A week and a half ago I stepped off a plane and into the Southern Hemisphere for the first time in my life. In spite of 12 hours of cramped legs and loud children heedless of fellow travelers’ sleep needs, it was an exhilarating feeling. Location: New Zealand. Though David Attenborough ably prepared me for [...]

[the following is a modified repost from Myrmecos, February 2011] I had been following an army ant raid for half an hour through dense tropical forest when the trees unexpectedly parted to reveal a small clearing. Sun broke through the canopy and fell on a low tangle of furry plants.  It was a monoculture, looking as [...]

The eastern bluebird (Sialia sialis) has lived in Bermuda as long as recent human memory can recall. It’s considered a native species, and some people even consider the population to be a subspecies–the Bermuda bluebird (Sialia sialis bermudensis)–because it looks a bit different from its mainland counterparts: its blue is a little more purple, and [...]

Mistletoe is frequently spotted hanging above lovers’ heads in terrible holiday specials–but only during one month of the year. That makes it easy to forget that more than 1,300 species hang in forests year-round, parasitizing thousands of tree species around the world. Or, rather, hemiparasitizing, which means the plant is partially self-sufficient: it has its [...]

When you read the word “nature,” what do you think of? Maybe you imagine a dark wood with sunlight reaching a mottled floor of foliage, thrushes singing and chipmunks hopping. Maybe you peer through grassy dunes at sanderlings running back and forth in the surf , occasionally halting to frantically peck at the sand. Or [...]

In honor of Chemistry Day here on the Scientific American blog network, I’ve dug out partially rewritten a post on ecological chemistry from the Culturing Science archives. Enjoy! Dimethylsulfide.  Does that word mean anything to you?  “Why yes,” you organic chemistry nerds may say, “It clearly is a molecule of sulfur with two methyl groups attached.”  [...]

Perhaps our species’s greatest misconception about the sea was that it is inexhaustible. The idea seems rather silly now, in a world where most people are familiar with the word “overfishing.” But men once gazed into the deep and imagined that it teemed with life so plentiful that we could take and take without ever [...]

Just like astrophysicists seek underlying patterns in space/time, ecologists seek similar patterns in life on earth. And there’s one they thought they had pegged: the pyramid of numbers. The first known pyramidal of numbers was drawn by Charles Elton in 1927 to explain the flow of energy through ecosystems. Plants convert carbon in the air into [...]

When I’m not spending my time writing about the weird bugs I find in the garden, or even weirder creatures I just think the world ought to know about, I study land snails from Pacific Islands. That means every time I give I talk I spend the first couple of minutes convincing people that – [...]

When Catherine Chalmers headed to Costa Rica for the third time this past January, she had a script in mind that told a very specific story: the stripping of nature. With a cast of hundreds, if not thousands, she would film a leafy branch being reduced to wood to represent the larger picture of clear-cutting [...]

Every year on June 8 ocean enthusiasts celebrate World Oceans Day. Last year over 300 official events in 45 countries recognized how the Earth’s largest and most complex ecosystem affects not only the rest of the planet and its inhabitants, but how the seas touch upon the essence of being human and the connectivity of [...]

Red-eyed periodic cicadas emerge every 13 or 17 years, but finding out why could take millennia In ""Too Hard for Science?" I interview scientists about ideas they would love to explore that they don’t think could be investigated. For instance, they might involve machines beyond the realm of possibility, such as particle accelerators as big [...]

The two-hour drive from New Orleans to Venice, La., is like cutting into a slice of apple pie—it’s as American as it gets. Busy streets and high-rise buildings give way to farms, fields, and wetlands, in the perfect picture of rural, small-town America. With the exception of the occasional oil refinery or church, most buildings [...]

Natural disasters always seem to strike in the worst places. The Sendai earthquake has caused over 8,000 deaths, destroyed 450,000 people’s homes, crippled four nuclear reactors and wreaked over $300 billion in damage. And it’s only the latest disaster. Haiti will need decades to rebuild after its earthquake. New Orleans still hasn’t repopulated following Hurricane [...]

Today is the publication day of Pink Boots and the Machete, book by Mireya Mayor, physical anthropologist, National Geographic Explorer, and former NFL Cheerleader. For this occasion, we have invited Darlene Cavalier to conduct a brief interview with the author. Darlene: You discovered the world’s smallest primate in existence in Madagascar. Walk me through the [...]

Extinction, as any child in elementary school knows, is forever—never again shall we see the likes of the dodo, Tasmanian tiger, or passenger pigeon. Once every individual of a species is dead, there is no coming back. Extinction is too often a sad and familiar tale of humans changing a habitat for their needs, while [...]

Island animals have been an endless source of wonder and fascination for biologists for centuries, and often capture public awe as well. It is always fascinating to picture miniature elephants and gigantic rabbits adrift on dots of land in a vast ocean, flowers with unimaginable types of fruit, or communities in which "terror birds" have [...]

In the world of biology, there is plant, there is animal, and there is plant-animal. Specifically, moss–animals, the bryozoans. [Public Domain Haeckel illustration—click to see large] I mention this because someone in Virginia recently had a run-in with these creatures that was startling enough to result in a press release. And when a bryozoan generates [...]

Spring and summer allergy sufferers might already have noticed a slight increase in days spent sneezing each year. And new research suggests that allergies triggered by pollen are set to increase—in both duration and severity—with climate change. The seasonal scourge ragweed has already been expanding its range in North America, thanks in large part to [...]

Last May, a University of Alabama graduate student was the first person to collect an oblong rock snail in over 70 years. The species, Leptoxis compacta, hadn’t been observed since 1933 and was declared extinct in 2000. Nathan Whelan, the biology PhD candidate who made the discovery, is glad that his research has a positive [...]

Today is the end of a series of dispatches we posted on our Expeditions blog – The ‘Problems Without Passports’ program at USC takes two experienced instructors and a number of students to do underwater research on the islands of Guam and Palau. I have immensely enjoyed working with the group and reading their posts [...]

Bananas, cacao and bee-pollinated crops are all threatened with collapse in part because of their monoculture management. When a biological or social system is full of uniform individuals—be they bean plants or banks—one shared weakness can spell disaster for the whole lot. Even when a new beneficial trait or tool enters the picture, if all [...]

The many octopus species that live beyond the reach of vacationing snorkelers, scuba diving researchers and even near-shore commercial fisheries are relative unknowns compared with the more familiar shallow-water species. But that doesn’t mean that they are not of great importance to science—and the ocean’s intricate food web. Last time we met the super-fecund cephalopod [...]

Of all the amazing octopus species out there, the mimic octopus, Thaumoctopus mimicus, is perhaps the most bewildering. While most known octopuses are able to change color and shape for camouflage, mimic octopuses can also impersonate other animals to deter would-be predators. They can contort their bodies and long, striped arms to look—and swim—like other [...]

Octopuses are clever, reclusive, dexterous, strong and slippery as heck—especially those belonging to the very largest species: the giant Pacific octopus (Enteroctopus dofleini). So how are researchers to catch and track them? Certainly not with traditional nets and tags, which the octopuses can (respectively) squeeze out of and rip off. Instead, try enlisting the help [...]

I was recently in Alaska as an invitee of GoPro cameras in support of a pretty cool science experiment by Project Aether. Briefly, I was there to assist as they launched weather balloons with GoPro cameras attached in order to collect intra-auroral images. After the weather balloons dropped, the GPS tagged cameras were then retrieved, [...]

Sorry for the silence here at Tet Zoo – Eotyrannus is keeping me busy, and no time for blog-writing. In desperation, I wanted to share this, originally posted on ver 2 in 2009. I don’t know about the rest of the world, but in Britain there is a very entrenched tradition of ‘feeding the ducks’. [...]

Moreton Bay is a small patch of ocean bounded by Queensland, Australia, on the west and on the east by Moreton Island and North Stradbroke Island. The bay is home, by various estimates, to between six hundred and eight hundred Indo-Pacific bottlenose dolphins (Tursiops aduncus). A study conducted in the late 1990s found that the [...]

The largest fish in the ocean is the whale shark (Rhincodon typus). This massive, migratory fish can grow up to twelve meters in length, but its enormous mouth is designed to eat the smallest of critters: plankton. While the biggest, the whale shark isn’t the only gigantic filter-feeding shark out there: the basking shark and [...]

Several weeks ago, science writer Virginia Hughes wrote a piece about her trip to the Galapagos Islands. In it, she described a project in which scientists intentionally killed eighty thousand feral goats on one of the islands in the archipelago. The post led to an interesting conversation in the comments. Following the discussion, Ginny put [...]

I opened up a new field site for this field season. It was a beast! Although I only caught two individual Pouched rats over the 80 x80 m square grid, it was a great effort. And much was learned. In addition to non-target captures in my live traps, I also put out camera traps. I [...]

I see these magnificent shells littered on the ground – in the woods, on lawns, everywhere. It’s the shell of the Giant African Land Snail. In Tanzania, they are native – living in terrestrial habitats or on land. But back in the United States they are an invasive species. Not only do they devour vegetation of most [...]

Society of Wetland Scientists (SWS) wants YOU to attend its annual conference. Hats off SWS. It’s one of themost active and vocal professional societies that work to promote diversity and inclusion of students, especially undergraduates in the scientific experience. The SWS Diversity Program was created to increase diversity in the Society and the field of [...]

Early today, I Skyped in and gave a quick presentation to University of Louisville BIO 263 Environmental Biolog students.  My friend and colleague Dr. Tommy Parker is an Assistant Professor and Director of the Urban Wildlife Research Lab. The course focuses on the relationships between humans and the environment. Topics include ecology, population biology, modifications [...]

Starting today, Monday, October 15th through November 5th, science bloggers from far and wide will compete to deliver the most supplies to students across the country. And I am on a mission. Yes. Yes, I am! Like all of my colleagues (now competitors) I care about quality science education and outreach and access for all [...]

Checking traps…. I get a lot of giggles for tweeting this.  I catch something everyday, sometimes females, sometimes males…I get more giggles when I tweet this.  On Thursday, September 6, 2012 I caught something new, different.  I knew right away it was a carnivore and it was beautiful.  I am doing a capture-mark-recapture study of [...]

B is for Botany I have seen many beautiful flowers and plants and trees here. The tree I was quite excited to see was the Baobab. As a young child, I was enrolled in West African Dance Class. I learned about African culture, traditional dances and music and was told amazing fables of Anansi – [...]

Karibu Marafki, Checking in with you all and answering your questions.  This one I get often. What exactly are you studying in Tanzania? I’m trapping.  Seriously, I’m studying African Giant Pouched Rats, Cricetomys gambianis in the wild to learn more about their natural history and behavioral ecology. Specifically, we (my PI and I) are interested [...]

I’ve been in Tanzania nearly 2 weeks and I’m getting settled. Here’s an overview of what I’ve been up to. I’ll be setting the traps soon to catch rats. If you would like to see more photos from my Trip to Tanzania, then follow allow on my Facebook Fan Page.  I’ve posted my pictures from [...]

June 18-24, 2012 is Pollinator Week. Join me is raising awareness of the importance of pollinators our ecosystems.   How well do you know your bees? Take this quick and see: Bee Identification.