In a grain of sand

Diatoms and more


(Also on view: 'Up close and spineless')

What is true for E. coli...

In the old joke a person is not "dead", they are just "metabolically different". Here, though, is evidence that organisms from microbe to elephant are metabolically the same (or pretty close):

"The largest organism we studied is the elephant, which has a metabolic rate of 1 Watt per kilogram, and the smallest is a bacterium with a metabolic rate of 4 Watts/kg"... Using the formulae that had previously been used to calculate the metabolic rate within separate classes of animals, you would have expected a multimillion-fold difference.

-- Is there an optimum speed of life?

Beast

'Peaceful' bonobos have been observed hunting: they may corner and feast on a still-living duiker, tearing out and eating its guts even as the animal is still screaming. (See Loving bonobos have a carnivorous dark side).

But predation and aggression are distinct behaviours, says Frans de Waal: there are, for example, aggressive herbivores such as bison and sociable carnivores such as lionesses. "For me, this finding does very little to change the idea of bonobos as relatively peaceful primates."

A problem without a name

'Ocean oxygen deprivation', says Ralph Keeling, is the best phrase he has come up with so far to describe the diminution of dissolved oxygen in large areas of the oceans resulting from large-scale, rapid dumping of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere [1]. The impacts on ocean life, said Keeling (speaking at Malente XVII), are likely to be adverse and significant [2].

Keeling invited ideas for a term that would better communicate the nature of the phenomenon. I asked what he thought of 'ocean suffocation' -- arguably a sensational term, but no more so than 'ocean acidification' (which actually refers to a reduction in oceanic alkalinity) [3]. Keeling said he had thought about this, but thought it might excessively sensational. He wanted to hear from biologists [4].


Footnotes

[1] As a result of anthropogenic emissions, CO2 levels are way outside the normal range for at least the last several hundred thousand years, and increasing at least a hundred times faster than at any time during that period.

[2] He referred to Expanding Oxygen-Minimum Zones in the Tropical Oceans by L. Stramma et al. DOI: 10.1126/science.1153847. A news report here.

[3] P.S. 22 Oct: I created a wiki stub for 'ocean suffocation'. On 23 Oct, following discussion with some distinguished oceanographers, this was changed to ocean deoxygenation. 24 Oct: see also this post from Simon Donner at Maribo.

[4] Keeling also said he thought research into the consequences of deep ocean dumping of CO2, "where it may do less damage", should be on the scientific research agenda (although not necessarily on the political agenda) . He couldn't see why it was not as good or better than most options on the table. [For an overview of ocean sequestration see, for example, the ocean acidification network.] In response, Philip Chris Reid was emphatically doubtful, pointing to the rich benthic life that would be affected. A Dutch participant (whose name I missed) highlighted what he said were enormous uncertainties regarding how thousands of microbial species in the oceans, many of them dormant, would react, and suggested that the changes [already underway] might be comparable those of 55 million years ago (I presume he meant the PETM). Sylvia Earle articulated similar concerns to both Reid and the second respondent ["We need to recognise that millions of years evolution and fine tuning have put us where we are with a functioning environment. We should do no harm and protect natural systems. In particular, we don’t know how to put them back together again"]. [See also Seibel and Fabry, 2003.] Keeling answered that to the extent deep ocean CO2 dumping was acute it would be localized, and to the extent it was widespread it was inevitable as the CO2 was heading for the deep oceans and much of that life was probably doomed anyway. Right now, by contrast, CO2 was being dumped into the "most sensitive" top layers of the oceans, and "we may do much better for fish [in the upper layers] by pumping [the CO2] deep"...“We have a global crisis at hand. All mitigation options need to be on the table to assess their merit. This includes less acceptable options such as CO2 sequestration in the deep sea. It may be a bad one but it may be the least bad one.”

Wrong way

If you wanted to see the demise of resources you would put in place the policies we have.

-- Jacqueline McGlade speaking at Malente XVII on the findings of an Assessment of assessments.

Pillage

Criminal syndicates are earning more than $10bn a year from a booming environmental crime business in rainforest logging, the trade in endangered animal skins and ivory and smuggling canisters of banned gas refrigerants.

-- says the Environmental Investigation Agency.

Sorcerer's apprentice syndrome

Poor Mickey Mouse found out that every time he chopped up one of his magic brooms, the problem doubled as each half sprouted new legs and continued its duties.

Palaeontologists everywhere can sympathise with Mickey's plight. When a seemingly large evolutionary gap is plugged with a remarkable new fossil, as happened just the other day with the discovery of a new primitive turtle from the Triassic, it just leaves two smaller gaps on either side. Now, instead of one gap in the fossil record there are two, and Creationists argue that the fossil record is, paradoxically, even worse than it was before the new discovery.

-- from $7.5 trillion for a 'transitional' fossil? by Colin Barras

Small change

The global economy is losing more money from the disappearance of forests than through the current banking crisis, according to an EU-commissioned study...

"Whereas Wall Street by various calculations has to date lost, within the financial sector, $1-$1.5 trillion, the reality is that at today's rate we are losing natural capital at least between $2-$5 trillion every year." [says Pavan Sukhdev, the study leader]

-- Nature loss 'dwarfs bank crisis'.

Elsewhere, Jacques Attali compares the financial crisis with the climate change crisis

Bubbling blogs

Carnival of the Blue #17 celebrates ocean-related thoughts from around the blogosphere. Go here for links to posts about polar bears and solar bears, 'killing whales to save them', octopus eyes, the Googly-eyed glass squid and much, much more.

From the vasty deep

Snailfish caught on video for the first time here. At 7,700 metres the pressure is 770 times atmospheric.

Machina ex machina

There is clearly no thinking presence behind any of the actions of [the 10,000 trillion] cells [in the human body]. It all just happens, smoothly and repeatedly and so reliably that seldom are we even conscious of it; yet somehow all this produces not just order within the cell but a perfect harmony right across the organism. In ways we have barely begun to understand, trillions upon trillions of reflective chemical reactions add up to a mobile, thinking, decision-making you -- or, come to that, a rather less reflective but still incredibly organized dung beetle. Every living thing, never forget, is a wonder of atomic engineering.

-- Bill Bryson.

P.S. 10 Oct Digital zebrafish embryo created:

Earth dive

virtually

Gone

Holdridge's Toad

Going

...the number of threatened mammals could be as high as 36 percent.

-- Jan Schipper with IUCN. See Redlist.

While the Red List does make headlines, somehow the irreplaceable loss of species does not stay in the minds of the general public, and it has certainly never prompted major financial investments. This has always puzzled me. As a colleague of mine puts it: "Imagine what would happen to us if rainfall was a thousand times more than normal? What if snowfall were a thousand times more than normal? What if rates of disease transmission for malaria or HIV/AIDS were a thousand times higher than they are now? That is what is happening to plant and animal biodiversity today."

-- Russell Mittermeier

P.S. 10 Oct: Here's the article from Science.

21st century turtles

A small story from early September:

More than 10 live Hawksbill and Green turtles of different sizes were found in the reservoir tank of Pars Petrochemical Zone [continues...]

(image: Turtles can fly)

Only disconnect

As generations of college students learn more about microbiology and evolution, they seem to be growing less and less familiar with the plants and animals around them.

-- Scott Atran et al (2004), quoted by Laura Rival.

Desk killer.

It's alive!

It is perhaps the history of the errors of mankind, all things considered, [that] is more valuable and interesting than that of their discoveries. Truth is uniform and narrow; it constantly exists and does not seem to require so much an active energy as a passive aptitude of soul, in order to encounter it. But error is endlessly diversified. It has no reality but is the pure and simple creation of the mind that invents it. In this field, the soul has room enough to expand herself to display all her boundless faculties and all of her beautiful and interesting extravagancies and absurdities.

These observations of Benjamin Franklin's [1] remain compelling as prose, and may still bear some weight as analysis [2].

It is not right to say today, though, that appreciating truth requires only “passive aptitude of soul”, or that only error is "endlessly diversified." The energy and capacity to better imagine is precisely what may give us "a fighting chance" [3] of reducing the amount of future destruction and instead developing the potential to appreciate and protect an [almost] endlessly diversified reality [4]. As Jorge Luis Borges put it:

Beauty, like happiness, occurs frequently. Not a day goes by in which we do not, for an instant, live in paradise.

Footnotes

[1 ] The passage is from a report of an investigation into Franz Mesmer presented to Louis XIV of France in 1784. It was quoted by Joan Kirby of Macquarie University in a recent discussion titled 'It's alive!' Frankenstein, science and philosophy in the Romantic period.

[2] Although see this.

[3] Bob Watson.

[4] Eliezer Yudkowsky has said, “Alas for those who turn their eyes from zebras and dream of dragons! If we cannot learn to take joy in the merely real, our lives shall be empty indeed.” To which I say, yes, but let us not forget the human tendency to see , and create, "dragons" in the strangest of places.

Beasts at the Igs

Among the 2008 winners:

Archaeology: Astolfo Mello Araujo at the University of Sao Paulo in Brazil for measuring how the contents of an archaeological dig can be disrupted by the actions of an armadillo.

Cognitive neuroscience: Toshiyuki Nakagaki, at Hokkaido University in Japan, for discovering that amoeboid organisms can solve puzzles.

Drowning

There are man's activities that can be contributed to the issues that we're dealing with now with these impacts. I'm not going to blame all of man's activities on changes in climate.

-- Sarah Palin.

P.S. 5 Oct: RealClimate.

Bear necessities

The human species is now a mainly urban animal for the first time in history, according to the United Nations, and in at least some regions of the United States, black bears appear to be following suit...

...more (plus at least one thoughtful response here).

"You know, in ancient cultures bears were considered equal with men."
"This ain't no ancient culture here, mister."
"Sometimes it is."
-- Ghost Dog.