#ecology

[nando161mando]

[grainelevator]

Faraway views (right lens of my binoculars)

[lichenaday]

My favorite part of teaching lichen ID class always comes when we are taking walks and I get to point at patches on rocks and trees and be like "hey, see that? Lichen." And then the students are like "what? no way. You mean those black spots on rocks/white spots on trees/etc. have always been lichen?" And I get to be like "yep," and watch their brain explode as they realize that everything around them has been covered in lichen the whole time.

[xcandiedorangesx]

[laconic-void]

Saying "mosquitoes are annoying" after one bites me but shaking my head the whole time so the attractive single ecologists in my area know I understand their value in the ecosystem and that we would slowly die if they went extinct

[reasonsforhope]

If you're feeling anxious or depressed about the climate and want to do something to help right now, from your bed, for free...

Start helping with citizen science projects

What's a citizen science project? Basically, it's crowdsourced science. In this case, crowdsourced climate science, that you can help with!

You don't need qualifications or any training besides the slideshow at the start of a project. There are a lot of things that humans can do way better than machines can, even with only minimal training, that are vital to science - especially digitizing records and building searchable databases

Like labeling trees in aerial photos so that scientists have better datasets to use for restoration.

Or counting cells in fossilized plants to track the impacts of climate change.

Or digitizing old atmospheric data to help scientists track the warming effects of El Niño.

Or counting penguins to help scientists better protect them.

Those are all on one of the most prominent citizen science platforms, called Zooniverse, but there are a ton of others, too.

Oh, and btw, you don't have to worry about messing up, because several people see each image. Studies show that if you pool the opinions of however many regular people (different by field), it matches the accuracy rate of a trained scientist in the field.

--

I spent a lot of time doing this when I was really badly injured and housebound, and it was so good for me to be able to HELP and DO SOMETHING, even when I was in too much pain to leave my bed. So if you are chronically ill/disabled/for whatever reason can't participate or volunteer for things in person, I highly highly recommend.

Next time you wish you could do something - anything - to help

Remember that actually, you can. And help with some science.

[jstor]

Our beloved mushrooms are so much more than just forest decorations, motifs in Gothic literature, or images we associate with Hozier's debut album.

Fungi act as "carbon conduits" and enable over 90% of plants to sustain themselves. In "The Fungi in the Carbon Jigsaw" from JSTOR Daily, ecologist and photographer Timo Mendez reveals how fungi helped early plants colonize land, and how their hidden carbon-trading systems today might be the key to fighting climate change.

And he took these beautiful photos to boot! Read the article and view some more photos on JSTOR Daily.

Photos: Amanita muscaria, russula, and ectomycorrhizal fungi. All taken by Timo Mendez.

[mushrooms-and-millipedes]

Not an ant, but very important to ants

going for a ride with mama

[hometoursandotherstuff]

[hawkpartys]

A sweat bee (Genus Lasioglossum) drying herself off after being rescued from a puddle

[aparrotandaqrow]

There are thousands of species of mosquitoes out there, and many many more species of small, soft-bodied insects with aquatic larval stages, many even that prey on larger animals. There is a relatively small number of mosquito species that prey on humans, and most of the most dangerous species, which carry diseases like West Nile, Zika, malaria, and yellow fever, are invasive in almost all ecosystems and have specialized for urban environments and preying on humans. They do not comprise a significant food source for insectivores like bats and hummingbirds, nor do they pollinate.

If we wiped out the handful of species of mosquito that prey on humans and carry deadly diseases (which are responsible for far more human deaths annually than any other animal except for other humans), there would be negligible impact to the food chain (again, plenty of other small insect species to eat), other mosquito species would continue to thrive, and there would be enormous benefit to humanity, in particular the global south.

We eradicated the screw worm fly from all of the Americas north of the Panama Canal, and that was an insect with much more ecological involvement, since they do pollinate and consume nectar. That eradication had minimal impact on ecosystems in central and north america, because screw worm fly was not a keystone species in those ecosystems.

The specific mosquito species that pose problems for humans are also not keystone species; we should eradicate them.

Nature is not a perfect system in balance and harmony were it not for human intervention; it's a constantly-shifting landscape of antagonistic, cooperative, and competitive relationships, and the loss of one species does necessarily cause irreversible harm to an ecosystem. We don't need to project the noble savage trope onto the natural world.

Mosquitoes actually are not replaceable in any ecosystem that naturally has them and that includes replacing them with any of the non biting species because these are the traits that make them so core to food webs:

Tiny

Can use every single pool of moisture to raise generations no matter how dirty and stagnant and low in oxygen

Can fly

Males get by on just sugars

Females take protein from larger animals to manufacture thousands more eggs

All these things combined allow thst ecosystem to make huge volumes of insects from conditions barren to most other macroscopic life. You might think there are other insects that seem to make huge massive swarms out of nothing but there's really nothing that hits all the same qualities *except other insects that also suck blood.*

It's the precise combo of being able to "prey" on things millions of times larger and breed in nothing but a few drops of filthy rainwater or the moisture in a rotten log. That's the most efficient combination for anything that size to multiply that rapidly where nothing else can even survive, except of course the things that can move in because they eat them :)

[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)

[lichenaday]

Cladonia coniocraea

Common powderhorn

images: source | source | source | source

[herpsandbirds]

These practices are very disruptive and destructive for a wide variety of aquatic creatures.

via: National Park Service