SEEN 2.1

Hello everyone,

 

Welcome to first year students and welcome back to returning students. For those of you who don’t know, SEEN stands for Southampton Ecology & Evolution News and is a fortnightly electronic newsletter I produce for Biology and Zoology students here at the University of Southampton but please feel free to pass it on to your friends and family. Have a scroll down and click on any links you think look interesting.

 

The idea is that you email things to me to include in the next edition (lecturers included!). As you’ll see below there is a mixture of types of things you can send me, some serious, some just for fun (like species of the week). Often people spot things that I don’t, so send me anything you think would be good to include.

 

Best wishes for 2011-12!

 

Judith

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After a summer of collecting interesting items, one theme kept recurring, are humans that different to other animals?

 

It used to be thought that we were unique in our tool use, but more and more animals have been found to use tools, including new evidence that the blackspot tuskfish uses rocks to open clams. But, is this actually tool use?

http://news.sciencemag.org/sciencenow/2011/07/diver-snaps-first-photo-of-fish-.html?ref=hp

 

We also thought we were the only animals to plan ahead, but before foraging on the seafloor dolphins wear sponges to protect beak

http://news.sciencemag.org/sciencenow/2011/07/why-dolphins-wear-sponges.html?ref=hp – review

http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0022243 – article

 

Tayras collect plantains, leaving the unripe ones to ripen in a location they remember

http://news.sciencemag.org/sciencenow/2011/08/do-tayras-plan-for-the-future.html?ref=hp – review

http://www.springerlink.com/content/4616t83111731340/ – article

 

Tool use in New Caledonian crows has been well-documented, now it has been found that crows can use mirrors to find food, once they become used to the mirror

http://www.bbc.co.uk/nature/14897544 – review

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0003347211003307 – article

 

It was thought that humans were the only species capable of generosity, setting us apart from other primates. However, a recent study suggests that earlier studies were just too complicated to actually measure generosity because the chimps didn’t understand what they were supposed to do!

http://news.sciencemag.org/sciencenow/2011/08/lab-chimps-extend-a-helping-hand.html?ref=hp – review

http://www.pnas.org/content/108/33/13847 – article

 

You can read more about chimpanzee culture in this Nature News feature

http://www.nature.com/news/2011/110817/full/476266a.html

 

A web chat on Science Live aimed to answer the question “Do animals use language?” You can read the transcript here:

http://news.sciencemag.org/sciencenow/2011/07/live-chat-do-animals-use-languag.html?ref=hp

 

Marc Bekoff ponders whether animals grieve in this Psychology Today article

http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/animal-emotions/200910/grief-in-animals-its-arrogant-think-were-the-only-animals-who-mourn

 

In the News

One story that seemed to be everywhere earlier last month was the lottery style reproduction in squid

http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/notrocketscience/2011/09/20/indiscriminate-squid-just-implantin-everyone-with-sperm/#more-5376 – review with video

http://news.sciencemag.org/sciencenow/2011/09/deep-sea-squid-mate-indiscrimina.html?ref=hp – review

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-14986769 – review

http://rsbl.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/early/2011/09/14/rsbl.2011.0680.full – article

 

Southampton news

Ecology lecturer Felix Eigenbrod presented his study “The impact of projected increases in urbanization on ecosystem services” at the British Ecological Society conference last month, attracting the attention of a BBC journalist.

You can read the BBC review here: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-14804551

The full article is in November’s edition of Proceedings of the Royal Society B available now online:http://rspb.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/278/1722/3201.abstract?etoc

 

Film clips

Big cats vs laser pointers http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x3BHSt42L0Y&feature=player_embedded

We normally think of frogs eating beetle larvae, but for the Epomis larvae it’s the other way around, it eats frogs. You can see this in action on Ed Yong’s blog:

http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/notrocketscience/2011/09/21/beetle-larva-lures-and-kills-frogs-while-the-adult-hunts-and-paralyses-them/#more-5420

 

Careers

Many of you may have undertaken work experience over the summer (if you have, then please email me to let me know where you went and what you did). You can use these hours towards gaining your Graduate Passport: http://www.soton.ac.uk/careers/passport/index.html

You can also collect credits by attending the Centre for Biological Sciences seminar series, which is on Monday evenings (third year students, you should try to attend these seminars). The first one that may interest you is on Monday 17^th October at 5pm in 85/2207 and is titled “Bat echolocation – molecular evolution, adaptation and communication”

 

Volunteering opportunity

Please keep checking this part of SEEN as we are hoping to have regular volunteering opportunities with local organisations.

Hampshire Museums Service, based in Winchester, is looking for 2 volunteers from Southampton University Centre for Biological Sciences on Wednesday afternoons:   There are storage boxes of insects that are awaiting amalgamation into our collections. The project would be to catalogue the specimens, add accession labels and then add them to the entomology drawers. It will be an excellent opportunity to get to grips with the taxonomy of insects groups and families, as well as the curation of insect collections and preparation of entomology drawers.

This really would be excellent experience if you are hoping to work in the museum sector or to enhance your insect identification skills. Please contact me (J.E.Lock@soton.ac.uk) if you are interested.

 

App of the week

I thought that SEEN would be a great way for us to share interesting apps.  “Taxonomy” is a free app which first years will find useful for BIOL1004 Patterns of Life.  As the name suggests it is a taxonomic catalogue, so you can browse from Kingdom to Species. Send in your apps!

 

Species of the week

Koala: Male koalas make a noise to make themselves sound larger than they are to attract females – males bigging themselves up to attract females, sounds familiar (see top).

http://www.bbc.co.uk/nature/15088320 – review (with sound)

http://jeb.biologists.org/content/214/20/3414.full – article

 

Don’t forget to send me your links!

 

Posted By : Judith Lock