#SciComm

[headspace-hotel]

i've been trying to stay off of internet and i've been active on tumblr because I'm too exhausted to do things I normally enjoy. Anyway

Animal enjoyers are mad about the slightly edited wolves that Colossal Biosciences is claiming are "dire wolves." Lots of them didn't read the articles, which would provide more information. However, the journalism about this has been god-awful anyway.

The company is concurrently working on cloning endangered red wolves and figuring out how to bring red wolf/coyote hybrids back into the red wolf gene pool, as per the Time article about it. The project includes one of the biggest names in canid genomics and evolution including pertaining to red wolves, so I am optimistic that red wolves are probably the real aim of the project and the dire wolf bullshit is just a snazzy jurassic park style tagline to snare investors.

However the grift has grifted too close to the sun as according to washington post, trump is using "de-extinction" technology as an excuse to gut the endangered species act (i can't actually read the article unfortunately). The cost of this lie could be very high if the general public thinks that bringing back an extinct species can be easily done by just going into the DNA of an animal that looks sort of similar and tweaking it.

Also somehow, even more infuriating to me, this is going to eternally fuck up the perception of what a dire wolf actually was. As per wikipedia, Aencyon dirus was not closely related to any modern wolves. It is over 5 million years separate from them. It was essentially not a "wolf" at all. You might as well try to create a dire wolf by modifying a jackal or an African wild dog. You might as well call the dire wolf a dire jackal or a dire dog.

Dire wolves were not that much bigger than wolves. They were maybe 20% bigger and their size range overlaps with the northern-most wolves of today.

Even the articles critical of the supposed "de-extinction" are fucking it up! The not-actually-legit "dire wolf" puppies have white fur, and the journalists are uncritically repeating the idea that dire wolves were white, when that isn't something we know about them. The white fur is based off of the fantasy creature of the same name in Game of Thrones.

That's just flat-out embarrassing.

[rebeccathenaturalist]

I am absolutely fascinated by the ecological recovery of the immediate blast zone around Mt. St. Helens. It was wiped clean of almost all life during the 1980 eruption, and in the aftermath it was decided that this area would be allowed to recover on its own, rather than being deliberately replanted by timber companies with a monoculture of Douglas fir, or by conservationists with a biodiverse array of native plants. This means the area is giving scientists an unprecedented close-up look at how an ecosystem recovers from such a massive natural disturbance.

This isn't to say there haven't been a few nudges by human activity. Rumor has it that local fishing clubs sneaked up to Spirit Lake and illegally stocked it with trout, though I've also heard claims that they arrived from a nearby stream, possibly originating from the higher elevation St. Helens Lake (which may itself have been restocked by humans.)

But the single day--two years after the eruption--that a batch of northern pocket gophers spent on the mountain made a big difference in the recovery of plant communities. (By the way, the picture in the article appears to be a ground squirrel, not a gopher.) Over forty years after their sojourn, the sites they were temporarily introduced to show much better plant growth due to the mixing of the soil microbiome, to include mycorrhizal fungi, bacteria, and other microbes. This microbial jump-start was caused by the gophers' digging, demonstrating why fossorial (burrowing) animals are so important to ecosystems. Without them, soil microbial communities can stagnate, and in the case of areas damaged by massive disasters, a lack of fossorial species can make recovery take much longer.

Speaking of disasters, scientists also found that forests that had been clearcut prior to the eruption had poorer, less diverse microbial communities than areas that had been more mature or old-growth forests, even when both areas were given the gopher treatment. This is yet more evidence that clearcutting forests is terrible for local ecology, because it not only removes entire ecosystems above ground, but below ground as well. And it shows that mature and old-growth forests are better equipped to weather disasters, with their higher biodiversity overall.

If we've learned anything ecologically from the 1980 eruption, it's that nature is incredibly resilient if we just give it the space to recover. The problem is that we keep poking at the wounds we create, not allowing them to heal over properly. By using more sustainable forestry practices, using resources more wisely, and preserving mature and old-growth forests, we increase the likelihood that the deeply intertwined life-support systems the planet provides (and which we, and all life, rely on) will remain functional in spite of our efforts to tear them apart in the name of resource extraction.

[bobnichollsart]

My 25 years of palaeoart chronology…

My 2023 illustration showing the human understanding of Iguanodon, from DINOSAUR BEHAVIOUR, by Prof Michael Benton (published by Princeton University Press).

[great-and-small]

When I was in vet school I went to this one lecture that I will never forget. Various clubs would have different guest lecturers come in to talk about relevant topics and since I was in the Wildlife Disease Association club I naturally attended all the wildlife and conservation discussions. Well on this particular occasion, the speakers started off telling us they had been working on a project involving the conservation of lemurs in Madagascar. Lemurs exist only in Madagascar, and they are in real trouble; they’re considered the most endangered group of mammals on Earth. This team of veterinarians was initially assembled to address threats to lemur health and work on conservation solutions to try and save as many lemur species from extinction as possible. As they explored the most present dangers to lemurs they found that although habitat loss was the primary problem for these vulnerable animals, predation by humans was a significant cause of losses as well. The vets realized it was crucial for the hunting of lemurs by native people to stop, but of course this is not so simple a problem.

The local Malagasy people are dealing with extreme poverty and food insecurity, with nearly half of children under five years old suffering from chronic malnutrition. The local people have always subsisted on hunting wildlife for food, and as Madagascar’s wildlife population declines, the people who rely on so-called bushmeat to survive are struggling more and more. People are literally starving.

Our conservation team thought about this a lot. They had initially intended to focus efforts on education but came to understand that this is not an issue arising from a lack of knowledge. For these people it is a question of survival. It doesn’t matter how many times a foreigner tells you not to eat an animal you’ve hunted your entire life, if your child is starving you are going to do everything in your power to keep your family alive.

So the vets changed course. Rather than focus efforts on simply teaching people about lemurs, they decided to try and use veterinary medicine to reduce the underlying issue of food insecurity. They supposed that if a reliable protein source could be introduced for the people who needed it, the dependence on meat from wildlife would greatly decrease. So they got to work establishing new flocks of chickens in the most at-risk communities, and also initiated an aggressive vaccination program for Newcastle disease (an infectious illness of poultry that is of particular concern in this area). They worked with over 600 households to ensure appropriate husbandry and vaccination for every flock, and soon found these communities were being transformed by the introduction of a steady protein source. Families with a healthy flock of chickens were far less likely to hunt wild animals like lemurs, and fewer kids went hungry. Thats what we call a win-win situation.

This chicken vaccine program became just one small part of an amazing conservation outreach initiative in Madagascar that puts local people at the center of everything they do. Helping these vulnerable communities of people helps similarly vulnerable wildlife, always. If we go into a country guns-blazing with that fire for conservation in our hearts and a plan to save native animals, we simply cannot ignore the humans who live around them. Doing so is counterintuitive to creating an effective plan because whether we recognize it or not, humans and animals are inextricably linked in many ways. A true conservation success story is one that doesn’t leave needy humans in its wake, and that is why I think this particular story has stuck with me for so long.

(Source 1)

(Source 2- cool video exploring this initiative from some folks involved)

(Source 3)

[knuppitalism-with-ue]

We are approaching the maximum of images you can post here so I thought it was time I make a little showcase of all the formation pieces we covered so far on the streams.

Chaneres Formation

Hanson Formation

Guimarota Formation

Winton formation

Holocene Madagascar

Riversleigh

Kimmeridge Clay

Tapinocephalus Assemblage Zone

Hunsrück Slate

Yixian Formation

Paja Formation

Besano Formation

Pebas megawetland

Fezouata Formation

Ngorora Formation

Kuldana Formation

Madygen Formation

Jebel Qatrani '

Holocene Cuba

Pierre Shale

Crato Formation

Archer City Formation

Tambach Formation

La Brea tar pits

Morrison Formation

Sannine Formation

Ballagan Formation

Shanwang Formation

Austrian Paratethys

For people who don't know: for several months now I draw one formation or fossil locality every Saturday. The next place we visit is chosen by a wheel of names, which we also constantly fill up again when a new formation is picked.

I try to make it as interesting as possible in my composition and choice of animals and I can tell you this series has been a great training when it comes to constructing these, how I call them, Menageries.

I have to thank a team of friends and colleagues who help behind the scenes with research, creation of size charts and conversation partners when it comes to deciding on the compositions of these pieces. Their help has been invaluable!

[untitledgoosegay]

as funny as it is to say, "there's no such thing as a fish" is not actually true

"science doesn't know what a fish is" is really not true

"fish" is not a monophyletic category. there is no common ancestor of everything that we call a "fish," and none of the things that we don't

"fish" is a paraphyletic category -- and a useful one! marine biologists use it! "fish" describes a general body plan and lifestyle. it is useful to be able to talk about coelacanths and tuna in a shared category, though coelacanths are more closely related to us than to tuna.

where this bugs me is the repetition of the idea that "scientists" are hidebound and uncreative, unable to comprehend anything that doesn't conform to a specific idea of categorization -- when this is fundamentally untrue! we know perfectly well what a "fish" is. the fact that it's a paraphyletic group is only confounding to pop science, as a funny factoid, not to anyone who actually understands what a paraphyletic group is.

[sarahmackattack]

I'm a squid biologist on a mission

To bring squid facts to you. To your friends. To your neighbors. To some random dude named Brad who you've never met.

How? The Squid Facts Project. It's a street art campaign and hotline that texts folks squid facts!

Only snag in this hair-brained plan is that texting people is kiiinda expensive. So! I teamed up with Philly artist Corey Danks to sell shirts to keep the hotline running. Every one of those shirt dollars helps deliver squid facts to people.

Like, over 70,000 people over the last year!!! Isn't that wild?

So anyway. Get a shirt. They're cool, *and* they keep people learning about squid. It's a beautiful thing.

Also, the backs have the squid facts hotline on them so by wearing these you're helping people learn about squid too.

If you can't buy one, give us a reblog. I run a small science education nonprofit called Skype a Scientist, we're scrappy but trying so hard!!

[ppaleoartistgallery]

a guide to the exoparia

the presence of the exoparia doesnt actually change much for the way we reconstruct most dinosaur groups, however, it changes some minor things for two of the most well known dinosaur groups that should be taken into account:

link to paper: onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/joa.14242

[chase-solidago]

In England Have My Bones [T.H.] White wrote one of the saddest sentences I have ever read: ‘Falling in love is a desolating experience, but not when it is with a countryside.’ He could not imagine a human love returned. He had to displace his desires onto the landscape, that great, blank green field that cannot love you back, but cannot hurt you either. [...] But the countryside wasn’t just something that was safe for White to love: it was a love that was safe to write about.

"It took me a long time to realise how many of our classic books on animals were by gay writers who wrote of their relationships with animals in lieu of human loves of which they could not speak."

Gavin Maxwell’s Ring of Bright Water, for example: the tale of a lonely man on the Scottish coast with an Iraqi otter on his sofa. Or the books of the BBC radio naturalist Maxwell Knight, former MI5 spymaster and closet queen. Doubly disallowed to speak openly of his allegiances, Knight wrote a book about hand-rearing a cuckoo called Goo. His obsession with this small, greedy, feathery, parasitic bird is terribly moving; it was a species made of all the hidden elements of Knight’s life: subterfuge, deceit, passing oneself off as something one is not. [...]

[T.H. White] kept [grass snakes] because ‘it was impossible to impose upon them, or steal their affections’. He loved them because they were misunderstood, maligned, and ‘inevitably themselves.’

----------- Chapter 4, H is for Hawk by Helen Macdonald (2014)

Does anyone know other sources that talk about the intersections between queer writers and nature writing? As a queer lady who does exactly that, this passage has always stuck with me.

[stavrosskundromichalis]

A group of Massospondylus carinatus on a joyful mountain hike in Early Jurassic South Africa. Double-page spread from my new book (När dinosaurierna tog över, Idus förlag).

[fiftysevenacademics]

So what have we learned? A charming rodent can be one of the most powerful tools in a technosavior's pocket. As Nature reported, Colossal is now valued at $10 billion. And what has Colossal produced so far? A hairy mouse that kind of already exists, and a slew of press releases on plans to de-extinct not just mammoths, but also animals like dodos and thylacines. The announcement of the woolly mouse will no doubt rake in even more capital, which was presumably the point and which will probably benefit its investors more than it will a putative, chimerical mammoth. When a company trying to sell itself calls something a "breakthrough," you don't have to believe them.

Gentle Tumblrfolk, I know we're all desperate for good news and that we all love cute, fluffy critters. But this "mammoth mouse" thing is absolute flim flam.

Please click and read the linked article. Sabrina Imbler (who is a great science journalist) does an excellent job explaining how science journalism works nowadays (unfortunately), and how almost no one paid attention to Nature's news story on it, which is what good journalism should be doing for a sensational claim like this.

[rebeccathenaturalist]

Book release day is serious business.

The Everyday Naturalist has been officially released into the wild! You can get signed copies from me at TheEverydayNaturalist.com, or see if your local bookstore has it in stock or can order it for you. Ask your friendly neighborhood librarian, too!)

[bobnichollsart]

My 25 years of palaeoart chronology...

Flight evolved independently in Dromaeosauridae, Archaeopterygidae, Anchiornithidae, Scansoriopterygidae, and whatever Rahonavis is. Here's Microraptor (Dromaeosauridae) from DINOSAUR BEHAVIOUR, by Prof Michael Benton (published by Princeton University Press).

[great-and-small]

You know what I hate about the internet? Sometimes people will just lazily slap a “citation” on an infographic and trust that they’ll be completely taken at their word and nobody is going to dig deeper. And it works all the time. As an example, please look at this photo someone posted to dispute my assertion that garlic can be toxic to dogs.

Okay well, kind of a pain to manually type in that link but obviously I am going to look into this study that is confident enough to recommend people feeding their dogs garlic. So here’s the article, kind of a weird journal choice for this graphic to reference from but looks like a legit (though 20 year old) study

Funny thing is, almost immediately this article acknowledges that garlic can indeed be toxic to dogs. The health benefits mentioned in the graphic are referring to human health, not canine. This section is literally in the introduction of the article and one of the first things you read. Emphasis here is mine.

Crazy to me that someone would imply that this article encourages giving dogs garlic when it in fact immediately asserts that doing so has the potential to cause hemolytic anemia. The article does explore the anti-thrombotic effects of garlic components in dogs and humans, but by no means does it say that “contrary to misconceptions garlic is safe for pets”. It is dishonest to assert this in an infographic. However the creator of the image correctly assumed nobody would check, because the person who posted it took it as fact without further investigation.

I am begging you to be skeptical. Check your sources. Check their sources. Check my sources. Learn how to dig deeper and exercise that muscle as much as you can, especially on the internet. You will be absolutely shocked how much misinformation is casually stated and received as pure fact.

[knuppitalism-with-ue]

I would like to thank in this post every artist who joins in nearly every Friday for Flocking Together, a weekly format we host on Twitch and Discord!

It's a stream in which we draw together 4 creatures from deep time. These have been voted on beforehand and each are done within 20 min. Before we draw it we discuss the animals in question, share references and talk about things to keep in mind about them. After the drawings are done people are free to post them and I review them and if you want to post them afterwards I am delighted to repost them, no matter how rough they might be. Here a few examples of the images that are created on stream by artists like @barghest-land, @bornulhuu, @petitepaleoartist, @cypressure, @impulseimpact, @aberrantologist, @katborg82, @the-dragon-girl-27, @veloci-raptor or myself If you wanna join in you can so on Twitch or Discord: https://www.twitch.tv/paleostream

[botanyshitposts]

if theres anything ive learned about science communication both online and offline its that people love unusually large or small versions of a creature. nothing really reaches across the barriers of age, education, or language like that does. if it has another interesting factor that seems mildly upsetting or surprising but not offensive to broad human cultural norms, that is a plus but its not required because even then for a single moment everyone is like damn, yeah, thats pretty big or small, and then even if they remember nothing else they might remember that the creatures are coming in Sizes. you know