hey. dont cry. 566 california condors, okay? 369 free flying.[1] it's gonna be okay.
for the record, in 1987 there were 27. [2] things can get better.
HEY. DONT CRY. 607 CALIFORNIA CONDORS, OKAY? 392 FREE FLYING. [3]
Keni
will byers stan first human second
Misplaced Lens Cap
dirt enthusiast

oozey mess
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@sporadic-science
hey. dont cry. 566 california condors, okay? 369 free flying.[1] it's gonna be okay.
for the record, in 1987 there were 27. [2] things can get better.
HEY. DONT CRY. 607 CALIFORNIA CONDORS, OKAY? 392 FREE FLYING. [3]
The holy grail of searching through academic literature is coming across a string of publications that are like:
Here’s An Idea. Smith et al. 2016
Terrible Idea; a comment on Smith et al. 2016. Johnson 2016.
You’re Wrong Too; a response to Johnson 2016. Nelson 2016.
Guys Just Stop Fighting, None Of Us Know What’s Going On; a Review of the Current Literature. McBrien 2017.
Not even an exaggeration.
“If We Knew What We Were Doing, It Would Not be Called Research, Would It?”
tags via @jesterbutch
They’re having Twitter beef now.
Speaking as the first author of a paper with a pop culture reference as the first half of the title, do not stop. I got more compliments on the title than the contents of the paper, and the paper won an actual award.
i wish there was inaturalist but for like. fossils. see a map of fossil sites all over the world. i also want to be able to click somewhere on a map, set a time frame and then see what animals would have lived there at that time.
I have good news for you
Love Kennis & Kennis reconstructions of ancient humans. Love the life they give them.
australopithecus afarensis "Lucy", australopithecus sediba, homo erectus pithecantropus, homo ergaster "Turkana boy", homo floresiensis, homo neanderthalensis x2, early homo sapiens from Jebel Irhoud, "Ötzi the Iceman" and neolithic woman Lisar.
It's very endearing to me how many people are willing to keep an eye on a video feed so they can push a button and let a fish in the Netherlands get to the other side of a dam.
It is genuinely baffling to me, in a very kind and positive way, especially coupled with the local news continually going several shades of 'wtf, this thing is a roaring success again and we don't quite get why'. They've already quadrupled their capacity for simultaneous clicks and it's still nowhere near enough and there's just... Bewilderment.
I think people want to help the environment in small but tangible ways, which is hard right now because of.. well... because of The Horrors. And being able to say 'wow! I helped this creature cross a dam' makes you feel good.
I also think that most people can relate to a small, helpless creature trying to get from one place to another and there's a FUCKIN WALL in the way.
But to come back to point 1- Citizen Science fills a hole in the soul that wanted to go out on adventures and discover things when we were younger, but the study of it was hard or we didn't have the money or our schools were garbage. But you don't have to have a degree to do things like... press a button or download and use an app, or count or transcribe notes.
Anyways- here's some Citizen Science links if the Fish Doorbell makes you feel happy and you yearn for more ways to help scientists do stuff:
Foldit (folding proteins)
Fathomverse (sea animals)
Project Monarch (butterflies)
Bioblitz, an event where citizens identify as many species in an area within a period of time
Species Watch (animal species)
BOINC’s Compute for Science
Zooniverse is a website that hosts information on many citizen science projects
Label trees in aerial photos
Count cells in fossils and modern leaves
Digitize Atmospheric Data
Count penguins
US-based Citizen Science Database
eBird (bird identification)
Merlin (bird identification by sound)
iNaturalist (nature identification)
MapSwipe (collaboration between several Red Cross organizations and Doctors Without Borders, update vital geospatial data)
Smithsonian Archives Transcription Center
I’ve decided that all bats fall somewhere on this horrid little graph I’ve devised. Here are some prime examples of the various Creature Varieties found in nature.
The complete ‘Women Who Changed Science - And The World" collection in honor of the 95th Women’s Equality Day.
Purchase Here!
biologists will be like this is a very simplified diagram of a mammalian cell
chemists will be like this is a molecule
We are full of so many fuckign guys
This is actually a full on interactive map! You can put your cursor over any structure to focus on it and see its name, you can focus on all the structures that are part of a specific pathway and, when you click on proteins, you open it up on PhosphoSitePlus, which is a curated database of proteins and their post-translational modifications. It has a helpful description and summary for each protein!
This is a HUGE complementary resource for learning molecular biology! It really helps to make sense of each individual pathway and it puts everything into perspective. It only focuses on human, rat and certain other animal cells, so it won’t have all the pathways one would wish to see… But for the pathways it does include, consider opening the image and accompanying it as you learn or revise them!
oh wow, thank you for the additional information, i had no idea, that’s so much cooler than just the flat picture.
The shape of a fish's caudal tail can tell you a lot about how fast the fish moves! A rounded tail is the slowest and a lunate tail is the fastest! The lunate tail has the most optimal ratio of high thrust and low draw, making it the fastest.
Ichthyology Notes 2/?
“the arts and sciences are completely separate fields that should be pitted against each other” the overlap of the arts and sciences make up our entire perceivable reality they r fucking on the couch
Art vs STEM is a lie created to stop us from turning on the real enemy: business and economics
Arts vs STEM is a lie, the computer that put us on the moon was a loom of woven wires, our space suits were made by hand sewing, we need chemistry to mix paint and we need biology to raise the sheep who make the wool we spin into yarn and crochet or knit or weave and the world is beautiful
Reblogging as a science enthusiast and an artist
paleoart is vital for accurate reconstruction of extinct species
we're using the ncbi blast tool in genetics lab today to identify some given nucleotide sequences and get familiar with how it works and how/why it was put together in the first place. shout out to @hellsitegenetics for preparing me for this moment. they should put a shiny little "as seen on tumblr" badge on the site, or at least on the genetics lab handout. this is just like the simulations
String identified: ' g t c at t gtc a ta t t g ct c a gt aa t t a / t a t tgt t t ac. t t t @tgtc ag t t. t t a tt "a t" ag t t, at at t gtc a at. t t t at
Closest match: Apteryx australis mantelli genome assembly AptMant0, scaffold scaffold27 Common name: North Island Brown Kiwi
(image source)
As someone who taught that module in genetics lab for several years, I love the engagement with BLAST that this blog drives. I love the understanding that words and DNA both are little packets of information encoded in the shape of the things and how that plays into the art of it. I love the fun!
A new viewpoint on antlers reveals the evolutionary history of deer (Cervidae, Mammalia)
fullview recommended!
something i've wanted to do for a while now. i've scoured the internet for something like this and can't find anything that compares all the different types of antlers together. except one recent study on their evolution, which is also very interesting on its own! i simplified it to provide a visual reference, while still trying to be scientifically accurate. some things differ between this and trophy scoring terminology like where the beam is and whatnot, so if something looks weird that's why.
small additional note, this study and others provide a lot of evidence that eld's deer should be in their own genus as it doesn't appear similar enough to barasingha and schomburgk's deer. however this doesn't seem to be adapted anywhere yet, so they're still in Rucervus for this guide.
🔴 KO-FI
⚫ COMMISSION INFO
we should talk about water more often that shit is crazy
it is literally one of the most normal things
you can’t even begin to understand how insane water is
@vzm i agree, and I'm going to prove you right
Water is ~800 times more dense than air. This density provides buoyancy, which means fish don't have to counteract the forces of gravity. This leads to something called indeterminate growth, which means as long as you're living and eating, you keep growing. This is why we have a lot of species of fish that can grow to quite literal monstrous lengths and sizes.
Water is in-compressible, which means it must be completely displaced to move through it. Due to something called the Reynold's Number [R] (which is a ratio of inertial forces to frictional forces as they relate to solids and water movement) your size in the ocean determines how well you can travel. If you are small, water is very hard to move through (R<1, frictional forces dominate, water basically feels like molasses); if you are large, water is easier to move through (R>200, inertial forces dominate, water basically feels like alcohol). This is why large species have very wide ranges of habitat.
Water being very dense and in-compressible has other passive properties. Sound travels through water better than air; so well in fact that there is a magic-like depth called the sofar channel where sound can literally go on forever. Whales uses this to communicate and find each other. These properties also helped fish develop suction feeding/vacuum effect, which is one of the primary forces driving the diversity of fish.
Water is a universal solvent, and sea water is one of the most corrosive things on the planet. Being a solvent means it can hold dissolved gases like oxygen, carbon dioxide, and ammonium (the ionized, nontoxic form of ammonia, which is very toxic). This means fish can safely eliminate waste products across their gills. PS this is also how our blood works with the help of hemoglobin. So thanks water.
Light is heavily absorbed by water, which is known as electromagnetic absorption. Because light is made up of differing wave lengths (with red being the least energetic and violet being the most energetic), you lose colors the deeper you go in the ocean. This means that most deep sea fishes are "color blind" and only sea in shades of green/blue. This provides one species of fish in particular the ultimate evolutionary cheat code: the Red Dragon fish not only kept the ability to see the color red, it also emits red light using an organ under their eyes like a spot light. This means they can use the light to hunt fish without being seen by predators themselves. Hollywood wishes it could make shit like this up.
Because water is so heavy, water pressure increases rapidly with depth. Every ~10 meters (or 33 feet) of depth you have the equivalent of 1 additional weight of Earth's atmosphere (atm) exerted on your body. This has an effect on dissolved gases such as Boyle's law (the volume of a gas is inversely proportional to the pressure; in layman's terms, the volume of a gas increases as pressure decreases), which in turn has a effect on the amount of dissolved gases can be available in water. Increased pressure also effects the structure of proteins, which is why most deep sea fish that are brought to the surface look vastly different when they are at depth. This also contributed to the evolution of something called chaperone proteins/molecules, which are proteins that help normal proteins keep there shape in vertical migratory fishes like lantern fish.
This has been a short ted talk on why water is awesome
By the 1930s, forest cover loss in the eastern states like the Carolinas and Mississippi had stopped, and massive reforestation took place.
"A century of gradual reforestation across the American East and Southeast has kept the region cooler than it otherwise would have become, a new study shows.
The pioneering study of progress shows how the last 25 years of accelerated reforestation around the world might significantly pay off in the second half of the 21st century.
Using a variety of calculative methods and estimations based on satellite and temperature data from weather stations, the authors determined that forests in the eastern United States cool the land surface by 1.8 – 3.6°F annually compared to nearby grasslands and croplands, with the strongest effect seen in summer, when cooling amounts to 3.6 – 9°F.
The younger the forest, the more this cooling effect was detected, with forest trees between 20 and 40 years old offering the coolest temperatures underneath.
“The reforestation has been remarkable and we have shown this has translated into the surrounding air temperature,” Mallory Barnes, an environmental scientist at Indiana University who led the research, told The Guardian.
“Moving forward, we need to think about tree planting not just as a way to absorb carbon dioxide but also the cooling effects in adapting for climate change, to help cities be resilient against these very hot temperatures.”
The cooling of the land surface affected the air near ground level as well, with a stepwise reduction in heat linked to reductions in near-surface air temps.
“Analyses of historical land cover and air temperature trends showed that the cooling benefits of reforestation extend across the landscape,” the authors write. “Locations surrounded by reforestation were up to 1.8°F cooler than neighboring locations that did not undergo land cover change, and areas dominated by regrowing forests were associated with cooling temperature trends in much of the Eastern United States.”
By the 1930s, forest cover loss in the eastern states like the Carolinas and Mississippi had stopped, as the descendants of European settlers moved in greater and greater numbers into cities and marginal agricultural land was abandoned.
The Civilian Conservation Corps undertook large replanting efforts of forests that had been cleared, and this is believed to be what is causing the lower average temperatures observed in the study data.
However, the authors note that other causes, like more sophisticated crop irrigation and increases in airborne pollutants that block incoming sunlight, may have also contributed to the lowering of temperatures over time. They also note that tree planting might not always produce this effect, such as in the boreal zone where increases in trees are linked with increases in humidity that way raise average temperatures."
-via Good News Network, February 20, 2024
Reblogging to show the temperature maps that are featured in the original study (and the Guardian article about it), because the visual difference really is so striking and so encouraging.
As you look at these maps of forests vs. temperature trends, remember that the temperature map is showing large-scale, very long-term averages, especially on the temperature map. Because of that, the map data doesn't reflect how very, very big a difference it can make on a local scale, e.g. those 9°F summer temperature conditions. And those local scale changes are the changes that people actually live in.
This is hugely
Forest Age vs. Warming Maps
Pictured: Guardian graphic. Source: Barnes, et al, 2024, ‘A Century of Reforestation Reduced Anthropogenic Warming in the Eastern United States.’ Note: Forest age data from North American Carbon Program. Age estimates as of 2019 at 1km resolution. Temperature data from Delaware Air Temperature & Precipitation Dataset.
Source: The Guardian, February 17, 2024. And the original study is here, from the journal Earth's Future, first published February 13, 2024.
(Also, btw, for any non-US and/or non-geography people, don't worry about the fact that there aren't any forests in the middle of the country. That's the Great Plains. Like we definitely did turn most of it into cropland, but it's not supposed to have forests.)
This is huge.
Even the small pockets of new reforestation elsewhere in the country are usually correlated with small pockets of cooling. (And of course correlation by itself does not equal causation, but that's what the rest of the study is for.)
This is genuinely strong evidence that the massive tree planting campaigns of the last 25 years are going to pay off dramatically much sooner than we thought.
The study found that the coolest forests were ones planted planted 20 to 40 years ago.
That means that trees planted in the 90s through 2004 are in that stage and causing the most cooling right now.
It also means that the ongoing, absolutely massive recent reforestation efforts are going to pay off a lot between now and 2050.
That means campaigns like China's 2022 pledge to plant or conserve 70 billion trees by 2030. Or India's annual tree-planting drive, which in 2021 saw 250 million trees planted in just one day. Or Kenya's new tree-planting holiday, started in 2023, to plant 100 million trees each year.
This study also gives strong evidence that newer forests don't have vanishingly few benefits compared to old growth forests - they do have benefits (if not as many), just different ones. It also, I would argue, suggests that tree planting efforts don't have to be ecologically perfect to make a real difference. They certainly were not nailing native plant biodiversity and ecological best practices in the US in the 1930s!
And as we learn (and actually implement) more and more about how to do reforestation right - more biodiversity, native plants only, actual forests and not just tree plantations - the benefits of reforestation will only increase.
Bro, you ok? Bro, humans aren’t separate from the ecosystems around us. We’re a part of them, bro. Bro, we’re never going to have absolutely zero effect on ecosystems, because we live here, bro. Bro, I never said it had to be a bad effect. We don’t have to immediately be perfect either, bro, sometimes doing what you can is what you can, and its way better than nothing. Bro what do you mean humans are a plague. You’re starting to sound a bit like an ecofascist, bro… Bro?
Phylum Round 3
🪱 ANNELIDA vs. CNIDARIA 🪼
Annelida
Cnidaria
Annelida: Segmented Worms. This group includes earthworms, leeches, and many classes under the umbrella of “polychaete”. This diverse phylum encompasses deposit feeders (eating dirt), detritivores, scavengers, deadly ambush predators, filter feeders, parasites, herbivores, and more. They are broadly defined by their repeating body segments and parapodia, which are nubby appendages used for both movement and breathing. Some have curved jaws for catching prey or scraping detritus off of rocks, while others have wide, elaborate, brightly colored feather-like fans for filter feeding. While able to crawl freely, a majority of marine Annelids spend most of their time in self-built tubes or burrows. Among their many important functions, they play a key role in mixing soil/sediment, breaking down decaying organic matter, and providing a key food source to countless other animals.
Cnidaria: Jellyfish, anemones, corals, box jellies, and hydroids. They have a gelatinous body with radial symmetry, a decentralized nervous system, and tentacles surrounding a simple mouth. The defining feature of this phylum are their cnidocytes, or stinging cells. There are two different body plans of the Cnidaria; an immobile “polyp” attached to a surface, or a free-living “medusa” which can swim or drift in the water column. Many polyp Cnidarians, such as corals, live in colonies. Some corals build reefs which serve as habitat for other animals. Free-living medusa Cnidarians must return to the seafloor in a polyp-like stage as a part of their life cycle.
[cracks knuckles] Alright, time to repost my annelid propaganda from a few months back, because I NEED EVERYONE TO KNOW HOW PRETTY AND COOL AND IMPORTANT WORMS ARE!!!!!!!
I study marine annelids, otherwise known as polychaete worms! These little guys are an important bio-indicator for environmental conditions on the seafloor - their presence, absence, and health can tell us a lot about the health of their ecosystem! They can be absolutely gorgeous, too - GUARDS, RELEASE THE ALEXANDER SEMENOV PHOTOGRAPHY
Just look at these beautiful, colorful miniature dragons!!!!! Such graceful curves, perfectly placed parapodia (LITTLE FEETIES)!!!!!!!
I'm gonna run out of room to add images so I'll probably add a reblog or two with more propaganda lol
Look at this one!!! Its face is LITERALLY :3
But with SECRET JAWS!!!! >:D
This worm is asexual!!! No, really, I mean it for real. This worm hangs out in coral reefs, and produces a bunch of clones of itself to swim up and fuck for it instead of going up there to do it itself. Asexual legend.
THIS WORM HAS LITTLE NUBBY HANDS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Look at those fuckin Whiskers (antennae). That is a Mouse , to me.
These beautiful creatures are different types of fanworm! The one of the left is called a Christmas tree worm! Just look at the little guy! They use their fans to filter tiny bits of food from the water column, while the worm itself stays safely in its burrow. Many fan worms actually play a key role in mitigating coastal erosion because of their burrows! Their bodies and burrow linings act like plant roots, stabilizing the sediment and preventing erosion from waves or storms.
Some of the key research that I'm working on right now has to do with sediment stabilization and worm activity! I'm currently studying Capitellid worms, these funky little guys that are impossible to get a good picture of:
Wait, what was that? Computer, ENHANCE
Yeah, that's basically a Muppet. Look at that SMILE
These little guys are found in soft sediment ecosystems all over the world! My current research aims to understand the relationship between worm burrowing activities, physical sediment stability, and chemical fluxes between the sediment and overlying seawater. These guys are critical for nutrient cycling processes - when they burrow, they bring oxygenated water down into the deeper sediment, which microbes can use to break down organic matter! One of my long-term stretch goals is to be able to map out this nutrient cycling and its correspondence to worm populations. Annelids are so important, guys!!
Have some more adorable worm pics, on the house :)
JUST LOOK AT THEM. THEY'RE LITERALLY GOING 🥺👉👈 AT YOU! VOTE ANNELIDA FOR THIS SWEET LITTLE FACE!!!!!!
Annelida propaganda!