Fact: flies are the coolest insects.
If you don’t believe me, take a look at this newly described weevil, Timorus sarcophagoides Vanin & Guerra, from Brazil, which is doing everything it can to fool you into thinking it’s a flesh fly (family Sarcophagidae).
This morning I was reading a newly published paper that I found intriguing, not only for its content1 but also for who it cited — sort of.
Among the regular cadre of peer-reviewed journal articles supporting the author’s findings were two blog posts by University of Glasgow professor Roderic Page. Rod is a major proponent for digitizing and linking biodiversity literature with all aspects of a species’ pixel-trail across the internet, so I was excited to see his blog being “formally” recognized. As I finished reading the paper and reached the References section, I skimmed through to see how a blog citation might be formatted. Much to my dismay, after breezing through the L’s, M’s, and N’s I found myself within the R’s, with nary a Page in sight.
Despite having directly referenced Rod’s work on three separate occasions, the authors failed to formally acknowledge his contributions to the field. I may still be a little wet behind the ears in this whole academic publishing game, but I suspect that if someone didn’t properly cite a Nature paper, they’d be quickly reprimanded by the editor of the journal they submitted to and be told to include the citation or face rejection.
I’ve been thinking about this situation all day, and I can’t come up with a reason why the author’s didn’t include a proper citation, other than the continuing bias against blogging (and social media in general) among the scientific community. Certainly there are those in the scientific community who realize the potential of social media and blogging in science2, but in large part it seems the message is being ignored because of prejudices regarding the medium in which it’s published.
But why do scientists have such a hard time accepting blogging & social media as valid outlets? It can’t be because of the holy peer-review process, as Bora Zivkovic3 elegantly points out:
“One of the usual reasons given for not citing blog posts is that they are not peer-reviewed. Which is not true. First, if the post contained errors, readers would point them out in the comments. That is the first layer of peer review. Then, the authors of the manuscript found and read a blog post, evaluated its accuracy and relevance and CHOSE to use it as a reference. That is the second layer of peer-review. Then, the people who review the manuscript will also check the references and, if there is a problem with the cited blog post, they will point this out to the editor. This is the third layer of peer-review. How much more peer-review can one ask for?”
There’s also plenty of evidence that the content being produced by today’s bloggers, tweeters and G-plussers is slowly earning the attention of the academic community. Kate Clancy, a tenure-track anthropologist who blogs at Context and Variation, had someone skim one of her blog posts and intellectually plagiarize her ideas by publishing them in a traditional journal, further evidence that “attention” doesn’t necessarily mean “respect”. Just this week Eric Michael Johnson, a science history PhD student, wrote an incredible article summarizing the arguments between kin vs group selectionists and published it on his blog, The Primate Diaries; it has since been recommended by E.O. Wilson himself, via his Facebook fanpage no less! And of course there’s Rod’s work which was included in the paper in question, even if it was improperly cited, and which started this entire digression.
So if the quality of content published on blogs is of interest, well supported and being recognized by our peers, why do we still see this disconnect between traditional literature and social media when it comes to proper credit? I think the social media movement4 is so new, seemingly free of traditional rules & roles and so quickly evolving that many academics have yet to take the time to explore its potential before dismissing it as a waste of time best reserved for celebrities and teenagers. Frankly, with the ever increasing pressure to publish, find funding and shoulder more responsibilities within academic circles, I can’t say I totally blame them. But just like those in academia have (mostly) accepted and embraced other technologies, I’m confident that social media, including blogging, will find its place among the scientific community and will revolutionize the ways we go about doing, discussing and disseminating scientific research. Certainly it will be an uphill battle for those who aspire to change the way this new technology is perceived and credited within the academic community, but ultimately I think it’s in all our best interest to push the boundaries!
Perhaps Rod Page summarized this entire post in a single tweet:
.@bioinfocus I suspect because blogs don’t fit into the “normal” landscape of publishing – yet
— Roderic Page (@rdmpage) July 10, 2012
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1- Which I won’t comment on here for a variety of paranoid political reasons, but I would still highly recommend you read the paper.
2- I’m talking about you, the people (person?) who took the time to read this blog post; thank you!
3- Nicknamed The Blogfather among the ScienceOnline community, he also appears to have the distinction of having the first blog post cited by a technical scientific article. Fitting.
4- Which is exactly how I see it. Much like the cladistic wars of the 1980s and the Darwinian debate 100 years before that, it’s only a matter of time until social media is embraced by the scientific & academic communities.
UPDATE: It turns out my first theory involving oestrid bot flies was full of holes. I’ll leave it up because the biology of the individual parasites is accurate and interesting, but see the bottom of the post for an accurate description of what happened in the photo. I apologize for the misinformation.
Recently, I was catching up on Twitter late at night when @PsiWaveFunction shared a link to a photo on Reddit that stopped me cold in my tracks and that has kept me morbidly fascinated since. I’ve spent the better part of a day thinking about the photo, and I think I’ve pieced together the series of events and organisms that lead to the case of the mystery myiasis. If my theory is correct, this might be one of the coolest cases of parasitism I’ve ever encountered, and features a fly who’s life history beautifully illustrates the intricacies of evolution, another fly that’s threatening the birds which helped Darwin develop his theory of evolution through natural selection, and a bird who is being selected against by the worst possible luck.
Normally I’d include the photo in question right about here, but out of respect for those victims readers who are a tad squeamish at the sight of parasites (or birds), I’ll simply link to it and allow your curiosity to battle your better judgement1. I’ll give you a moment to decide and, should you accept the challenge, digest what you’ve just seen.
“This baby bird has no face… only maggots”
So, were you amazed? Disgusted? Wondering what the hell you were looking at? If you’re like me, you probably felt a little bit of all three, and then immediately went back to take a closer look.
Welcome to the wonderful world of warble flies (family Oestridae)! Each of those oddly formed lumps is actually a bot fly maggot which has burrowed beneath the skin of the chick to feed and develop. You’ll notice two dark marks on the exposed end of each maggot; these are the spiracles through which the maggot breathes. After a few weeks, each of the maggots will wriggle free from the bird, drop to the ground and pupate, eventually emerging as an adult ready to breed. Normally the host is left mostly unharmed after providing safe harbour for a bot fly, but in this case I suspect the bird might have problems due to the shear number of maggots present (at least 15 that I could make out).
Dermatobia hominis -- Photo by J. Eibl, Systematic Entomology Laboratory, USDA.
What’s odd about this situation2 is that these bot flies have parasitized a bird. You see, almost all bot flies are mammal parasites, infesting anything from rodents to elephants, and are usually very specific about their host species. One bot fly however, Dermatobia hominis, is a generalist, and has been recorded infesting a number of different animals, from humans and monkeys to dogs and cats, and of relevance to this story, birds on occasion. In a family of narrow specialists, it’s a wonder that D. hominis is such a broad generalist; until you learn how D. hominis distributes its offspring — by hijacking other flies to serve as expedited egg couriers.
Psorophora sp. (Culicidae) with D. hominis eggs attached. Illustration by A. Cushman, Systematic Entomology Laboratory, USDA.
After mating, female D. hominis will snatch up other parasitic flies, like mosquitoes, flesh flies and muscid flies3, and lay a clutch of eggs on the enlisted fly. When the carrier fly locates and lands on a host to feed4, the body heat of the victim signals the bot fly egg to hatch and fall from the carrier onto its new home, where it quickly burrows in to begin feeding. This amazing life cycle means that the female bot fly has little control over where, and on what species, its offspring ultimately end up infesting, resulting in a nearly random generalist parasite that must be able to survive on whatever host it finds itself on, including our small bird.
Obviously the natural world is a complex system, and unfortunately for our bird, it’s full of a diverse array of parasites, all looking for a free meal. Let me introduce you to another player in this saga, Philornis downsi (Muscidae), a fly native to continental South America and Trinidad & Tobago, where our unfortunate bird lives.
Philornis in nasal cavity of deceased bird. Image from O'Connor et al. 2010
While adults are unassuming, feeding on pollen and nectar, Philornis downsi larvae are brood parasites of nesting birds. Hiding out of sight during the day in the bottom of the nest, maggots emerge after dark to crawl within the nasal passages of developing chicks, feeding on their blood and tissue, sapping their energy. As the maggots continue to grow, they begin feeding elsewhere on the nestlings, causing severe damage and ultimately death. Throughout the Galapagos, where the fly was introduced sometime prior to 1964, Philornis downsi has been causing nestling mortality rates as high as 95% in Darwin’s finches, the unique birds who’s diverse beak shapes inspired Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution by natural selection. While there has been a great deal of work done on P. downsi in the Galapagos in an effort to save these ecologically important birds5, I assume it is also receiving research attention in its native range, which is where we return to Reddit, our original photo and what I think happened.
Of all the parasites, in all the nest boxes, in all the world, she flies into mine.
The photo that began all this was uploaded to Reddit by marrgalo, who explained they found the bird while monitoring bird nests on Tobago for Philornis downsi as part of their research program. Tobago is also well within the range of Dermatobia hominis. Here’s what I think may have happened:
My theory was wrong. See below for information about the actual parasite.
Of course, this is only a theory based on a single photo and a very small fraction of information about the team’s research, but given the evidence and biology of the species potentially involved, I think it’s certainly a plausible hypothesis. There are a lot of potential fallacies in my theory, like whether the bot fly larvae are actually Dermatobia, or whether Dermatobia even uses Philornis as a vector (although it’s known to use 11 species of Muscidae), but these are the sort of questions that can be observed and tested eventually. Hopefully the researchers behind the photo will rear the maggots from the bird’s face, identify the parasites involved, and then publish their work so I can find out whether any of these ideas turned out to be accurate6.
Whether my theories were correct or not, the fact that they’re even plausible keeps me interested and excited about entomology and the intricate roles parasites play in our daily lives!
References:
Eibel, J.M., Woodley, N.E. 2004. Dermatobia hominis (Linnaeus Jr., 1781) (Diptera: Oestridae). The Diptera Site. Accessed June 6, 2012. http://1.usa.gov/MbTexi
Fessl B, Sinclair BJ, & Kleindorfer S (2006). The life-cycle of Philornis downsi (Diptera: Muscidae) parasitizing Darwin’s finches and its impacts on nestling survival. Parasitology, 133 (Pt 6), 739-47 PMID: 16899139
O’Connor, J.A., Robertson, J. & Kleindorfer, S. (2010). Video analysis of host–parasite interactions in nests of Darwin’s finches, Oryx, 44 (04) 594. DOI: 10.1017/S0030605310000086
UPDATE June 7, 2012 @ 3:30PM EST: It turns out that the maggots in the bird’s face aren’t Dermatobia hominis, or even bot flies of the family Oestridae at all! After doing some further research, I’ve learned that they are more likely to be another species of Philornis fly. I was totally unaware that there were flies outside of the oestrid bot flies which burrow into the skin of hosts and form warbles like these, but it turns out there are.
While Philornis downsi are ectoparasites that feed on nestling birds as I described, it seems that there are several species in the same genus which burrow within the skin and form welts similar to oestrid bot flies. Here’s an example of Philornis vulgaris infesting a Tropical Mockingbird nestling from Colombia:
Philornis vulgaris infestation from Amat et al. 2007
Looks vaguely familiar no? I think it’s safe to say now that this is what happened in the original photo and not the complex tale of 2 parasites like I described above.
I’m incredibly embarrassed by my Taxonomy Fail here (which holds a TFI of 11.3). Although the biology of the two parasitic species I originally discussed are accurate, the chances of them having anything to do with one another appear to be unlikely. I sincerely apologize for publishing a story that spread such inaccurate information, and I’ll do my best to not let it happen again.
Note to self: don’t assume you know anything, especially when it involves parasites.
On the bright side, I learned something new about Diptera (and humility) today, and we can all rest comfortably knowing that there are multiple, unrelated groups of flies that get under the skin of their hosts. Because I’m sure that makes everyone feel better.
More information about subcutaneous Philornis:
Amat, E., J. Olano, F. Forero & C. Botero 2007. Notas sobre Philornis vulgaris (Couri, 1984) (Diptera: Muscidae) en nidos del sinsonte tropical Mimus gilvus (Viellot, 1808) en los Andes de Co- lombia. Acta Zoológica Mexicana, 23(2): 205-207. http://bit.ly/LwsHh1
Uhazy, L.S., Arendt, W.J. 1987. Pathogenesis associated with philornid myiasis (Diptera: Muscidae) on nestling pearly-eyed thrashers (Aves: Mimidae) in the Luquillo Rain Forest, Puerto Rico. Journal of Wildlife Diseases 22 (2): 224-237. http://bit.ly/KlXBGR
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1- If you can’t decide, I vote you click and look. You can thank me later.
2- Beyond the whole face-of-a-million-maggots of course.
3- Among other groups including blow flies and even ticks.
4- Something these blood-sucking flies have evolved to do quite well obviously. The fact that bot flies “cheat the system” in this regard, getting their eggs to their host without needing to invest energy in complex host-finding senses, just goes to show that nothing is more awesome than evolution in action.
5- See O’Connor et al. 2010 for a good synopsis of work and observations, and check out some of the videos she’s posted to YouTube of the maggots interacting with nestlings.
6- If you happen to have research contacts in Tobago who might know about work being done on Philornis, can you let them know I’m curious? Thanks.
Yesterday, UK photographer Paul Bunyard (@wildaboutimages) ran into a massive mating swarm of chironomid midges (family Chironomidae) while travelling through the Norfolk countryside, and shared some amazing images on Twitter (reproduced here with his permission).
Photo copyright Paul Bunyard & reproduced with his permission
I was browsing MSNBC tonight trying to stay up to date on goings on from around the world (well, at least the stuff that my Twitter feed hasn’t taught me already), when I saw this headline in the Science section:
In case you can't see it, the headline reads "Newly discovered legless amphibians are horrifying"
Ahh, nothing like some mainstream media-endorsed fear mongering to make people care about an at-risk animal! The amphibian being referenced is actually a really neat new family of Caecilian, legless amphibians which live underground and, in this case, look like earthworms with backbones.
Photo by SD Biju, linked from MSNBC article
The cruel irony is the author (who I’m going to assume didn’t write the headline) finishes off the story by saying:
The habitat of these bizarre animals is under threat, as farming takes over forest land in northeast India, according to the University of Delhi. Although caecilians are harmless, local lore has it that they are incredibly venomous snakes, another factor that threatens these mysterious, secretive creatures.
How exactly are we supposed to get the public to become interested in an at-risk new species when we set them up with negative opinions from the get go? Instead of sharing a fascinating new species that doesn’t conform to most people’s idea of what an amphibian is, and encouraging them to ask questions like “Wow, why does that animal look that way?” or “How is that a relative of frogs?”, MSNBC has instead promoted the ‘ick-factor’ and reinforced that if something looks different it should be feared. Maybe this type of headline will get a lot of people to click on the link, but how many will actually read the story and learn about their cool biology rather than just looking at the photo and agreeing with the headline? When the natural world coughs up an amazing story it’s maddening to see it trashed and slandered like this!
Of course, at least MSNBC knows that scientific family names like Chikilidae are always capitalized, unlike the CBC…
Update: It seems MSNBC syndicated this story and headline from LiveScience. Perhaps the headline was proposed by the author after all…
Robert Redford may have a beetle, but musical sensation Beyoncé is fly!
That’s right, Ms. Sasha Fierce has been bestowed with the taxonomic honour of patronymy by Australian dipterists Bryan Lessard and David Yeates.
Bryan was bedazzled by the golden rumped females of the newly described Scaptia beyonceae, a horse fly in the family Tabanidae, and decided to forever immortalize Beyoncé’s Bootylicious bottom. The species may have been a child of destiny, as the type specimen was collected in northern Australia shortly after Beyoncé’s birth, and has only been collected twice since. Nobody knows how this fly species would appear if it were a boy, as all known specimens are female.
I tried reaching Taylor Swift to learn when her own fly would be coming out, but was interrupted by Kanye West who apparently thinks this is one of the best flies of all time. No word yet when junior synonym Scaptia blueivyii will be described, but I’ll keep you updated!
(All kidding aside, Bryan is a cool guy who I met at ESA this past fall. He described another 4 species in the same paper, including one named for Dr. Leigh Nelson (Scaptia nelsonae) which isn’t receiving near the press for some reason…)
Bryan D Lessard, & David K Yeates (2011). New species of the Australian horse fly subgenus Scaptia (Plinthina) Walker 1850 (Diptera: Tabanidae), including species descriptions and a revised key Australian Journal of Entomology, 50 (3), 241-252 : DOI: 10.1111/j.1440-6055.2011.00809.x
It’s not often that flies make headlines, and when they do it’s usually in a negative connotation (malaria, mosquitoes, black flies, etc). A new paper published Tuesday in PLoS ONE (Core et al, 2011) is certainly not helping this Detrimental Diptera Dillema (DDD), announcing that a species of scuttle fly (Phoridae) has been discovered parasitizing honey bees (Apis mellifera), one of the most loved insects on the planet.
Fig. 2 - Images of Apocephalus borealis and honey bees from Core et al., 2012
Of course things attacking honey bees isn’t in itself news, especially in the age of Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD). The real news here is that the scuttle fly, Apocephalus borealis, has seemingly switched hosts, previously known to be parasitic in bumble bees, paper wasps, and even black widow spiders (Brown, 1993). Other Apocephalus flies are better known as ant-decapitating flies, who’s larvae will pupate in the dismembered heads of their ant hosts. As for A. borealis, it’s association with honey bees was thanks to a serendipitous natural history observation:
(John) Hafernik, who also serves as president of the California Academy of Sciences, didn’t set out to study the parasitized bees. In 2008, he was just looking for some insects to feed the praying mantis that he had brought back to SF State’s Hensill Hall after an entomology field trip. He scrounged the bees from underneath the light fixtures outside the biology building.
“But being an absent-minded professor,” Hafernik joked, “I left them in a vial on my desk and forgot about them. Then the next time I looked at the vial, there were all these fly pupae surrounding the bees.”
– San Francisco State University Press Release, January 3, 2012
After further observation, a few behavioural trials and some interesting molecular techniques, the research team found that not only were these scuttle flies parasitizing honey bees in the San Francisco Bay area, but also in migratory bee colonies housed in the Central California Valley and South Dakota, and also that infected honey bees would leave their colonies at night to fly away and die (often congregating at man-made lights and acting strangely); that all of the parasitized bees had been exposed to Nosema ceranae (a fungus which can lead to death from diarrhea and malnourishment) and/or Deformed Wing Virus (a disease that can cause malformation of a bee’s thorax and wings during pupation); and that some of the flies had evidence of these bee pathogens in their systems.
This is a lot of really interesting information for one study, but it’s not hard to see where the authors were going next with their story: scuttle flies could be contributing to CCD and posed a “new threat” to honey bees. The authors proceeded to pose a long series of questions regarding future areas of research, and how all of their findings could be detrimental to honey bee populations and the potential role these flies play in CCD. Overall, this is a very cool piece of natural history research, with a bit too much CCD hype for my liking!
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You can see why the media has fallen in love with this paper; it includes flies (which no one likes on principle), honey bees (which everyone likes on principle), CCD (which scares the daylights out of everyone) and zombies (which also scare the daylights out of everyone). At the time that I wrote this post (midnight-ish Wednesday morning), I found 13 major news outlets or blogs from around the world which had covered the story (see list below).
This is where we have a problem though. Of the 13 stories I looked at, 8 of them had errors in their reports, of varying severity. What’s worse, all of the erroneous accounts were in major reporting outlets, potentially misinforming thousands of readers! It’s not surprising however, to see that 7 of the 8 stories that got things 100% correct were all science-focused publications/blogs, while one was a small-market news affiliate:
The Good
KQED News – ‘Zombie’ Parasite Preys on Bay-Area Honeybees, by Lauren Sommer
Observations (Scientific American Blog Network) – “Zombie” Fly Parasite Killing Honeybees, by Katherine Harmon
New Scientist Life – Parasitic fly could account for disappearing honeybees, by Andy Coghlan
Science Now – Parasitic Fly Dooms Bees to Death by Maggots, by Erik Stokstad
Myrmecos – Did a parasitic fly cause Colony Collapse in bees?, by Alex Wild
Not Exactly Rocket Science – Parasitic fly spotted in honeybees, causes workers to abandon colonies, by Ed Yong
The Bad
MSNBC (WebCite copy) – Stated bees which foraged at night were more likely to be parasitized than bees that foraged during the day (misinterpretation of Fig. 3A of Core et al., 2012)
Mirror (WebCite copy) – Stated that the parasite “is similar to one being found in bumblebees” (it’s not just similar, it’s the same species)
Press Association (WebCite copy) – Title states that the flies are linked to bee losses (not true, the connection between fly parasitism and CCD is simply proposed by the authors); Implied that bees are immediately turned into light-seeking zombies after the female fly lays her eggs (it appears to take up to a week for this to happen)
Daily Mail Online (WebCite copy) – Title states link between flies and global decline of bees (see above); Didn’t italicize species names (minor I know, but it bugs me)
CBC News (WebCite copy) – Implies that bees which foraged at night were more likely to be parasitized than bees that foraged during the day (see MSNBC)
io9 (WebCite copy) – “This parasite is a likely culprit (in reference to CCD – MDJ) because it does indeed force bees to abandon their colony” (authors say the fly may contribute to CCD, not that it is the likely culprit)
Daily Express (caching not allowed) – Implies that bees are parasitized in their hives and that they immediately “abandon their hives in a crazed state” (the authors are unsure of where the flies attack, but they know it’s not in the hive, and see the Press Association above); didn’t italicize species names (argh)
While I doubt that heads will roll at these institutions because of these errors (sorry, a little Apocephalus humour there), the moral of this story is that the science content the majority of the public is exposed to is not exactly the best science content available! Hopefully, as scientists and science writers continue to use social media and blogs, the good stories I featured here will reach more of the people who would normally only see the “bad” versions, imparting a correct and positive experience with the fantastic research being done every day around the world!
Update (Jan. 07, 2012, 20:30) Brian Brown, a co-author on this study and the world’s expert on these flies, has expanded on the natural history and taxonomy of the flies involved in this research on his blog ‘flyobsession’. The remainder of the research team behind this study will be setting up a FAQ to help ‘clarify’ some of the errors I reported on above, and are also beginning a new citizen science project to begin understanding how far flung this parasitism is.
Core, A., Runckel, C., Ivers, J., Quock, C., Siapno, T., DeNault, S., Brown, B., DeRisi, J., Smith, C., & Hafernik, J. (2012). A New Threat to Honey Bees, the Parasitic Phorid Fly Apocephalus borealis PLoS ONE, 7 (1) DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0029639
BROWN, B. (1993). Taxonomy and preliminary phylogeny of the parasitic genus Apocephalus, subgenus Mesophora (Diptera: Phoridae) Systematic Entomology, 18 (3), 191-230 DOI: 10.1111/j.1365-3113.1993.tb00662.x PDF Available HERE
Have you ever traveled to a new city and wondered where you can grab a burger, or perhaps a beer? How about wondering if there’s a good spot to bird watch or even collect a few flies in between meetings or family functions? One of the benefits of being a biologist is traveling to new locations, either to gather new data/specimens or to talk about your work on said data/specimens. Unless you have a local source of information, be it a friend, colleague or naturalist’s forum that can point you to a good park, the amount of time you spend looking for a site may equal (or be greater than) the amount of time you actually spend in the site. Wouldn’t it be great if there was a social network that could help you find natural areas faster, and let you see ahead of time what local naturalists were finding where?
Good news; there IS a social network capable of all these things, it’s just that no one has begun to use it for that yet! Let me introduce you to foursquare, and explain how I think it can enhance interactions between naturalists and scientists.
foursquare is a geography-based social network, allowing you to “Check in” to locations such as restaurants, events or shops and see where nearby friends have been recently. You can also leave “Tips” on things to do at a location or what’s good on the menu, and construct to-do lists of places you’d like to visit and things you’d like to do. While check-ins are only shared with your friends, the locations and tips are public and searchable, allowing you to plan trips or discover new venues.
While the network was designed for finding restaurants and bars in big cities, you can also create venues for all types of natural habitats; city greenspaces, provincial, state, or national parks (and even areas within those parks, like specific camp grounds or trails), your local arboretum, lake, or river, etc. Combine that with the Tips function and you have a GPS-enabled network which allows you to record recent nature sightings, notes on the type and quality of habitats, or anything else which may help others get the most out of their visit. Available through your web browser or on smartphones, it’s a very simple way to keep track of what you find and where!
Unfortunately I haven’t had much time in the past few weeks to explore local parks to provide you some examples, but here is the page I made for the University of Guelph Insect Collection (did I mention foursquare is a great way to increase the exposure of your local museum or natural history collection?):
As you can see, I’ve left a tip with some information about our collection and encouraging people to stop in and see what we do, but this is where you can leave sightings or other observations you’ve made at a location. These tips are searchable (try searching “1863 near Guelph, On” in foursquare for example), allowing people to discover potential natural history information (imagine a tip reading “Saw a bald eagle and 3 cedar waxwings today! #nature” or “Check the pond at the northwest corner for excellent dragonfly collecting #nature”). You could even go so far as to create a public list of natural areas in your region, making it even easier for others to discover new areas to explore.
So how can foursquare help naturalists and the public connect with researchers? Obviously the more people who join and record their naturalist outings in this way, the more data and locations visiting scientists may have to play with. eBird is a similar technology (without the mobile app) where birders around the world record the birds they saw, along with when and where, and which has created a near real-time database of bird diversity, ranges and migrations that is being used by ornithologists. I think by using foursquare in a similar way, researchers studying other groups can potentially do the same. Entomologically speaking, imagine the possibilities: citizen science programs tracking monarch butterfly populations, urban insect sightings (bed bugs in hotels, roaches in restaurants, etc), or taxonomists like myself finding new localities to collect in or records of uncommon species! More importantly though, is the ways in which a researcher can give back to the naturalist community. If you visit a location frequented by a local naturalist, why not meet up with them if they’re in the area, and of course share your own favourite locations and sightings for everyone to experience! I suspect that there are ways to harvest data or create secondary applications which work in concert with foursquare, but I don’t have the programming skills to explore those avenues (if you do and are interested, let me know).
Obviously for this idea to really work it will need to be adopted by naturalist communities across North America and beyond, but I think it has a lot of potential, and I’d encourage you to give it a try (and spread the word)! I’ll be continuing to record my visits and sightings, and I’ll be sure to provide future updates on how this idea progresses!
At a time when few people seem interested in the natural world around them, social media like foursquare create opportunities for us to share nature with everyone. If even one person who wouldn’t normally take the time to venture through a city park or visit an entomological museum does so because they learned of it through foursquare, I’d consider that a success!
Let me start by saying that when I went looking for a song for this week’s Tuesday Tunes, I didn’t expect to find such a gem as this. All I wanted was something simple that would allow me to segue into some very cool insect news, but what I got instead was one of the worst songs I’ve ever heard, but which actually has some relevant biology included in the lyrics. That being said, consider yourself warned: there’s cool science ahead, but also some really, really, bad music!
The University of California Davis insect collection announced yesterday (with future taxonomic publication to come I assume) that they collected specimens of Bombus cockerelli Franklin 1913 for the first time since 1956. Collected again from it’s extremely restricted known range (a 300 square mile plot of land in New Mexico), this species is understandably rare in insect collections. There has apparently been considerable debate amongst Bombus experts over whether B. cockerelli represented a unique species or whether it was a variant of the much more common Bombus vagans, and with museum specimens 50+ years old, there has been no ability to compare DNA between species. Lead researcher Doug Yanega implies that molecular evidence obtained from these new specimens supports B. cockerelli as its own species, and it will be interesting to see in future publications how this species fits into the larger Bombus picture! Doug has some succinct comments on why it shouldn’t come as a surprise to rediscover an insect species thought to be “lost”, so I’d highly recommend giving the press release a read!
Bombus cockerelli courtesy of EOL.org (CC-BY-NC-SA)
Moving on to this week’s “killer” song, if you grew up in the late 90’s (or had offspring doing so), you’re probably familiar with the musical torture stylings torture that was Aqua, the Danish pop band responsible for the hit song Barbie Girl. This week I bring you another musical instrument of torture, Bumble Bees:
Well, did you catch the surprisingly accurate lyrics as pertaining to pollination biology? From the “Wham bam, thank you mam” insinuating the correct sex for flower visiting bees, to the fact that bumblebees regularly leave “donations” of pollen while “invading” deep flowers, the song is actually pretty good for biology. Even though it sounds horrible, Aqua get props for taking the time to pen some pollination biology into their “music”!
If you haven’t had enough, this song is available on iTunes – Bumble Bees – Aquarius
