One Fifth of 2008's Research Papers Were/Are Open Access

Posted by Alex H. |0 comments

I recently found an interesting blog post and felt it was worth sharing.

The Great Beyond: One fifth of 2008's research papers now open access

According to this article and its associated primary literature article (find it here), roughly one in every five of 1837 sampled from a database of 1.2 million was open access somewhere on the internet. The article breaks down these numbers, but generally I believe this is a good direction for the transparency of science.

Reading primary literature is difficult enough, and without institutional access to online versions of journals, this task is made frustrating and (too often) off-putting.

Photo credit

Male Green Frogs in Suburban Habitats Sometimes Develop Eggs

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Interesting video of the now:


I hope you enjoyed that. I post it not only because of the interesting topic, but the simple manner by which a complex process is described. As I look into graduate school more and more, I'll probably be posting videos similar in feel to this one. This is simply because visiting research lab websites exposes me to, well, lab research.

Brown-Headed Cowbirds Exhibit Mafia Behavior

Posted by Alex H. |1 comments

Been a while since my last post. Perhaps I've taken some time off? Nope! School's out for sure, but I'm currently working full time (+ some) with Dr. Ben Pierce in SU's biology department. I spend most of my time in front of a computer, and after a long day of quality excel time, I'm usually just not in the mood to do blahg stuff.


But I'm here for you, right? Yeah.


So today's news isn't really news at all; however, I'm going to guess that the average person on the street has not heard of this problematic species and their interesting behaviors. I've been putting this one off for a while - there's a lot of information, but I think you will find it very intriguing!


Residing in the Southern USA & Mexico, brown-headed cowbirds (Molothrus ater) are obligate brood parasites (some male BHCs pictured on the right in a trap described later). This terminology means that females BHCs do not (and cannot, I assume) construct nests and must lay their eggs in the nest of another species of bird in order to have a successful clutch. The cowbird eggs hatch earlier than the 'normal' eggs and yield large chicks with very big mouths to feed. Guess who's the bad guy here:

(Photo credit)

Yikes! The parental birds feed the biggest and most obvious beak - which will often be owned by cowbird chicks. This would be fine and dandy in the world of biology, if it weren't for a tiny detail. BHCs used to be restricted to what wildlife biologists call 'edge habitat', as illustrated in this figure:

(photo credit + description)

Essentially, when one has a grouping of a certain type of habitat, the edges are susceptible to different pressures than the inner portion of that type of habitat. Cowbirds got their name because they were found following the wake of edge habitat created by cattle trails in the 1800s. Nowadays, cattle drives are rare, but suburbia and habitat fragmentation are everywhere:

(photo credit)

For species that "live life on the edge" (sorry, I had to), life is good. For the affected species... not so much. Problems arise when this brood parasitism spells certain death for the nest fate (i.e., success) of, say, endangered species. Brown-headed cowbirds, which used to have a more limited range (and then restricted to edge habitats), must now be controlled in areas under management for endangered species of birds.


A classic example of this BHC control is performed on Fort Hood in central Texas. Fort Hood has been a leader in environmental protection and the protection of endangered species. Many an environmental/biological researcher has earned his or her Ph.D. working on their property - and with good reason. Specifically, Fort Hood is the largest remaining breeding ground for the endangered species of bird, the Black-Capped Vireo. Before controlling for BHC,  vireo nest fate was zilch - guaranteed zero percent nest success if parasitized by BHC. Now, the military facility invests a lot of time (and money) into maintaining brown-headed cowbird traps like this one (this is actually a photo I took out at Fort Hood this year):

The premise is simple. The birds can get in, but not out. A door allows someone to enter the cage and handle the birds as necessary. Food and water is provided. Generally, when one BHC is inside the cage (bait), other BHCs will fly over and into the cage to investigate, trapping themselves. Females are euthanized and males are released (only females lay eggs). This simple, if labor-intensive, control has had a hugely positive impact on restoring the black-capped vireo population. The numbers are a bit fuzzy, but I think in the late 80s, Fort Hood had around eighty nesting pairs, and at current they have around five thousand nesting pairs.


So what's new? If you're any sort of bird person, you've probably heard all of the above, if not for the details. The story here is a study released by the University of Florida in 2007 which gave evidence for mafia behavior in female brown-headed cowbirds. ScienceDaily reports on the article (found here). If all of the behavior described above wasn't enough to make you have a distaste for brood parasitism, this article may be the kicker for you. What the researchers, including primary author Jeff Hoover, found was that female brown-headed cowbirds would ransack the nests of birds who rejected the parasitic eggs laid in their nests. It's worth noting that female BHC lay eggs in a nest over a period of days (2-4?), and so they are involved in some parental care of their young - watching to ensure the nest isn't abandoned, checking to see that the eggs have not been pushed out of the nest, and even feeding the chicks after hatching.


Hoover et al. observed Prothonotary warbler nests (a truly beautiful bird which accept BHC eggs almost 100% of the time) and found several interesting things:

"Retaliatory mafia behavior in cowbirds makes hosts' acceptance of cowbird eggs a better proposition than ejection," Hoover said. "The accepting warblers in our study produced more of their own offspring, on average, than those where we ejected cowbird eggs."

The researchers also found what they called "farming behavior." This means that after a warbler rejected the female BHCs eggs, the BHC would force the female warbler to make a new nest, sync her egg laying with the warbler, and parasitize this new nest. This final step happened 85% of the time the farming behaviors were observed. A male prothonotary warbler is pictured on the right (photo credit).

I hope you learned something after reading this truly lengthy post. Thanks for sticking it to the end.

"Seduce Me" and "Green Porno" - The Art of The Birds and the Bees

Posted by Alex H. |1 comments

Every now and then, someone has a truly great idea about how to explain science to the general public. Sometimes the topic is animal mating behavior.

This is the setup for the Sundance Channel's two recent series: "Green Porno" and "Seduce Me." "Green Porno" explores wild and weird animal mating behaviors while "Seduce Me" acts out animal courtship - a whole other bag of worms.

You can view many of their videos here.

The star/director/mastermind behind the effort is Isabella Rossellini. Quite often, her acting performance will have you in stitches. The costumes and sets designed for both shows are often quite beautiful, regardless of topic.

Here are some samples, but remember many, many more are available on their website:

The Art of Karen Carr

Posted by Alex H. |1 comments

I'd like to direct your browsers to the online home page for international wildlife and natural history artist Karen Carr and Karen Carr Studio, Inc.

Here artwork is incredible and demonstrates a world-class level of care for her topics. I even read (but lost the source) that when she worked with traditional media and was attempting to portray a scene or organism underwater, she would snorkel and make sketches underwater (presumably with waterproof materials!). I had come across her art several times in my internetting, but never realized that it was all mostly from one woman!

Here website and online gallery are easy to navigate and contain a treasure trove of wonderful biodiversity - alive or extinct. She also posts directions on how she paints digitally, which is neat.

Her best known work and association is with The Field Museum in Chicago, IL, an incredible museum of natural history.

The following images are samples of her work (all copyright Karen Karr and are available on her website):

PS - if you find yourself interested in illustrating natural science (I know I am!), check out the website for the Guild of Natural Science Illustrators (GNSI).

Museum of Living Art (MOLA) - Now Open

Posted by Alex H. |1 comments

As summer approaches, I am getting mixed news about what I'll be doing for the next few months. I had applied to several internships, but none of them had positions open :/

One place that I am interested in is the Forth Worth Zoo. I had a post at the beginning of the year which described the zoo and a new exhibit - the Museum of Living Art (MOLA). This exhibit replaces their Herpetarium built in 1960.

Upon visiting the FW Zoo's website, I see that MOLA opened in March of this year!

Check out their over-the-top promotional videos here or here.

The size and scope of the exhibit are phenomenal. The 30,000 sq. ft. facility houses (at current) around 1,000 individuals representing a hundred different species of reptiles and amphibians.

I'm super-pumped! I'll report in when I have the chance to visit them next.

Update: When searching for images for this article, I spotted one of my pictures in the top results of a Google Search. Moving up the food chain. We also recently hit 1,000 pageviews. Hooray!:

Lots of Stuff - Videos, Snake Bites and More!

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Here's the setup.  Whenever I find something I think would make an interesting post on this blog, I bookmark it with intentions of writing an article at some point.  That happens for the things with some substance, but over time, I have accumulated all kinds of internet knick-knacks that I'd like to share in one large post.

• Here's a neat one. On this website, you can view high-quality, color, streaming video of a nesting Red Tailed Hawk (tipoff from here). The nest is located in Philadelpha, PA at the Franklin Institute Building. Here's a screencap of what I saw when I visited :)

• A study has found that denim denim may guard against rattlesnake bites. Read the fine print, as the study was just measuring the amount of venom that was injected into warm saline-solution filled gloves - not necessarily accounting for physical damage or psychological damage (I think you'd be a bit freaked out if you were bit by a poisonous snake!). Nonetheless, it's an interesting read (especially since I'm always wearing denim jeans).

• A species of frog thought to be extinct in the wild for 30 years has been rediscovered on farmland in the Southern Tablelands of New South Wales state of Australia. The Yellow-Spotted Bell Frogs are quite adorable and the article notes optimism for similarly-"lost" species. Seven of Australia's 216 known species of frogs have disappeared in the last thirty years.

• Impress your friends with this compendium of collective nouns for animals. Where else would you hear about a murder of ravens, a pounce of cats, or a parliament of owls?
• A punk band named REPTILES. You can listen to their music here.
• When looking for advice on how to draw reptiles, I encountered this humorously-simple description of how to draw amphibians and reptiles.
• Some great underwater photography from one of my favorite blogs, The Flying Kiwi.
• Cool fluorescent coral (via Deep Sea News):

Hope that was enough for you! I'll continue updating throughout the week as I tactfully do not do homework before finals week.

Review - "How to Train Your Dragon"

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With much that I talk about on this blog being so seemingly obscure, perhaps you can take comfort in something much more mainstream. :)

I recently wrote a review of the DreamWorks Animation's most recent film "How to Train Your Dragon."

You can read the review here.

This movie has been all I've been thinking about for the past two weeks. I highly recommend it and, if you have the opportunity, see it in 3D.

Here's a trailer: