Natural History articles from October 2007

Natural History archives from October 2007

Phantom of the Opteras.(THE NATURAL MOMENT)(phasmids)(Photograph)
October 1, 2007... Walking sticks are creeping up on the 250th anniversary of their scientific debut: The Swedish taxonomist Carl Linnaeus first chronicled three species in 1758, calling them the phasmas, or ghosts, of the insect world. The moniker stuck, though...

Shallow-water thinking.(UP FRONT)
October 1, 2007... Go and look in the fish markets," Richard L. Haedrich tells me, "and you'll see all kinds offish spread out there. But you won't know where any of it really comes from. They give you the country of origin, but they don't tell you that the...

Cut-rate proteins.(LETTERS)(Letter to the editor)
October 1, 2007... Olivia Judson's excellent article on the cell's use of relatively "cheap" amino acids ["A Terrible Scrooge," 5/07] made me wonder whether the principle could also apply to the so-called essential amino acids--the ones that people cannot...

Save the vaquita!(LETTERS)(Letter to the editor)
October 1, 2007... I cried when I read "How Now, Little Cow" [7-8/07], Robert L. Pitman and Lorenzo Rojas-Bracho's article about the vaquita. I know people need to make a living, but it's not fair to do it at the expense of another species. The price tag the...

Name that plant.(LETTERS)(Letter to the editor)
October 1, 2007... The plant identified as Gloxinia macrophylla on page 26 of Wm. Wayt Thomas's article, "Survival of the Rarest" [6/07] should be called Sinningia macrophylla. The current name can be found in the World Checklist of Gesneriaceae. The plant is...

Ask the experts.(LETTERS)(Comet Giacobini-Zinner and a meteor shower)(Brief article)
October 1, 2007... I hope you can answer a question I have had for many years. One October years ago (maybe between 1943 and 1945), in northwestern Wyoming at about 7,500 feet elevation, we were bringing horses home from a cattle drive when, between 8 and 10:30...

They came from the deep.(SAMPLINGS)(deep-sea bacteria)(Brief article)
October 1, 2007... What does a deep-sea thermal vent have in common with the inside of your gut--apart from a tendency to rumble and grumble? It turns out the two places are home to bacteria with a surprising evolutionary connection. A team led by Satoshi...

Collective medicine.(SAMPLINGS)(effect of solid conifer resins' antibiotic properties on wood ants)(Brief article)
October 1, 2007... Wood ants are industrious food gatherers, but why do they bother lugging home inedible gobs of solid conifer resin? The answer, according to a new study, is that the resin disinfects the nest and helps keep the ants free from disease. ...

Australia's rip van winkle.(SAMPLINGS)(pygmy possums' hibernation)(Brief article)
October 1, 2007... If hibernating were an Olympic sport, pygmy possums would be gold medalists. One of the mini-marsupials dozed for a record 367 days, according to Fritz Geiser of the University of New England in Australia. The key to soporific success lies in...

The kindness of strangers.(SAMPLINGS)(rats)(Brief article)
October 1, 2007... "One good turn deserves another." Most people take that aphorism to heart--so much so, studies show, that after receiving help, we are more willing than before to help someone else, even a stranger. It might be tempting to think such virtue is...

Who's your mommy?(SAMPLINGS)(sea rockets)(Brief article)
October 1, 2007... Animals aren't the only life-forms that can recognize their family members. Plants can too, it seems. The sea rocket, Cakile edentula, is a member of the mustard family that grows on sandy beaches. Susan A. Dudley of McMaster University in...

That sinking feeling.(SAMPLINGS)(effect of earth temperature on landmasses' elevation)(Brief article)
October 1, 2007... New York City sinks 1,400 feet beneath the Atlantic; only the tip of the television tower atop the Empire State Building pokes above the waves. No, it's not a scene from the latest doomsday flick, it's what would happen if the rock underlying...

A hot new trend.(SAMPLINGS: THE WARMING EARTH)(heat waves in Europe)(Brief article)
October 1, 2007... The European heat wave of August 2003 killed some 35,000 people; temperatures in many places topped ninety-five degrees for as long as ten days in a row. A new study shows that the lethal hot spell was part of a century-long trend toward higher...

Out of sync.(SAMPLINGS: THE WARMING EARTH)(effects of global warming in flowering plants)(Brief article)
October 1, 2007... Flowering plants provide food to their animal visitors in exchange for pollination, so both groups are in big trouble if their schedules fail to mesh. Will global warming disrupt their timing and lead to a wave of extinctions? Until recently, a...

Snow gray.(SAMPLINGS: THE WARMING EARTH)(dust storms)(Brief article)
October 1, 2007... A billion people living in the dry regions of our planet owe their summer supply of freshwater to snowmelt from nearby mountains. To them, climate change will not be kind. In the future, alpine snow won't last as long as it does now--and not...

Fellow traveler: fifty years ago this month, the U.S.S.R. launched Sputnik 1, the world's first Earth-orbiting artificial satellite. Shocked into action, the U.S. ramped up its space program--and its science education.(UNIVERSE)
October 1, 2007... One floodlit midnight in early October 1957, beside the river Syr Darya in the Republic of Kazakhstan--while office workers in New York were taking their afternoon break--Soviet rocket scientists were launching a two-foot-wide, polished...

Lucy goes walkabout; the travels of a celebrated fossil highlight the vitality of Ethiopian paleoanthropology.(REFLECTIONS)(Lucy's Legacy: The Hidden Treasures of Ethiopia)
October 1, 2007... The world's most famous hominid fossil has taken up temporary residence (until next April 20) at the Houston Museum of Natural Science, as the star attraction of the exhibition "Lucy's Legacy: The Hidden Treasures of Ethiopia." An early hominid...

Deep trouble: fishermen have been casting their nets into the deep sea after exhausting shallow-water stocks. But adaptations to deepwater living make the fishes there particularly vulnerable to overfishing--and many are now endangered.
October 1, 2007... The deck was covered with fish. I'd never seen anything like it. There were long, slender eels, black sharks, pale rays, silvery grenadiers with long, pointy tails, and great black things with huge, dark eyes. We'd needed the biggest winch on...

Vampire slayers of Lake Victoria: African spiders get the jump on blood-filled mosquitoes.(Evarcha culicivora)
October 1, 2007... The diet of the East African spider Evarcha culicivora reminds us of a line from the 1931 film Dracula. Soon after Renfield, a visitor from England, arrives at Count Dracula's castle, he struggles to get through an unnaturally large spiderweb...

What's good for the goose: a Wisconsin marsh offers a welcome rest stop to migrating birds.(THIS LAND)(Horicon National Wildlife Refuge)
October 1, 2007... From mid-October through November, people flock to Horicon National Wildlife Refuge to observe flocks of Canada geese and other migrant species, as well as the resident birds. The thirty-three-square-mile refuge, in southeastern Wisconsin,...

The Most Important Fish in the Sea: Menhaden and America.(BOOKSHELF)(Book review)
October 1, 2007... The Most Important Fish in the Sea: Menhaden and America by H. Bruce Franklin, Island Press; $25.00 To my knowledge, I have never eaten a menhaden, though it is the most common fish native to the East Coast of North America. Nor is there a...

Glorified Dinosaurs: The Origin and Early Evolution of Birds.(BOOKSHELF)(Book review)
October 1, 2007... Glorified Dinosaurs: The Origin and Early Evolution of Birds by Luis M. Chiappe, Wiley-Liss; $69.95 In 1861, two years after the publication of Darwin's Origin of Species, a Bavarian quarry worker unearthed a nearly complete impression of...

Riddled With Life: Friendly Worms, Ladybug Sex, and the Parasites that Make Us Who We Are.(BOOKSHELF)(Book review)
October 1, 2007... Riddled With Life: Friendly Worms, Ladybug Sex, and the Parasites that Make Us Who We Are by Marlene Zuk, Harcourt, Inc.; $25.00 Think of this book," its author writes,: as a disease appreciation course. Don't get her wrong, though: Marlene...

Beep Beep.(nature.net)(www.naturalhistorymag.com)(Brief article)
October 1, 2007... Born in 1960, I have no memories of the heady years when our species first vaulted to a higher plane, Earth orbit--though I did witness the end of the space race, when astronauts landed on the Moon. What was it like, half a century ago, to tune...

John and Amanda: a scientific legacy stretches from the core of the Sun to deep beneath Antarctic ice.(OUT THERE)(John Bahcall and the Antarctic Muon and Neutrino Detector Array)
October 1, 2007... Just about everyone in the field of astronomy today has a story or o about John Norris Bahcall. Not all that long ago, at a small scientific conference, a fellow graduate student and I were chatting, when my friend suddenly gestured toward a...

The sky in October.(Calendar)
October 1, 2007... Mercury begins October just past its greatest elongation, twenty-six degrees east of the Sun. But as seen from latitude forty degrees north, the planet, shining at magnitude zero, sets only three-quarters of an hour after sundown. In the...

It's not easy being clean.(At the Museum: American Museum of Natural History)(cleaning specimens)
October 1, 2007... Live African elephants often shower themselves with dust to protect their skin from insects and the searing heat. While these are not such a problem inside the Museum, the African elephants in the Equally Hall of African Mammals nonetheless...

The butterfly effect.(At the Museum: American Museum of Natural History)
October 1, 2007... Live butterflies return on Saturday, October 6, and with them comes one of the most crowd-pleasing experiences the Museum offers--the possibility of an up-close encounter with one of the 500 free-flying creatures at the heart of this popular...

Science and society: words and music.(At the Museum: American Museum of Natural History)
October 1, 2007... Much of the Museum's work revolves around where we've come from and where we are headed. But two lectures by prominent researchers making science accessible and engaging to the public will address another key concern: what makes us tick now....

Museum events: American Museum of Natural History.(Calendar)
October 1, 2007... EXHIBITIONS Mythic Creatures: Dragons, Unicorns, and Mermaids Through January 6, 2008 Mythic Creatures traces the origins of legendary beings of land, sea, and air. Cultural artifacts bring to light surprising similarities--and...

Where have all the flowers gone?(END PAPER)(Kadua haupuensis)
October 1, 2007... High on Mount Haupu, in a rugged part of the Hawaiian island of Kaua'i, Kenneth R. Wood tied one end of his climbing rope at the top of a cliff, hooked up his rappelling gear, and slid down the rope. Wood is an "extreme botanist," an expert on...