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2018, recap, the, circles, of, life, gallus, gallusred, junglefowl, lutrochus, meridaensisotter, beetle, pterodrilus, distichuscrayfish, worm, glossopteris, etheostoma, osburnicandy, darter, cytheropteron, dryopteris, cristatacrested, wood, fern, chlorobigreen, sulfur, bacteria, 2019, plans,

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gallus gallus red junglefowl why did the chicken cro nevermind the joke s overused but to me it shows that chickens have been a big part of our life in fact as i m writing this there s a viral study stating that chicken bones in the landfills will be our legacy in the fossil record there are about 21 billion chickens living today about three for each person we slaughter 60 billion of them yearly more than half the number of all humans that have ever lived i too have raised and eaten many of them in my life i spent hundreds of hours playing harvest moon in the 90s fooling around with the hens i started studying animal anatomy by staring at chicken photos on the internet it s impossible to ignore their contribution to our history beyond my history the chinese zodiac features a rooster in their roster the europeans feared the mythical cockatrice pope gregory i picked the rooster as an emblem for christianity they have fed countless people from the ancient romans to minimum wage millennials in the form of cheap nuggets and what do they get in return they don t get the glory of dogs or war horses the word chicken refers to a coward and people say feathered dinosaurs are no longer scary now that they look like chickens i bet those people have never seen how brutal cockfights are to me domestic chickens reflect our ever evolving relationship with nature and what we value in it wherever humans went we took chickens with us and bred them to fit our many desires today a big chunk of the world breeds broilers for their eggs and flesh but the all black cemani of java is bred for their mystical appearance in japan the onagadori is considered a national natural treasure thanks to it s long trailing phoenix like tail as the final entry in this series the chicken sums up why i did this project in the first place we take the birds for granted but if we trace back from their beginning as the wild red junglefowl in asia we start to unravel countless stories these stories not only tell how creatures live and evolve but also how their history is intertwined with ours these stories in the end are also about us franz anthony is a graphic designer and illustrator for someone who uses a chicken avatar and draws fish for a living he tweets a lot about invertebrates my main blog twitter instagram behance studio 252mya ko fi patreon source the circles of life december 26 wednesday 314 26th december dec 314 email facebook pin it tweet embed reblog permalink lutrochus meridaensis otter beetle ft crystal maier as a kid entomologist crystal maier loved getting her feet wet what excites me most is standing in the middle of a mountain stream with my toes in the water cool water running past with a net full of little tiny creatures waiting to be discovered she says this is how she got to know aquatic beetles which are known for their love for clean water now as an adult she got to study her favorite bugs as a career in fact her phd revolved around investigating beetles from the family lutrochidae which at the time only had 11 species all of which are small fuzzy and brown they live in waterlogged plant debris or on travertine calcium deposits in streams giving them the nickname travertine beetles in reality less than 50 actually live on travertine i m a huge advocate for calling them otter beetles from lutra the latin name for a genus of otters it makes sense because they are fuzzy brown and are equally at home on land and in the water just like otters she adds in her research she identified many new species that have been sitting in museum collections for years sometimes centuries this highlights the importance of museums as repositories of diversity and how much is still waiting to be discovered worldwide there are over 2 000 known species of aquatic beetles a small number compared to the grand total of 400 000 species of beetles in the world beetles make up 40 of currently known insect species and a 25 of all animal species living today but if she had to choose a single species that means a lot to her it would be lutrochus meridaensis it lives clinging to the face of cascada velo de la novia a waterfall in venezuela burrowing through the liverworts that grow on the water splashed rock it was among the several unidentified venezuelan beetles handed to her by her phd supervisor at the end of the project crystal described and named 6 species from the country alone with many more discovered in the rest of the world an important part of science is describing and understanding what exists in the natural world so that we may better understand our place in it crystal maier is an insect collection manager at the field museum get to know crystal water beetles and her museum life twitter instagram my main blog ko fi patreon source the circles of life december 19 wednesday 124 19th december dec 124 email facebook pin it tweet embed reblog permalink pterodrilus distichus crayfish worm ft bronwyn w williams bronwyn enjoys showing people creatures that they never knew existed but live in or near their backyard i also enjoy doing so using a form of charades to explain what they look like and how they move often like a drunk inchworm she starts pterodrilus distichus is a tiny worm that doesn t grow larger than 1 mm in length it has what bronwyn affectionately calls devil horns along its back and a tail fan we have no idea what the back appendages are for but they do have a tendency to collect all sorts of gunk making them look like living mobile dust bunnies she adds these peculiar worms need to be on a live crayfish to reproduce depositing cocoons containing embryos on the crayfish s shell if the crayfish molts the embryos left on that molt die it s a very specific life cycle that s fine tuned by millions of years of evolution she first heard about these worms when she was looking into a crayfish invasion in the prairie provinces of canada but the story has a twist the crayfish had tiny worm companions back then she was interested in invasion biology and genetics she wanted to use genetics to figure out how crayfish from different habitats are related to each other to understand how they spread but instead of using the crayfish s dna she used the worms instead since their shorter lifespan means they breed faster and their genes change more quickly unfortunately her crayfish research failed but this led her to investigate the worms diversity instead today she gathers crayfish in the field and looks for the worms clinging to their shells sometimes the worms can also be found at the bottom of the jar in museum collections her aim is to determine how these worms vary spatially across individual crayfish crayfish species habitats and temporally over evolutionary time particularly relative to their crayfish hosts even now she s wrapping up a scientific paper describing a new species that quickly becomes her favorite species when the paper comes out in a few months she ll happily introduce the world to a new chubby little worm one that bronwyn affectionately calls the michelin man bronwyn w williams ph d is the research curator of non molluscan invertebrates at the north carolina museum of natural sciences get to know bronwyn and her branchiobdellidans entocytherids crayfishes and several non molluscan invertebrate pursuits such as climbing and travel twitter lab my main blog ko fi patreon source the circles of life december 12 wednesday 89 12th december dec 89 email facebook pin it tweet embed reblog permalink glossopteris ft aviwe matiwane it s just a myth your car doesn t run on liquid dinosaurs though it s true that coal and gas were once living beings they re remnants of plants and small animals that died millions of years before the first dinosaurs walked the earth this was a time before flowers even existed in south africa glossopteris formed our oldest coal fields this shows the great contribution the fossil plant has in our economy says paleobotanist aviwe matiwane glossopteris is one of the largest and best known groups of extinct plants their fossils are found all over the global south what we now call south america africa india australia new zealand and antarctica this distribution is one of the many pieces of evidence that those places though now separated by oceans were once connected as a supercontinent called gondwana these once common plants were majestic trees that could grow as tall as a ten story building with hundreds of species scattered all across gondwana today they re mostly only known from their simple tongue like fossil leaves unfortunately their plain appearance makes it hard for scientists to tell them apart this is a 200 year old mystery avie is trying to solve figuring out which tiny features of the leaves are most useful for classifying each species on top of that she s also developing a database that will be available online for researchers worldwide her research is possibly the first one to look at these iconic plants taxonomic details at such a great detail a proof that shows how understudied plant fossils are in fact when avie competes her phd she will be one of three paleobotanists in south africa this is why she wants to get people excited about fossil plants through twitter and instagram she wants the world to see what paleobotanists do whether it s curating fossils at the museum or going out for fossil digs in the physical world she also participates in a lot of outreach programs at the albany museum where she works in though plants might be at the bottom of the food chain only by understanding how they lived and died we can paint a better picture of life in the ancient past aviwe matiwane is a phd student at the department of botany at rhodes university grahamstown get to know avie fossil plants and biostratigraphy twitter instagram albany museum instagram albany museum facebook writing my main blog ko fi patreon source the circles of life december 5 wednesday 108 5th december dec 108 email facebook pin it tweet embed reblog permalink etheostoma osburni candy darter ft brin kessinger to a north american the candy darter looks like a tropical fish little do they know these rainbowy fish dwell in their backyard the males are more colorful than the females especially during the breeding season i fell in love during my undergraduate not only did i not know they existed i didn t know there were so many species just in my state biologist brin kessinger says all darters of the genus etheostoma are small they cling to the bottom of fast moving streams using big fins and dart from rock to rock to catch insects hence the name the candy darter is native to one river basin that extends from west virginia to virginia such a limited range makes the candy darter vulnerable to extinction caused by habitat loss and fragmentation interestingly the biggest threat to the candy darter is its cousin the variegate darter these two species were isolated from each other by kanawha falls but began hybridizing when the variegate darter was introduced to the ecosystem as the hybrids flourish the variegate s genes began to swamp out the candy s this is why wildlife managers must be aware of each fish s dna makeup when they release a fish into the wild brin is one of the scientists investigating the issue but even with the pure candy darters not every fish is the same if two populations have similar genetic makeup wildlife managers treat them as one this means a fish from one group can be freely introduced to the other when they are genetically distinct they should be kept separate this is because each group s genes are often fine tuned by thousands of years of evolution to help them survive in a specific part of the river when they cross breeding with a foreign fish the offsprings can be physically unfit to live in that specific habitat this complexity shows that conservation is often a deeper issue than what our eyes can see for us all to do it right we need to be thorough and swift the candy darter has been proposed to be listed as threatened under the endangered species act and could go extinct if action is not taken soon brin laments brin kessinger is a master s student at west virginia university get to know brin fish genomes and the wild genomics lab twitter instagram wild genomics instagram wild genomics facebook brin dedicates this entry to ichthyologist isaac gibson whose enthusiasm and comprehensive knowledge of the candy darter sparked the effort to protect the small unassuming fish isaac passed away in august 2018 the candy darter has formally been listed as an endangered species on 20 november just one week before this interview goes live my main blog ko fi patreon source the circles of life november 28 wednesday 215 28th november nov 215 email facebook pin it tweet embed reblog permalink cytheropteron ft caren shin no restaurant would ever serve the so called seed shrimp these crustaceans also known as ostracods are way too tiny to fill anyone s belly you could fit 100 or so on your thumb they are generally smaller than poppy seeds so you could also fit a handful on a grain of rice if that helps with a sense of scale says biologist caren shin in fact they re so tiny she had to sieve mud and sand to find ostracod shells for her research unlike the more familiar shrimp an ostracod looks more like a microscopic bug living inside a clamshell this covering is what is usually found in the fossil record although in rare cases fossilized organs have also been found it fascinates me that there can be such a range in size shape and adornments that they can take caren exclaims about the shells her study revolves around why ostracods are so diverse and she cites a subgroup called cytheropteron as an example this group is so variable caren and her colleagues think they must have been adaptable enough to have lived from the shallowest waters to the deep sea but the tiny critters tell a bigger story than just the animals life and death by closely studying the ostracods caren can peer into the history of the land they were found in and yes land though ostracods live under the sea her fossils are mostly found in cliffs or hills that used to be submerged under shallow seas in the past specifically her fossils come from the maritime region in southeast asia called the coral triangle the region is now dotted with thousands of islands mostly belonging to indonesia and the philippines it is also known as the amazon of the seas due to the countless number of species of fish corals and many other creatures living in the waters though caren was originally trained as an ecologist she took this nosedive to the deep past when she started learning about these fossils to her understanding the past is a crucial part of making a better sense of the present and eventually the future it excites me that there is so much to discover about the natural world and it all starts from observations that we build upon our knowledge of it caren shin is an ecologist and artist based ...