romunov’s blog et al

Biology students’ society has organized a "field weekend" in Budanje in Vipavska dolina valley. I was attending the buttefly group. We visited Goriško (famous for its fine assortment of wines) and Mlake. Goriško was, from butterflies point of view, totally devestated. Only two habitat types that we noticed were vinyards and fragmented forest. The only viable habitats were along the roads, but they had only grasses, not suitable for adult butterflies. We found only a few species of butterflies - and not even the most common ones one would expect. We took a trip to Mlake, a marsh area recently turned into highway and military shooting range. According to older biologists, they destroyed the most valuable part of the marshy grassland that sheltered innumerable vulnerable species of plants and animals. All three pictures are from this location.

Mellicta britomartis (I hope that’s the species - I’m waiting confirmation from a senior lepidopterologist). It’s Mellicta athalia, one of the most common ones. My bad.

Euphydryas aurinia

A cerambicid beetle. My guess would be Aromia moschata. Have to check with the experts though, as I’m very short on coleopterid literature.

From the latest Carter trip:

JERUSALEM (AP) — Former President Carter said Monday that Hamas — the Islamic militant group that has called for the destruction of Israel — is prepared to accept the right of the Jewish state to "live as a neighbor next door in peace."

Give me a break. This is Hamas’ official stance for quote some time now. The only catch is that they demand that Israel recognizes Palestine as a state as well. And that’s where the noose ends. That’s why Israel is stepping up its actions (the Gaza ghetto) to grab as much land as possible, because they don’t have much more time. 

Indeed, Jin’s comments gave me some motivation to write a post. I’ve been away for quite some time now, mostly due to full schedule. And when I come home there is a ton of stuff I need to do first.

Regarding Jin’s comments in one post ago, it holds some truth regarding some (para)government entity - look at my licence plate. Someone has a sense for irony. The emblem has a star of David and the Muslim moon thingy. Whoever is responsible for this - very funny.

I took the oportunity and went for a photographing spree around the local meadows and woods. A bunch of pictures under the fold. It’s 11 p.m. and I still have some work to do, so I’ll be attaching names at a later date. I know most of them, but I need to identify a few of them.

(more…)

One of the main and most recognizable characteristics delineating arthropods (and some other animals - see Ecdysozoa) from other animals is its ability to moult. Contrary to our body plan, they have a hard exoskeleton and attached muscles on the inside, where we have exactly the opposite. We have an endoskeleton and muscles attached outside. Both types have their own advantages. Having a hard shell makes it a bit harder to grow, but, you do have a hard shell for potential impacts.

Moulting is a critical time for all animals. This is the time where they shed part of their old skin (a lot of it reabsorbs and is used again to build the new shell) and expose their soft sides. This is the ideal time for predators to strike and hence, animals tend to hide. They also lose their usual coloration (see pictures) which usually makes them more visible. This is also the time where interspecific "confrontations" often take place. If you are growing crickets and it’s too crowded and/or limited supply of food and water, the animals will tend to eat each other during moults, less frequently when fully armorned (personal observation).

Luckily for me, there are also weirdos out there, and here is one of them. I keep a tiny grass stem in the terrarium where I keep the crickets, and one thought this would be a great spot to moult. In the pictures below, you can see the (pale) coloration (or the lack of), the exuvium (moult) and a fully grown cricket. It takes at least 10-20 minutes for them to attain their full coloration. I don’t know how long it takes for the shell to reach terminal hardness (I’m not fond of poking animals). Perhaps it correlates with the color?

Adult males and females have wing, and males use them to produce a high pitch sounds, also audible to us, but especially to their females. The females (not pictured) have a long hard ovipositor protruding from the terminal end of their abdomen. They use it to deposit eggs deep into the soil, where they have more favorable constant conditions (temperature, humidity) to develop.

Bush tried to peddle a nookie once again (remember Iraq?):

But Bush in an interview with a US-controlled Farsi-language radio station said Iran has declared it wants nuclear weapons "to destroy people."

But the scam fails and:

The White House on Friday sought to back pedal on comments by President George W. Bush accusing Iran of having said it was seeking a nuclear bomb.

But at least Bush knows (hopefully) that having nuclear power is their right, according to the NPT:

Bush told Radio Farda, which broadcasts from Europe to Iran, that he supported Iran developing a civilian nuclear power program.

"It’s in their right to have it," Bush said, according to a White House transcript of the interview made on Wednesday.

 

More at Yahoo news. 

Scientists found potential new species at the Ross sea (between Antarctica and New Zealand). Cruises to destination of remote locations often yield similar result. It’s still common belief that the wonder of science is discovering new species. There must be something majestic (self-centered?) to the fact that your name is attached everywhere the species is mentioned (in print)? But this is far from the truth, and has been for quite some time. The erra of describing species is over, at least for now. While molecular techniques offer a fesh new look at the species concept and recognition, it’s far from applicaple on a massive and field scale. A lot of the morphological identification has been done in the past century. Today, a lot of people are not pursuing to find new species, but work with ecology (interaction of species with other species and environment), physiology and recently most pronunced, genetics, instead. Which is just a step forward in the race for knowledge.

A lot of new species awaits us in the ocean deeps, the forrest darks and mountain colds, but even more new knowledge is stored within and between them.

This is exactly why we should not rely on the police to protect us. We have to do it ourselves.

A woman from South California was calling 911 when someone shot her dead. She was calling for help when someone was trying to break into her house. I guess she was right.

link

The US has o.k.-ed an arms sales to Kosovo. Followed by a loud bang. This is going to get interesting, as the history of the region dictates a conflict.

Yesterday, about a month long project has been launched in Ljubljana - Dvoživke na Večni poti. A project of translocating amphibians across the road will try to minimize the roadkill that results when frogs, toads, newts and salamanders migrate to their "nesting" sites.

A small fence has been erected yesterday that will prevent animals from crossing the road. Volunteers will be picking moving them across the road daily. The project is also about identifying and counting individuals, which will give us a clearer picture of which sections are "hot spots" for crossing animals.

I have just read a story about US Catholic church paid 400 million EUR (615 million USD) for child sex abuse in 2007 (see from RAW story here). This just shows how much abuse has been going on, and not just recently. A lot of cases go back decades. Second, it shows how much money Church really has. This is probably just the tip of the ice berg. One has to wonder what they do with it. Help those in need, or gather more and more power? We can only imagine what can follow some day. And third, and this is really important, settling out of court is a catch - if the church settles, they are not criminally responsible, and the abusers walk free. Also, the victims are in it for the money, not as much justice. Of course, one has to wonder how far one would come if he dragged that little cock sucker through the legal system. At the end of the day, a few million in your pocket is perhaps worth more than a few years of jail time for that pervert.

L’oreal and UNESCO are awarding their international "For women in science" scholarship to dr. Maja Zagmajster, one of the junior scientists at "my" faculty. We are all very happy and pleased that she received the award. She has been recognized for her work in researching the biodiversity of subterranean fauna in western karst region. She is the first Slovenian junior scientist to receive the scholarship. She will be receiveng her award in Paris. Read the story here (in Slovene) or here (official page). On the other hand, some of our research facilities and institutions are "overstaffed" with women, and missing technical people for heavier and more technical work. .. Or so I hear.

Dear Base,

The human species I was sent out to study is rather strange. I was faced with a new, at least to me, concept of "showing respects". As you already know, the former president of the country I reside in passed away, and the entire country is formally in state of mourning.

My kindergarden teacher (they call them university professors here -  things are very different from those @ home) asked us to show respect to the passed away president with one minute of silence (wtf?!). Yeah, I know, my thoughts exactly. I don’t know how that helped. I’ll explore this concept further and report at a later date.

On this same thought, I have been thinking… When George W. Bush dies, they’ll have to import people to will pay respect. Possibly from Mars or Venus.

I’ve managed to get a temporary job at the National institute of biology. I’m going through a bucket load of samples (a few 1000 vials), identifying animals, grouping them into size clusters and finally, count them. The work is done routinely, a perfect job for a graduate student like me. Behold my work place, my sanctuary where I spend my time lurking down the EtOH-ed insects (mostly), fighting off the janitors in the late evening hours. The only thing I could wish for is a good radio station. Radio Ekspres has gotten really boring, really fast.

Found this roadkill (Lepus europaeus) on Thursday morning. I cleared it off the road and placed it on a meadow about 15 steps from the road (yes, I counted so I could locate it later). This was around 7 am in the morning. As I grabbed it by the legs and carried it to the meadow, a common buzzard (Buteo buteo = kanja) fllew away from a near-by tree, sounding very upset. When I was returning home around 11 pm, the poor wittle bunny wabbit was already 1/3 eaten (posterior end and eyes). I of course ran out of battery juice  to document that, so I was forced to return in the morning. About 8 hours were enough for *something* to locate it and drag it off somewhere else. I suspect a dog, or perhaps a fox. Note my foot (number 39) for size reference.

A new program to study Biodiversity will launch any time at University of Primorska.

I’ve always been skeptical of 3 year programs. They even included statistics in the second year. Big no-no! But time will tell how things will work out. Best wishes to the participants.  

If you’re a bit radical and non-conformist, you probably already use OpenOffice. While the tool is still in development, it has come a long way since the first releases when I first tried it! One of best ways to support the creators is (besides financial stimulation) using their products. In order to use them, you need to know what they do, and how to do it. OpenOffice Calc Tips is one of those sites that goes over the line and gives you the sort of information you need when working with your daily files. I think this can come handy for those joke documents you whip up to very serious stuff (like your thesis).

To keep the homosexuals and Sting on one side, I’d like to point out a site called http://www.europe-aliens.org. I was at a DAISIE conference yesterday, and was listening to the results from various authors from around the EU (and even New Zealand). An interesting page giving you some basic information about (truly) alien species to Europe. This page and its information is a result of three years of work done by about 1700 scientists.

Stephan Gollasch, who had, in my view, the best presentations, especially because he was talking about aquatic invasions, also mentioned e-journal called Aquatic invasions. The journal isn’t indexed to get points for publishing. Too bad. On the bright side, it’s totally free to read!

I became a proud owner of book named Limnology by Robert G. Wetzel. The book is subtitled “Lake and River Ecosystems”, which gives you the rough idea of what limnology is. It’s a science about freshwater and saline inland waters. Here is one of the definitions from the book:

Limnology is the study of the structural and functional interrelationships of organisms of inland waters as they are affected by their dynamic physical, chemical, and biotic environment.

The book was about 80 EUR, but some of the amount was already paid, as I did some promoting for the book store a while ago. The credits were suppose to go to buy a book on oceanography, but the one I wanted is, as far as I know, out of print. Unfortunately, buying used books from vendors was in the near past almost impossible, not only from USA, but also Europe. What are you going to do, when a German company asks you where is Slovenia, and if it’s located in the EU… And we’re two friggin’ borders away (I did manage to find an Italian who didn’t know where Slovenia is, nor which countries border Switzerland).

And I thought it’s time to graduate slowly, as I’m running thin on space in my book stand. This is the last one I could put in comfortably.

See a video on 7/7 London bombings. Video here.