I recently spent a couple of weeks at Tjärnö Marine Biological Laboratory where I learned to recognise various groups of marine invertebrates. It was a lot of fun, especially since I have never actually looked closely at live corals or sponges before, such organisms being absent from the dead brackish waters of the Baltic outside Stockholm.

One group that definitely drew the eye were the nudibranchs or sea slugs. Sure, we don’t have the graceful swimming kite-like ones of warmer waters, but you don’t have to be large to display striking colour or form. I took some pictures:

Some nudibranchs feed on hydroids and, somehow, manage to prevent their cnidocytes (the cells containing the stinging nematocysts, used for predation or protection or both) from discharging and utilise them in their own defenses. If anyone knows how they do this, I would love to get an explanation, as the course assistants were unable to answer that question!

ETA: These beauties have now boarded Friday Ark #169.

marine biology, nudibranchs, sea slugs

Next week’s Tangled Bank will be hosted at Ouroboros. Please send your submissions (after reading the very minimalistic rules at the Tangled Bank webpage, of course) to host@tangledbank.net - the sooner the better!

tangled bank, science, biology, blog carnival

I have on a few occasions (most recently on Agricultural Biodiversity Blog) been asked to give my view on various aspects of Colony Collapse Disorder, a mysterious syndrome that seems to be killing honeybee colonies primarily in the USA but possibly also in Europe. Because I’m a beekeeper, apparently my opinion is considered “expert”.

The thing is, no one really knows what CCD is all about. The symptoms include adult bees vanishing from the colony, while the queen is still present as well as brood and some food stores. Adult bees will usually not abandon a hive while there is still capped brood present, and if the colony is starving, uncapped brood are usually eaten before the adult bees start dying. Also the bees in a colony dying from starvation or disease normally die in or around it rather than simply vanishing.

CCD has only been defined in the past couple of years and has mainly been reported in the US. There are historical sources speaking of similar events in the past but the records are incomplete and, just like today, everything is mostly based on beekeepers’ own reports. In short, very little actual trustworthy data exists on the true extent of the disorder.

It gets even worse when you start looking at possible causes. Pretty much everything has been suggested and there is no conclusive evidence for anything. Varroa destructor mites, the most pervasive and destructive pest faced by beekeepers and their colonies today, appear not to be linked to the disorder. The Israeli acute paralysis virus has been shown to be correlated with incidence of CCD, but no causality is implied and it might simply be that colonies suffering from whatever is causing CCD are more receptive to the virus. Electromagnetic radiation has been implicated by the press but the one study on which the media based this ridiculous rumour had nothing to do with CCD.

Here in Sweden, most of the senior beekeepers I have spoken to are extremely skeptical about the disorder and consider it mostly a problem for American beekeepers, who tend to truck their hives around a lot during the active season as well as use antibiotics to a much greater extent than we do over here. Beekeeping is much more of an industry in the US, and that has to affect the bees in some way. In short the general opinion over here seems to be that US beekeepers had it coming, because they are exposing their colonies to stressful situations that never occur in nature, which likely weakens their immune system and generally renders them more vulnerable to all natural enemies.

In fact, there are quite a few beekeepers as well as scientists of the opinion that the recent mass-deaths of colonies in the US are within the bounds of what can be considered normal: Some years, a lot of bees simply die because of poor weather conditions.

Either way, I don’t want to pretend I know something that I can’t possibly know. There are scientists hard at work at figuring out what is causing CCD, and until they have produced some evidence in any direction, I won’t offer an opinion on the subject. I am of course very interested in seeing what will happen and hope that a cause and treatment is found soon, but meanwhile, I think I will focus on battling the Varroa in my own hives.

ETA: One possible cause I haven’t seen discussed anywhere is the possibility of genetic stress due to breeding. We already know that honeybees are very sensitive to inbreeding due to their sex determination system (I think I’ll write about this in a future post, it’s very interesting), but what if there are other, less obvious problems with the way we breed honeybees? Could it be that breeding for docility, repressed swarming behaviour and increased harvests produces other unwanted effects such as a weakened immune system?

colony collapse disorder, ccd, honeybees, beekeeping, varroa

Welcome to Tangled Bank #94! My name is Felicia and this is my blog, Life before death, in which I write about secularism, science and bees, with the occasional digression into other things. You may notice that there has been a bit of a gap in posting lately, but I’m back in the game now. Should anyone want to know more about myself (unlikely as that may seem), there’s an About link in the sidebar. But now, without further ado, let’s get on with the carnival!

First out is Chris Patil of Ouroboros reporting on the development of anti-aging drugs that might for instance combat type 2 diabetes. Read “Sirtuin activators as anti-diabetes drugs, and beyond“!

Kentucky of the physics arXiv blog makes a few comments on the slightly frightening prospect of how little we actually know about how flu spreads. On a happier note, progress has been made on computer modelling of river deltas. Which makes me think of quantum computing and the way many sciences today seem to have reached a point where certain questions can be answered in theory but in practice; so many calculations need to be done that our computers can’t handle it. The question is what’s faster, waiting for the engineers to finish inventing quantum computers, or simply watching river deltas form…

The author of Common Sense probably describes “Brian May Not Like This” best: “The join between two recent stories about sea killings - the restart of whaling and the dumping of over-quota fish. Strangely linked via the musing of a guitar rock legend.” The post answers my long-standing question of why it is that when dolphins hunt fish on a nature documentary, the music is happy and cheerful, but when a shark kills a seal that’s a tragedy. Another entry contains a spot-on criticism of the way nature shows often portray life as perfectly adapted to its surroundings, when evolutionary theory tells us something else. Is this a passing trend, has it gotten better? I would like to think so.

Larry Ferlazzo’s Websites Of The Day has a perfect website tip for those who are too busy to read blogs.

If I were categorising entries, Paddy K’s would probably be sorted under “Human Behaviour”. As we all know, Homo sapiens is a notoriously pattern-seeking animal, which has on occasion resulted in deities appearing in foodstuffs, to be sold on e-bay. (Is this where I confess that my significant other bears a striking resemblance to the popular image of “the bearded one”, so much so that “Jesus” has actually become his nickname at Oxford? As a hardline atheist, I don’t quite know what this says about my taste in men…)

Both DC Birding Blog and 10,000 Birds report on the International Ornithological Committee’s attempt at standardising English bird names worldwide. John Beetham of DC Birding and Mike of 10,000 Birds speak highly of how important it is to take steps toward international understanding - but keep in mind there’s quite a few birders out there whose mother tongue is something other than English! Until English really has become the first language of most of the world, perhaps we might as well just stick to latin?

Ed Yong of Not Exactly Rocket Science contributes with a post touching upon one of my favourite subject: Studying capuchin monkeys’ sense of justice throws light on the biological foundations of morality. Clear evidence that a sense of justice exists in other species than humans indicates that morality is something we are born with and don’t need to be taught from scratch.

Alvaro at SharpBrains brings us an interview with professor Robert Emmons, about how feeling gratitude makes you happier. What’s more, nurturing gratitude apparently doesn’t just enhance happiness and health, but also makes you a better person. Who would have guessed that being optimistic and looking on the bright side of life could have such positive effects? I may sound sarcastic, but in all seriousness, being positive is vastly underestimated as a way of improving your mental health. Whether this is because, as Emmons says, people feel uncomfortable because the subject feels “spiritual” or “religious”, or simply because being cynical is more hip, well… I know what I believe…

MartinR of Aardvarchaeology points out that one of the best way to reduce our carbon emissions would be to fly less, and that the current system of longer flights being cheaper is absolutely insane. However, asking Americans to tax flying seems to me like asking North Koreans to denounce their president/god. The ones who aren’t brainwashed into thinking the current system is fine will remain quiet for fear of being ostracised… I’m joking, I’m joking!

Greg Laden comments on a paper on “Extended Male Growth in Robust Austrolapithecus“. I’ll have to admit that I had to google that term (it’s a kind of human-like primate)… The paper suggests a pronounced sexual dimorphism was present, with males growing to larger sizes than females like in for instance gorillas. Laden comments that they fail to consider the option of trimorphism like that of orangutans, where males come in a large and a small morph. What I wonder is, how does this affect our view on human evolution? Is this dimorphism or possibly trimorphism related to the dimorphism we observe in Homo sapiens?

Archaeozoology contributes with a very educational post on avian osteopetrosis. Note, petrosis, not porosis. There’s an important difference and mistaking one for the other (because you’re tired and not reading carefully enough) may lead to much confusion…

Another favourite subject of mine, the evolution of certain complex systems that are sometimes referred to as irreducible, is brought up by Ian from Mystery Rays from Outer Space. “Same trip, different routes: lamprey immunity” takes a look at how the immune system of sharks didn’t have to appear all in one go, but may have been adapted from functioning systems lacking certain parts – such as those in lampreys and hagfishes.

To quote John Cleese, “and now on to something completely different”: It is said that all biologists suffer from physics envy. Personally I seem to suffer from a general physics-and-maths-o-phobia. That’s why we need people like John Wheaton who can explain things like zero-point energy so that even a biologist can understand it.

Finally, two entries from the Agricultural Biodiversity Weblog: Jacob van Etten writes about Monopsony, which refers to a market in which there is only one buyer, resulting in a reduction of agricultural biodiversity. (The mention of potential vineyards in Sweden seems highly amusing to a Swede in December.) Additionally, Luigi takes us on a tour to the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Centre.

That’s all folks!

tangled bank, science, biology, blog carnival

I am currently studying Systematic Zoology at Stockholm University (and one of these days I will share the link to the webpage I’m creating as a way of studying for the exam on December 20 - simply reading just doesn’t do it for me). I think this is possibly the first biology course I’ve taken where I haven’t felt the least inclined to buy the textbook. Or rather, I was going to, but didn’t, and after borrowing it from the head teacher for a while I realised that it’s not a book I’d particularly like in my collection. It’s simply too … boring.

This got me thinking about university course literature and the way it’s often treated by students, at least in Sweden. Science textbooks are usually ridiculously expensive over here, and students often have trouble actually affording to buy the literature assigned for each course we take. A solution is to buy used literature and sell your old books to the next batch of students taking the course. The publishers seemingly desperately try to avoid this by producing new editions as often as possible, but given how small the changes often are this can usually be worked around.

Whining about the cost of course literature wasn’t going to be the subject of this entry, though. Instead, I’m wondering at the rather odd way we for some reason value these books far lower than all the other books we collect in our shelves. The same people who can’t afford to buy a fat book on developmental biology will happily order Alastair Reynolds’ scifi novels from Amazon, and try to sell their plant physiology book while trying to complete their Jane Austen collection.

And yet - which books do we normally go back to and use again, in any way? Most fiction you only read once; a book really has to be very good for you to feel the urge to experience it again. But while I might not read my various biology books from cover to cover very often (or at all, ever), I frequently use them as a way to look up things I’ve forgotten or want to know more about. These books are actually useful to us, so why do we sell them? Why not get rid of the tedious classics or tacky fantasy that mostly serve as dust collectors anyway?

My theory is that it comes with the deeply ingrained idea that because you have chosen the subject as a career, the books are associated with work, and work = boring. So what if they’re useful, you’d rather have fun stuff around, right?

But … if you don’t think your subject is fun, why are you studying it in the first place?

science textbooks, university, students, money, literature

Usually this is not a personal blog and hence I hadn’t planned on going into any detail as to why I haven’t been posting lately. However, one of the several things that happened, I would like to share.

The day before yesterday, Viran our family dog was laid to rest after a period of suffering from cushing’s syndrome. She was diagnosed quite a long time ago and it was decided that she not be treated - she was ten years old and the treatment would very likely have been worse than the actual disease. She was used to freedom; being allowed to run around outdoors as it pleased her, when it pleased her, and for us to suddenly excert the control needed for an effective treatment would have been more depressing to her than the disease.

Viran was born in the summer of 1996, and from the start she was a very happy border terrier. She loved absolutely everyone, forgave everything and could find reasons to be happy everywhere. She was happy when anyone came home after having been out for an hour or two, she was happy when she was outside, she was happy when she was snoozing in my parents’ bed with her paws around her best friend, the cat Lillen. She was occasionally annoying; relentlessly begging for food at the dinner table and rubbing all kinds of icky things from the forest into her fur, like dogs do.

Even towards the end, when her body was stiff and aching from her disease, she managed to find reasons to be happy.

We have lost a family member, and she will be sorely missed. Goodbye, Viran. I love you.

dog, death, cushing’s syndrome

Again, many apologies.

Just as I thought I would be getting back into the swing of things, Real Life ™ hit me with full force - AGAIN. And here I am with a severely neglected blog and an exam in three weeks and hosting Tangled Bank OMGWTFREALLYSOON and I had completely forgotten and I don’t even have any CONTENT here…

Seriously, how do people have both real lives and blogs? How do they DO it?

Back to your ordinary Life before beath (that title is turning out to be quite ironic, as it seems like I can only write regularly with ease when I don’t in fact have a life at all) experience shortly. This time for real! Otherwise, I swear I will just call it a day and stop tempting people.

This is the last chance I give me!

(Oh and obviously Tangled Bank is ON. PZ is forwarding me submissions and you can also feel free to comment on this entry if you want to suggest something.)