Science Online 2012: Pirate Branding, Life as a Sperm, and Scheming Fireflies
This book has taken up residence on my bookshelf alongside my well-loved copy of Mushrooms of Colorado and my sexy black 50's-era ex-University of Nebraska microscope.
The Artful Amoeba
A Blog About the Weird Wonderfulness of Life on Earth
Deadly and Delicious Amanitas Can No Longer Decompose
The iconic Amanita muscaria. You may have seen some smurfs living in one of these. Public domain; click image for link. Amanita mushrooms -- like all creatures -- rot, but most of them can't rot other things.The fact that they don't rot other things is not news to biologists, who have long known that many, if not most, fungi have become professional partners with trees, plants, or algae.The fact that they can't rot other things -- as reported in July in PLoS ONE -- is news, and provides a clue to how symbiotic partnerships can withstand the temptations of leaving and the sometimes dissonant interests of their symbiotic partners...
How Ballistic Cup Fungi Fire Their Spores (and Look Cool Doing It)
It's a bit embarrassing to admit you were recently on your hands and knees excitedly filming a cow pie. But I was.And the reason was this: Here's another one found nearby: There were five or six of these polka-dotted mounds in close proximity...
Deep Sea Coral Clings to Oil Platform at Record Gulf Depth
When the Mississippi River flows into the Gulf of Mexico, its odyssey doesn't end. It enters an underwater valley called the Mississippi Canyon, a world where nutrients from the river nourish some fantastical forms of life...
The Brain-Eating Amoeba in Minnesota -- Live
Last Thursday I received an email from the media coordinator for Scientific American about a brain-eating microbe. It's not every day you get to answer the call of duty on one of those.Minnesota Public Radio had asked to interview me about a microorganism suspected in the death of a young boy in the state this year -- only the second time in the state's history and the second in two years...
What Does a Marmot Sound Like?
What happens when squirrels invade the tundra? Well, in one case, they got chubby, fluffy, flappy-tailed, and occasionally kinda cranky, sorta like a hydrophobic alpine beaver.
How Mosses Have Sex in Spite of Their Swimming-Challenged Sperm
Last summer I was hiking in the tundra near Gray's and Torrey's Peaks when I came upon a moss that looked strange. It had little flattened discs that looked something like this: Polytrichum piliferum...
A Final Fern Tribute, the Witch's Hat Lichen, and an Unidentified Gelatinous Blob
It's about time to get back to your regularly scheduled blogging. But before we leave the Southern Hemisphere entirely, let's have one last Best of the Rest Post.
The Amoeba Collective
Dear Readers — As you are probably well aware by now, today is the Sci Am Blog network’s One Year Anniversary! So, in honor of that fact, we are asking our readers to come forward and identify themselves...
Proteas: The Most Beautiful and Abundant Flowers You've Probably Never Heard Of
It's Independence Day here in the United States, and in celebration, today I bring you a short post about some flowers that grow nowhere in the wild in America -- but beautifully resemble certain patriotic displays that are currently banned nearly everywhere here in Colorado due to extreme fire danger...
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