against the law in New Zealand to kill a Great White shark deliberately.
At 3m and 300kg, this shark is nearly as big as some great whites.
The great white shark is an endothermic poikilotherm.
Great whites know how to evade dolphin echo location and have varying hunting techniques for a variety of species.
Most attacks on humans from great whites are thought to be "test bites" as they attempt to establish what we are. Humans' unique knack of getting out of the water explains why many attacks are non-fatal. Some have hypothesised that great whites don't like the taste of humans.

I, for one, welcome our new mycological overlords

kliuless — Wed, 31 Dec 2008 18:54:27 -0800

Mushrooms Save the World (long form) -- Paul Stamets on mycelia. Previously: 1 2 3 [bonus: slime molds]

you really should watch this.

plexi — Sun, 02 Nov 2008 10:56:58 -0800

Hunting the Hidden Dimension. You may be familiar with fractals, but in this PBS Nova episode, divided online into 5 parts, fractals go beyond the impossible zoom of the Mandelbrot set. Scientists are using fractals to describe complex natural occurrences, like lava, capillaries, and rain forests. In part 5, scientists measure one tree in the rain forests, and the distribution of small and large branches mirror the distribution of small and large trees. Fractals, it seems, are nature.

Yale Environment 360

homunculus — Wed, 18 Jun 2008 16:16:08 -0800

Yale Environment 360 is an online environment magazine from the Yale School of Forestry & Environmental Studies. It has a lot of great material, like "Biodiversity in the Balance" by Carl Zimmer and "Carbon’s Burden on the World’s Oceans" by Carl Safina and Marah J. Hardt. [Via Zimmer's blog The Loom]

Brittlestar Galactica

Kronos_to_Earth — Mon, 19 May 2008 05:58:10 -0800

Tens of millions of brittlestars have been discovered inhabiting the peak of a sea mount in the Macquarie Ridge south of New Zealand. Strong currents are believed to be responsible for sweeping their predators away, more or less recreating their home 300 million years gone....

Planetary Pathogens

Kronos_to_Earth — Thu, 08 May 2008 20:11:35 -0800

West Nile virus and Avian influenza and Chronic wasting disease, oh, my! (and Monkeypox...) Outbreaks of disease in populations of wild and domestic animals, having such a heavy impact on human health, has led the United States Geological Survey and the University of Wisconson to develop a way to track news of disease outbreaks around the planet: The Global Wildlife Disease News Map.

Finding Waldo

Kronos_to_Earth — Wed, 07 May 2008 07:59:49 -0800

It's 15:00 UTC. Do you know where your Common Toads are...? World on the Move.

Spinoza and Biology

No Robots — Mon, 31 Mar 2008 12:35:34 -0800

Public concern over ecological damage inflicted by human activity has led to growing recognition of the general importance of issues relating to biological science. Unfortunately, the dispute between creationists and upholders of the theory of evolution tends to overshadow public discussion of other more pertinent matters. Specifically, there are significant but relatively unpublicized initiatives underway to promote holistic approaches to biology. The Nature Institute in New York is one such initiative... ...providing instruction in holistic approaches to natural science based on the work of Rudolf Steiner, who based his approach on that of Goethe, who in turn was inspired by Spinoza. The centrality of Spinoza for biology is an issue of increasing interest, with Robert J. Richards arguing that Darwin was inspired by the Spinozist doctrines of Goethe and his contemporaries. Spinoza's holistic, naturalistic approach effectively bypasses the creationist-evolutionist controversy, and provides an ecologically sound basis for human activity. For background, see the work of Robert J. Richards: ▪The Romantic Conception of Life: Science and Philosophy in the Age of Goethe. ▪The meaning of evolution : the morphological construction and ideological reconstruction of Darwin's theory. ▪Darwin and the emergence of evolutionary theories of mind and behaviour. ▪Darwinian heresies.

The Rise of Slime

MetaMonkey — Tue, 01 Aug 2006 20:06:52 -0800

Altered Oceans: A Primeval Tide of Toxins The fireweed began each spring as tufts of hairy growth and spread across the seafloor fast enough to cover a football field in an hour. When fishermen touched it, their skin broke out in searing welts. Their lips blistered and peeled. Their eyes burned and swelled shut. Water that splashed from their nets spread the inflammation to their legs and torsos.

Snail into Comparison

nthdegx — Fri, 31 Oct 2003 18:29:29 -0800

Play with a virtual ecosphere. [Flash].

mrmanley — Fri, 05 Apr 2002 09:43:20 -0800

We're finding new fauna in some of the most heavily-populated areas on earth. It sort of makes you wonder what how many species we never even know about as we slash and burn great hunks of the rain forests, wooded areas, and other biodiverse areas of the world. (And good grief, those bugs are huge!)