Welcome to the 2nd edition of SEEN. Please have a scroll down and click on any links that you find interesting. Don’t forget to send your links to me.
SEEN 1.2
Did you know that Southampton University has a conservation society? Their president Michaela Roberts tells us more:
“Southampton University Conservation Volunteers are a group of students and staff that spend our Sundays out of the city in the Hampshire countryside carrying out conservation tasks for local organisations. We are involved in eradication of invasive species, coppicing, deer fencing and many other tasks. Much of what we do is related to land management, and we pick up many different skills along the way (such as tree felling last week), as well as seeing the many different strategies adopted by different organisations. It’s a brilliant way to actually contribute to many of the issues we spend much of our time learning about, and good for releasing some of the stress of studying. If you want to get involved send us an e-mail to sucv@soton.ac.uk to find out about our next tasks.”
In the news:
Royal society prize for popular science book of the year – Life Ascending by Nick Lane, a popular science book about evolution. It’s on my Christmas list!
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-11595847
Paul the octopus, who predicted Germany’s results in the World cup this summer, has died
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-11626050
Exmoor Emperor shot dead (more sad news) – are poachers affecting the fitness of the population? What do you think?
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-devon-11624253
The Mammal Society (based in Southampton) is looking for student committee members
https://app.e2ma.net/app/view:CampaignPublic/id:38898.8756519289/rid:909fd30259cf101eee05ffdddae256a0
Narwhals collect data – an interesting way to collect data but there are limitations
http://www.nature.com/news/2010/101028/full/news.2010.569.html
British waterways survey – kingfishers are on the increase, has anyone seen one?
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-11673044
Full survey available here
http://www.waterscape.com/wildlifesurvey/2009-results
World bank puts a price on nature – 2nd and 3rd years are learning about ecosystem services, it’s having/going to have a huge impact on conservation
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-11642538
Interesting websites:
Hampshire mammal group (for those of you interested in mammals)
http://www.hwt.org.uk/pages/-hampshire-mammal-group-763.html
Caring for stuffed animals (not the ones from the toy shop!)
http://www3.hants.gov.uk/museum/conservation/caring-for-collections/conservation-nat-science.htm
How to take an award-winning wildlife photo
http://www.newscientist.com/blogs/culturelab/2010/10/how-to-make-a-prizewinning-wildlife-photo.html
Interesting articles:
Mairead McGuirk sent in this link for a recent article in Journal of Experimental Biology on parenting behaviour in the discus fish, unlike a lot of fish species they do provide postnatal parental care, producing a mucus for their offspring to eat until they are large enough to forage for themselves. This study investigates the mucus at different stages of the parental care period.
http://jeb.biologists.org/cgi/content/full/213/22/i
You may have heard in the news about how fat mice fathers affect their daughters. This is an unexpected result if you think that body mass is not genetically controlled (inherited), so how is it having an effect? The answer is epigenetics, a developing area of research. Epigenetics is defined as inheritance not based on coding changes in the DNA, so it depends on factors such as DNA methylation, suggesting a developmental cause. Not to be confused with Lamarkism (inheritance of physiological characters, like muscle size, you probably learnt about the giraffe’s neck at school, as you know this is not the mechanism of evolution). However, one journalist did get confused!
This is the original Nature article
http://www.nature.com/news/2010/101020/full/news.2010.553.html
Comments by Oliver Burkeman at The Guardian
http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2010/mar/19/evolution-darwin-natural-selection-genes-wrong
This led to a rant by Jerry Coyne, an eminent evolutionary biologist who wrote the book Why Evolution is True, on his daily blog on the same subject (why evolution is true):
http://whyevolutionistrue.wordpress.com/2010/03/19/worst-science-journalism-of-the-year-darwin-completely-wrong-again/
The Guardian then replied:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/mar/19/darwin-evolutionary-science-media-coverage
So you can see that it is important to have a full understanding of a topic before printing in a national newspaper! It also points to a need for more scientists to work in science communication.
Turtle play behaviour – mentioned by Joel in his Animal Behaviour lecture last week, evidence that turtles play (there is a link to the original article in The Scientist.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/10/101019132045.htm
There is some positive news that conservation efforts are working. This link is for the original article’s abstract – the whole article is not yet available but will be soon (keep checking Science)
http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/abstract/science.1194442
There is an overview here:
http://www.nature.com/news/2010/101026/full/news.2010.563.html
Extreme conservation efforts using Imprinting to assist in teaching the migration route to endangered migrant birds, born in captivity, BBC article with links to 2 projects – Waldrapp team and Operation Migration
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-11574073
Are these methods the way forward?
Do you know how clever Caledonian crows are? They can actually use tools. You can watch their tool use here (with a link to a related article in Science)
http://video.sciencemag.org/VideoLab/609859393001/1
A further video and a review of a study investigating the importance of observing parents for learning tool use is available here (+ with link to original article in Animal Behaviour, click on green “Sources” box)
http://news.bbc.co.uk/earth/hi/earth_news/newsid_9125000/9125227.stm
Is there interspecific communication in dolphins? This article suggests that there could be
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1439-0310.2010.01828.x/abstract
What’s on:
David Attenborough’s First Life, Friday 5th November, BBC2 9pm
Sir David Attenborough goes back in time to the roots of the tree of life, in search of the very first animals
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00vw49d
Royal Geographical Society/IBG Talk given by George McGavin, Turner Sims, Southampton (on campus!), Thursday 11 November 8.00 pm
Entomologist George McGavin from the BBC’s series The Lost Land of the Tiger and The Lost land of the Volcano will be talking about the geography and biology of species from the series.
Tickets are available from the Turner Sims box office on campus or by calling 02380595151. Staff tickets are ÂŁ12, students ÂŁ7. See you there!
Find out what’s happening at UCL’s Grant Museum
http://www.ucl.ac.uk/museums/whats-on/grant_listings
This includes the 14th Annual Robert Grant Lecture given by Prof Steve Jones on 17th November at 4pm. The talk will last about an hour (you can get a National Express to London Victoria bus station on campus).
Southampton Natural History Society – Fungus Foray, Sunday 21st November, meet at Hawthorns Centre at 2pm
http://sotonnhs.org/events.asp
More on this society in the next edition.
National Biodiversity survey, Sept-Dec 2010 – take part
http://www.opalexplorenature.org/?q=BiodiversitySurvey
Careers:
Graduate careers special – New Scientist
http://cde.cerosmedia.com/1F4cc1a2a819bd5148.cde
Species of the week:
Nominated by Southampton University Conservation Volunteers – Rhododendron ponticum, “as that’s what we seem to spend half of our lives chopping down!” This introduced plant is very destructive as it is able to outcompete British plants having devastating consequences on the whole ecosystem.
Please send in your links, comments and species of the week suggestions, it seems to be a bit animal dominated this week (sorry, plant lovers!).
Posted By : Judith Lock