romunov’s blog et al

In Slovenia, as well as many other European countries, have wolf (Canis lupus) populations that are more or less on the verge of extinction, due to shrinking available habitat and hunting. They are trying to sell us on “a fact” Slovenia is too small for a few dozen wolves, but can muster up tens of thousands (edit: 150.000) of domestic dogs (Canis familiaris). Especially in rural areas, you have farmers, who get their livestock butchered by “wolves” or lynx. Since dog and a wolf look pretty much alike, especially by their markings (paw prints), it’s hard to identify the attacker (although wolves are much more skilled hunters and killers than domestic dogs, often making the distinction possible. Wolves kill with precision while dogs basically tear the animal apart, dying in awful agony). And most of the time, the attack is pinned on the wolf, at worst because farmer gets compensated for the sheep and the offspring (I hear even if the sheep is not pregnant, but this info may not be accurate) if damage was done by wild animals.

Swedish team (Sundqvist et al, 2008) took a step further and tested a method of identifying the attacker by the saliva left behind on the wounds. What they did is they amplified the DNA present in the saliva on the wounds and compared certain fragments of it against home two dogs and Swedish wolves and dogs. They found that the saliva sample is probably not from wolves or two herding home dogs but a third individual.

If you look at the Figure on the left, you can see that samples from multiple sites of DNA from wolves (marked as X) were more similar to each other (also, notice the less diversity of the examined loci of DNA compared to squares (dogs)) than to dogs, marked as open squares. Having a background, you can run your sample against this data and you can see that the sample (black dot, marked with arrow) was more similar to the dogs than wolves. If they had more sites from the DNA, the distinction would be even sharper (you can see some X samples were grouped with dogs), yielding the results even more reliable.

Hopefully we will see more such studies done in the future on Slovenian farms, where in this writer’s opinion, wolves take more flak than they deserve.

Sundqvist, A-K., Ellegren, H., Vilà C. 2008. Wolf or dog? Genetic identification of predators from saliva collected around bite wounds on prey. Conservation Genetics. 9 (5): 1275-1279. DOI: 10.1007/s10592-007-9454-4. (link)

Moving in with my grandmother changed all sort of things in my life. Including my innervation to the old mighty internet. This house hasn’t had phone line until couple of years ago and you can imagine, no optic fibers here. So I was forced to seek alternative options. Living in the city makes GSM signal reception somewhat better than if you’re living in a valley 10 km away from “civilization”. This gave birth to the idea of mobile internet via Si.Mobil, a mobile phone provider pretty popular in Slovenia. The other major, socialist, provider is Mobitel, an offshoot of Telekom, publicly sponsored now privatized firm.
Becoming many months with packages for mobile internet high in demand but short supply, I finally scored in Kranj, another major city about 20 km north of Ljubljana. When I found that a certain selling stand has one, I rushed up there and acquired my package which includes a USB dongle (transmitter/receiver), media and documentation. Free at last! Thank God Almighty, I am free at last!

But as time went on, the hull of the ship called Si.mobil mobile internet started to show cracks. On the average, about once a day my connection drops and there’s no way of reestablishing it other than rebooting my machine. I don’t know if this is my OS specific or a common occurrence, but here it is. And when I try to play COD2 online, my ping is terrible, jumping from 300 to 1000, making the game play rotten at best.

But the most surprising nugget came into my sn(m)ailbox a few days ago - my second receipt! I was surprised to learn that I owe them 30, instead of 20 € and I soon found out why. When you first start, they give you 15 days of free trial. After 15 days you can terminate the contract, return the equipment and all goes back to normal. But if you decide to take the service, they charge you fully for the 15 before-free service. But all is well, because this is assumed in the contract, the very last clause where they state that after you decide to take the service, they start charging you from the day when one signed the contract. Oddly enough, this isn’t much publicized, anywhere. I wasn’t able to find the special contract they whip up for you, either.

Had I known this before hand, I would probably reconsider my options and perhaps go with xDSL.

When I woke up this morning, there was a little surprise displayed as a header in my Facebook page. It would seem the new Terms of use stirred up quite some dust. Unfortunately, I don’t have a screenshot for the first quote, because I didn’t think I’d use it.

A couple of weeks ago, we posted an update to our Terms of Use that we hoped would clarify some parts of it for our users. Over the past couple of days, we have received a lot of questions and comments about these updated terms and what they mean for people and their information. Because of the feedback we received, we have decided to return to our previous Terms of Use while we resolve the issues that people have raised.

About fifteen minutes later, the header changed to this.

As if this wasn’t enough, another fifteen minutes later, they “corrected” the statement to this.

God knows what’s going on there.

I’ve recently been looking for another group of animals to work on (aside the fact that current work-load is overloading me already). Being a “defense” player, usually staying behind and picking up what the offense misses and cleaning up, I narrowed down my choices into groups that not many people around me works with. I’ve often contemplated on working with Diptera (flies and midges) but never quite got through with the project. A few months ago I gave it more serious thought and about a week ago, I got my first real book on identifying to family level. I did copy a key for European Diptera families from my friend Maarten, but the key was in Dutch. Quite a set back for someone who is not that versed in that particular language. While language barriers are not as high as people usually take them for, it is cumbersome at first. But I digress. I received my book from this site (I’m linking because the book arived in four days and it’s cheaper than anywhere else where I searched). Maarten was so kind that he got me a book on Syrphidae (hover flies) to go along for free! He’s an avid hover fly enthusiast and is studying the litter buggers in quite some detail. To my knowledge, he’s the leading expert on Syrphidae in Slovenia (and he’s Dutch!).
A book called Forensic entomology spurred my enthusiasm for two-wings as well. I like working with something and turning it into something practical, and forensically interesting groups seem to fit my list of things that arouse my attention.

To get to the meat of the matter, the reason why I actually started writing this post. As I’ve already mentioned, I received the book on Diptera families for Europe (see the pretty little picture on the left or visit the link). This is the best piece of work regarding dichotomous keys I’ve ever seen. The drawings are excellent and I like the arrangement of key/drawings. When you open the book, one page is dedicated to the text key, and the opposite page has most of the pertaining drawing and if not, the drawing you’re looking for isn’t far away. The key appears very clear, with linkage to drawings and details almost everywhere. Even if you’re not versed in terminology right away, you will be able to find the character described right away. What I miss is some information on how to capture and preserve specimens.

Scientific value aside, it’s printed on glossy paper, which is a bit bummer if the light you’re working with is at a weird angle which shines right into your eyes, the quality is superb. The book is armed with hard covers with printed figures most commonly used when working. Book has around 200 pages.

While doing a bit of reading before going to bed, I also found http://diptera.info/. At a first glance, the page seems very fluent, well organized with pictures and related literature. In our times, a Forum is a must, where people can exchange ideas in minute-to-minute bases, if situation orders it. I’ve clicked through some menus and found the page most useful. I have a gut feeling this is the site I’ll be frequenting more often in the near future.