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sometime over the next few months besides being a treat for aurora watchers this intensified light show will be invaluable for researchers looking for ways to protect our satellite and communications networks from this increased radiation while they may be beautiful the ions spiralling through space can and have wreaked havoc on our electrical grids this year s maximum has turned out to be the weakest in over a century but there are still lights to be seen so look up look waaay up and hopefully you will have the chance to experience a true natural wonder p s to find out when and where your best chances for aurora spotting are visit www gi alaska edu auroraforecast posted in art boreal natural phenomena nature science space tagged aurora aurora borealis boreal naturalist nature night northern lights phenomenon sky solar max solar winds space stars 4 comments flight of dragons posted on august 22 2013 by heather although growing up i was very much a tomboy climbing trees and mucking around in the bush and ditches near my house my relationship with insects was more typical of most city girls i didn t like them i thought nothing of swatting a house fly and i m sad to say that i ve run screaming away from a pursuing horsefly or the longhorn beetles that show up around august at the cottage however as i ve aged my impression of insects has evolved quite a bit as i ve grown to appreciate the amazing beauty and complexity of our natural world i find myself drawn more often to those things that used to frighten or disgust me to re examine them with my new perspective on life i m pleased to report that i ve developed a new appreciation for longhorn beetles however the one group of insects has always fascinated me even as a child is the dragonflies i have a vivid memory of canoeing with my father down the la salle river south of winnipeg when a dragonfly landed on my knee i was rapt as i carefully held my lower half as still as i could while paddling to ensure my visitor a smooth ride wanting to keep it with me as long as possible i m not the only one with this fascination there s just something about these bejewelled predators that captures the imagination i see representations of dragonflies everywhere on t shirts in wind chimes and other household decorations on jewellery and even fridge magnets i think most people simply find them attractive with their iridescent colours and delicate wings they re also benevolent bugs from the human standpoint voraciously devouring our undesirables like mosquitoes and black flies even with all of this goodwill i don t think the average person really knows all that much about them dragonflies and damselflies belong to the order odonata toothed ones which contains some of the most ancient and largest insects ever known there are over 5 900 living species with nearly 100 of them found in manitoba they ve been around a long time with the earliest fossil protodonata pre dragonflies dating to around 325 million years ago they were also a lot larger then with wingspans reaching nearly a metre i m not sure we would ve been so fond of them if they were still that size when these insects first took to the air they were the monarchs of the skies feeding on whatever flew into their path vertebrates were only just crawling out of the water and so dragonflies had little competition and few predators the benefits of being big however only lasted until dinosaurs started coming into their own although they ve become much smaller over time the overall structure of a dragonfly hasn t really changed all that much in 250 million years these bugs are built to hunt on the wing their compound eyes are enormous relative to the size of their body and over 80 of their brain function is devoted to analyzing the visual input from the up to 30 000 ommatidia facets that make up each eye having eyes made up of independent facets results in an incredible ability to detect movement because they can see in just about all directions at once this hyped up visual centre can also detect parts of the colour spectrum that we can t human eyes have three types of opsins light sensitive proteins that detect red green and blue light diurnal dragonflies have four or five types of opsins arranged very specifically throughout each compound eye with blue and uv receptors pointed up and longer wavelength receptors pointed down likely to maximize their efficiency with amazing visual acuity the ability to focus on one prey item at the expense of all else almost all of their limbs facing towards the head and prehensile labia mouthparts they can snatch their prey out of the air with about a 95 success rate the last part of this deadly equation is their stunning aerial ability we ve all seen them dive and weave hover and back up all while reaching speeds of nearly 50 km h dragonfly flight is actually very complicated probably the most complex process of all flying organisms with four wings that can move independently of each other and dynamic airfoils that can flex around several angles things can get complicated and scientists are still trying to sort it all out with the help of high speed film they can make use of the classical lift that keeps planes in the air and a back and forth figure eight stroke much like hummingbirds as well as take advantage of the vortices they create some can turn 360 degrees around the axis of their bodies with the wings on one side stroking forward and the other side stroking back in one coordinated movement all of it is driven by a circuit of 16 neurons hard wiring the brain to the highly developed motor muscles in the thorax so the next time you catch the flash of a dragonfly as it zips along take a moment to marvel at these truly ancient wonders of the natural world posted in art biology entomology insects natural history nature physiology science tagged bugs damselflies dragonflies entomology eyes flight insects manitoba naturalist nature odonata physiology sight wildlife 5 comments back home on the range posted on july 6 2013 by heather i ve fallen behind a bit on my posts of late but in my defence i ve been very busy teaching and for the first time in a while travelling in my travels i had the opportunity to branch out from my usual boreal forest aspen parkland region and explore a whole new host of habitats one of those were the grasslands of southern saskatchewan these regions are often passed over as boring by travellers in canada who prefer the more obvious grandeur of the rocky mountains or coastal regions however i can assure you that the mixed grass prairie that carpets a swath along canada s border with montana is a truly remarkable region full of breathtaking beauty and a whole host of fascinating species you won t find anywhere else the stark landscape is alive with grasses rippling in waves dotted with islands of sagebrush the odd tree and the carefully manicured lawns of prairie dog towns this is the landscape that once was home to the plains bison for thousands of years millions of these thundering ungulates roamed not only grasslands but at least 45 other ecoregions as the largest ranging ungulate in north america shaping each region as they went you see bison are what are known as a keystone species keystone species are those whose impact on the world in which they live is greater than what you d expect from its population or more specifically its biomass these are species who fundamentally alter the habitat they live in affecting the lives of myriad species around them in their heyday these largest of all north american herbivores were the linchpin holding the grassland ecosystem together providing food for a host of predators including entire civilizations of humans and by shaping the very structure of the landscape and thus affecting the day to day lives of a large proportion of prairie species i was fortunate to learn about these relationships from wes olson former parks canada warden who has lived and worked with bison for decades bison literally left their footprints on the landscape their heavy bodies pressed their hooves into the earth leaving singular holes called pugging that bled into trails churning the soil and breaking up the thatch from previous years for new growth and allowing a greater diversity of plants to get a foothold ploughing their noses through the winter snow to graze the coarse remains of the summer s grass left short cropped lawns that would green up faster in the spring offering much needed nutrients to both the bison and other prairie grazers like jack rabbits and pronghorn these patches also would get a boost of nitrogen from urine the bison released regularly into the ground these winter grazing lawns were also great places for animals that need visibility to congregate birds like sharp tailed grouse and sage grouse could use them in early spring as dancing grounds or leks where males get out and literally strut their stuff in the hopes of finding a female a bison s penchant for wallowing also had a significant effect on the landscape when a 2000 lb animal rolls around on the ground it tends to leave a mark these dust bath pits were often the only spots on the prairie to retain open water for any length of time and become important draws for many dozens of species from insects and frogs to top carnivores like badgers and coyotes every part of the animal was used human predators like the blackfoot people of southern alberta would use everything from the hide to the meat to the bladder for protection food and other tools animal predators like coyotes would feed on the flesh scavengers like vultures and badgers would take what was left rodents would gnaw on the bones in their search for the calcium missing from their diets dung beetles and burrowing owls would make use of the bison patties for food and olfactory camouflage respectively if humans didn t scoop them up first for fuel in this wood less landscape this intricate network was torn apart as european settlers moved across the continent by the late 1800s a combination of habitat loss conscious extermination efforts and just plain wastefulness saw a population of several million reduced to tiny isolated herds today the wild population numbers about 30 000 individuals restricted to parks and conservation areas however the bison is not extinct and the threads are starting to re knit themselves in more and more places herds have been thriving in elk island and riding mountain national parks for years making their mark on the aspen parkland plains bison were also reintroduced to grasslands national park in southern saskatchewan in 2009 and already their effects are being felt slowly after over a century this much abused landscape is starting to heal though it s hard if not impossible to turn back the clock some of the interactions and relationships i ve described are reforming and places like grasslands remind us just how complex and resilient nature really is posted in biology conservation ecology grasslands natural history nature tagged bison buffalo canada conservation keystone species learning mammal natural history naturalist miscellany nature plains ungulate wild wilderness wildlife 8 comments a thing with feathers posted on march 19 2013 by heather even if you can somehow go through your entire life without ever seeing a bird chances are very good that you will still have some experience with feathers whether displayed in a hatband stuffed into a pillow or quilt or tied together at the end of a duster feathers are a fairly ubiquitous part of the world around us and certainly the defining characteristic of the group of flying vertebrates we know today as birds but have you ever given much thought to where they came from as it turns out feathers have been around a lot longer than most people realize as paleontologists find more fossils every year to slot into the puzzle that is the evolution of life on this planet the picture becomes clearer and stories start to make sense when it comes to the story of the evolution of feathers the first thing you have to remember is that birds are modern dinosaurs having evolved from the lineage known as theropods whose ranks include those jurassic park villains velociraptor and tyrannosaurus rex however what didn t make it into the movies was the fact that at the very least velociraptor was not only ferocious but fluffy at first this detail was inferred from the discovery that many of its ancestors were feathered and some like the bizarre bi plane like creature microraptor gui could fly then a discovery of quill nobs a trait seen in modern birds on the forearm bones of one specimen confirmed it now an accurate representation of velociraptor is something like a sleek predatory ostrich even more recent discoveries have put the assumption of a scaly hide in tyrannosaurus rex into doubt while they haven t found specimens of this iconic dinosaur with feathers yet a cousin from about 125 million years old china named yutyrannus most definitely was feathered about the size of a bus these are the largest feathered dinosaurs known to date so how far back do feathers go in time we can trace their existence at least 160 million years to chicken like dinosaurs called anchiornis but these critters already had the highly complex barbed feathers we see in modern birds today most evolutionary biologists agree that feathers likely started out as single hollow hair like filaments that became branched and barbed as needed over time these have been found in many species most notably sciurumimus a dinosaur found very near the base of the theropod branch described for the first time just last year this species shows a spectacularly preserved coat of dense filamentous plumes finding feathers like these near the base of the branch suggests that maybe more advanced theropods including t rex had some kind of plumage still we don t know just how far back down the tree they go the point of origin keeps getting pushed closer and closer to the root of at least the dinosaur s evolutionary tree thanks to feather filaments being found in some ornisthischian dinosaurs like the triceratops cousin psittacosaurus who are about as far removed from theropods and modern birds as a dinosaur can be actually they re starting to find feathers all over the dinosaur family tree leaving us to wonder if they predate the group altogether in fact the genes responsible for taking an undifferentiated plate of keratin and turning it into a feather has been found in crocodilians who although they are birds closest living relatives branched off from the group well over 250 million years ago so what did these prehistoric feathers look like structurally early feathers started out as simple hollow strands growing out from a plate of keratin embedded in the skin more advanced feathers split into barbs looking like fluffy ostrich plumes eventually those barbs developed tiny barbules that allowed their wearers to zip them up t...