Laboulbeniales

I've been writing a lit review about insect-fungal interactions. This is probably the coolest thing I have re-discovered in my reading. Laboulbeniales is a group of fungi that live on insects. Unlike other fungi that like to snack on insects, though, the Laboulbeniales like to hang out on the outside of the insect. Here you can see them attached to a ladybird beetle, sticking out like tiny yellow spikes. The fungus is anchored to the insect's cuticle, with roots extending down into the insect's hemocoel, drinking their juices. This way, the fungus can live and let live, feeding but not killing its host. More information here:
Laboulbeniales
Laboulbeniomycetes
Harmonia beetles with Laboulbeniales

Photo from Wikipedia, used under creative commons license.

Luciferase - Enzyme of wonder

Firefly light production itself is kind of a little miracle. In their light organs, the enzyme luciferase oxidizes luciferin in a reaction that converts almost all the energy of the reaction into light without producing excess heat. The light can be turned on and off by the coordination of nitrous oxide production to liberate oxygen to participate in the reaction.

Things that make you want to become an oceanographer

Yeah, it's a jellyfish. A really huge blanket-like jellyfish called Deepstaria enigmatica. I love it!

Dissertation

So, I'm writing a dissertation. Supposedly. Supposedly it needs to be finished in less than two months. Supposedly I am the person who will accomplish this feat. While teaching 5th-grade science. Here's what's killing me: I'm not working on it. I'm freaking out instead.

In undergraduate, back when I was an English major, I would read something the week before the big paper was due. Then I'd spend an afternoon in the library reading a few sources about things I didn't understand in the thing I read. Then I'd sit down and write a paper from start to end. I'd lay that paper like a golden egg, the product of a week's worth of reading and thinking and composing in my head magically squirt out of my brain's cloaca all at once. I'd put myself to bed and in a week or so get back a paper full of glowing praise. It made me feel very clever.

The dissertation is nothing like those old English papers. The dissertation is built word-by-word, a stone castle perched on a 6-year-old garbage heap of data. Every step makes me feel stupid. Every word is scrutinized by the perfect scientist who lives in my brain and judged. Rarely does a single sentence escape the retreating cursor.

I called Kelly about my sudden and acute dissertatiophobia. She commanded me to stick butt to chair and do something. So I tried it. I did one little task. Then I did another. Doing something made me feel loads better, and I worked the rest of the day, taking a break for a late lunch and a late dinner before talking to Kelly again.

She reminded me that I'd need to finish one chapter per week if I want to have a full draft by May for Jim. I have enough of a start on two of them that finishing the two chapters won't be too bad. It's the unknown chapters that scare me still. Is that part of the garbage-pile firm enough? Or will the west wing collapse under its own weight. Only time will tell! Short, brief, momentary time. Finish this first part by Wednesday? Yikes! But it can be done.

Giant stick insect rediscovered, fails to win beauty contest

Photo by Patrick Honan/Nick Carlile.

You might have seen this Giant Stick Insect Article from NPR recently. It tells the story of a crazy large stick insect from Australia that disappeared in 1920 and was thought to be extinct, only to be re-discovered clinging to life on a tiny rocky island in 2001. Scientists brought a few of them back home and managed to breed them in a zoo.

Great news, right?! Totally sweet insect saved from extinction! Now we just have to get rid of the rats that ate all the original population and we can once again have these massive tree-lobsters roaming all over the place!

Except...
"Will ordinary Janes and Joes, going about their days, agree to spend a little extra effort and money to preserve an animal that isn't what most of us would call beautiful?" (says Robert Krulwich in the NPR article)

Should survival be a beauty contest?

Wondermark comic about animal language

Here is a link to the comic


I love Wondermark. There are a number of highly amusing science comics by Malki that rank among the best comics I've ever LOL'ed at. This is no exception. Here, encapsulated in a simple webcomic, is all that I have wondered about human and animal 'language.' We consider ourselves sophisticated users of language because we have things like arbitrary signs (like beeping for instance), ability to talk about displaced or non-existent objects, and infinite flexibility of expression. However, these very things that we consider to make our communication of a higher order than the rest of the world, also makes our communication more obfuscated. A wolf's growl communicates in perfect clarity and simplicity across multiple species. No one needs to learn what it means, and no one needs any more information than it provides.

Wetas

Above and Beyond in the Down Under: Cool Creepy Crawlies.
The snow today reminds me of the alpine weta, a creature that can survive being frozen solid. May we all weather our trials with the same cool-headed-ness.