COTS UP ON SCIENCE AND SENSIBILITY

It's the end of the month, and the tenth edition of Circus of the Spineless, the invertebrate blog carnival, is up at Science & Sensibility. This month's Kiwi edition is the first to be hosted from outside North America. Have a look; you're bound to learn a thing or two before clicking onto the first post.

THE BEAR HUNTER

Last week Doug Peacock was in town for a book-signing party at Ken Sanders' Rare Books. Doug's primary claim to fame was his turbulent friendship with Edward Abbey, and the fact that he served as the raw template for the character George Washington Hayduke in Abbey's classic, The Monkey Wrench Gang. In the years since he and a few friends buried Abbey in a secret desert location in 1989, Peacock has developed into a fine “wilderness writer” in his own right. His new book, co-authored with his wife Andrea, is his second one dealing with his life's obsession with Grizzly, or Brown Bears (Ursus arctos). It looks like it should be a good read; unfortunately, it sold out before I could purchase a copy. The same thing happened at my own book-signing party a couple of months ago. We need to have a little talk with Ken about his ordering policies.

At the event, each co-author read a short excerpt from the book. I had never met Andrea, a professional journalist whose method seems more clinical, and probably provides a good balance against some of her husband's literary excesses. I found her reading about a bear hunter especially interesting. Without interjecting any judgments of her own, she created a portrait of this bowhunter, a man whose passion for bears ran deep, and who had thought long and hard about his sport, and described it in the most articulate terms. His style of hunting required a level of skill rarely possessed by contemporary Americans: the ability to track down a half-ton Brown Bear, and get close enough to it to deliver a mortal broadside shot. Should the bear charge, no arrow could slow it. This is the closest thing to a fair contest, where the bear is almost equally capable of killing the man. The only advantage held by the latter is the knowledge of the rules and the stakes of the game. As Andrea described the hunter's philosophy, I found myself agreeing with and fully understanding everything he said. Killing a bear in this manner is truly an accomplishment, and a way of being far more ecologically connected than most of America. What struck me especially, though, was the total selfishness of his viewpoint. Though he spoke with great passion about how the hunt enriched him, his analysis lacked any consideration of how his sport affected the bears, the wilderness, the boreal ecology, and all the things he obviously loved so much.

The truth of the matter is, the hunter's impact is probably pretty negligible, overall. While it may be wasteful and ugly to kill a member of a dwindling species every few years, we all engage in more damaging activities every day of our lives. Being oblivious to our effect on the natural world is only obvious when it involves an activity as extraordinary as hunting Brown Bears with a longbow. I've thought long and hard about the effect of my own favorite sport, falconry, and came to the conclusion many years ago that any harm caused by responsible falconry is negligible. I'm pleased to see that the U.S. Department of the Interior came to a similar conclusion in their new Draft Environmental Assessment(pdf). Be that as it may, flying large falcons in the modern age requires more daily miles of driving than can be easily justified.

It's easy for those of us with a deep love of the natural world to forget how damaging that love can be. As human population and standard of living continue to rise, we're obliged to be aware of our personal impact, whether we hunt bears, build a house in the woods, or simply enjoy wilderness hiking, and consider what we're willing to give up for our love. A few centuries ago, a man like Andrea Peacock's bear hunter would have been honored, and rightly so. Today there are probably few of us who would leap up to praise his anachronistic sport, but rather than jeering him, we would do better to look more closely at the motes in our own eye.
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illustration: SLOTH BEAR & INDIAN PIED HORNBILLS ( 1998) ink wash 19" x 12"

COLOR CHANGE IN KALIMANTAN

Today the WWF announced the discovery of a rare case of a color-changing snake. The reptile is a Kapuas Mud Snake (Enydris gyii), a species described last December, that is known only from the Kapuas drainage system in the Indonesian province of Kalimantan Barat, in Southwestern Borneo. According to the story, Mark Auliya said, “I put the reddish-brown snake in a dark bucket...When I retrieved it a few minutes later, it was almost entirely white.” The article does not mention it, but this quote was not taken fresh from the field, but from an account of a 1996 event in Auliya's Ph.D. dissertation. Dr. Auliya was one of three herpetologists who described E. gyii last winter, based on two specimens he collected from fishermen on tributaries of the Kapuas in '96. The species was named for the late Burmese herpetologist Ko Ko Gyi, whose revision of Enhydris' subfamily, Homolopsinae, is generally accepted today.

The genus Enhydris comprises 23 species, distributed widely throughout Southeast Asia, from Pakistan to New Guinea and Queensland. They belong to the family of typical snakes, Colubridae, and are highly aquatic, often frequenting rice paddies and other standing and sluggish waters, where they feed on fish and aquatic invertebrates which they immobilize with a mild venom that is not particularly dangerous to humans. Their fangs are opisthoglyphic, meaning the venom flows down an open groove in the tooth, and located near the rear of the mouth.

Physiological color change is well known in tetrapods. It is widespread among amphibians, and common in lizards. Strangely, it is very rare among snakes, and the case of E. gyii sounds especially unusual, although three species of dwarf boa (Tropidophis spp.), A Pacific island boa (Candoia carinata), the Round Island Boa (Casarea dussumiereli) and Western Rattlesnake (Crotalus viridis) have all been shown to exhibit this ability to some degree. It is curious that snakes are generally color-fast, and the evolution of physiological color change is sure to be a future post topic. What is equally interesting to me is that the WWF is putting out this press release for a story that is interesting, but obviously not news. This trend reminds me of a visit I paid to the Aquarium in Seaside, Oregon, some 20 years ago. One of the tanks housed a group of nondescript brown cod. In order to jazz up the exhibit, they illuminated it with green lights in the back, and blue ones up front. The sign explained that the fish had the uncanny ability to change their eye color from green to blue at will, and, sure enough, as they swam from the front of the tank to the back, the color of their eyeshine shifted. The end result was to make the fish seem more mundane than they really were—as if the management felt they had to apologize for them. The biology of Borneo is plenty fascinating and plenty imperiled. That fact can be communicated easily enough without resorting to hyperbole.
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Photograph of Enhydris gyii taken by Mark Auliya

OWLET BUTTERFLIES

In tropical forests all across the world, large and showy butterflies are a dime a dozen. In the jungles of the New World, the most conspicuous butterflies are the morphos (Morpho spp.). Some species are brown or white, and some are rather small, but the scrawny body of the typical morpho is supported on outsized wings of shimmering blue that can span seven inches, and can send it flopping buoyantly across the understory like a piece of fine blue tinfoil. Less showy, but no less splendid, are the 12 genera of owlet butterflies in the subfamily Brassolinae, which are found from Mexico to Argentina, and on Trinidad and Tobago.

Except for the little brown members of the genus Narope, the owlet butterflies are characterized by tasteful vermiculated patterns on the underwings, with one or more ocelli on each hind wing. When the wings are spread, the ocelli strongly resemble two large eyes, hence the common name of the subfamily. The ecological significance of this marking is hard to understand. One author put forth the notion that it mimics certain unpalatable treefrogs, and if you squint just right you can almost see a vague frog or the Virgin Mary. Others have suggested the false eyes may frighten potential predators or cause them to lunge for the hind wing instead of the more vital body. The fact that the ocelli are most conspicuous when the insect is at rest seems to belie either hypothesis.

Male brassoline butterflies have complex scale tufts on their hind wings and the sides of their abdomens, called androconial tufts. These organs store pheremones, which are released during courtship, and are produced by cells at the base of the tuft. The androconial pheremones give many species a characteristic odor; the males often smell strongly of vanilla. Brassoline eggs come in a variety of shapes, and are deposited on the leaf of a host plant singly in some species, and in clusters in others. A variety of monocotyledonous host plants are exploited, from bananas (family Musaceae) and heliconias (Heliconiaceae) to grasses (Poaceae), bromeliads (Bromeliaceae), and palms (Aracaceae and Cyclanthaceae). Some brassoline caterpillars are important agricultural pests, particularly certain Caligo species that feed on the leaves of bananas (Musa spp.) and the gregarious Brassolis larvae that spin communal silk tents on Coconut Palms (Cocos nucifera). In some areas, Opsiphanes caterpillars can cause problems on either crop. The mature caterpillars of owlet butterflies are cigar-shaped, with a pair of caudal appendages. Many species have a row of soft spines running down the back. In all genera except Brassolis, the caterpillar's head is ornamented with two or more pair of horns. A gland on the prothorax can be everted to secrete noxious chemicals if the caterpillar is attacked. The genera Brassolis and Dynastor form amazing chrysales that look very much like the heads of vipers.

Adult owlet butterflies are often crepuscular, sometimes bordering on nocturnal. They feed on rotting fruit, whose skins are pierced by sturdy probosces. In many species, the proboscis is usually infested with various mites, whose ecology is still poorly understood. A number of species of tachinid flies and chalcid and trichogrammatid wasps are important parasites of brassoline caterpillars and eggs. Among the best studied of these relationships is the one between Caligo butterflies and Xenufens wasps of the family Trichogrammatidae. The adult Xenufens wasp is tiny: less than half a millimeter long. The gravid adult female attaches herself to the hindwing of a butterfly. If her host is a male, she will transfer to the female when he mates. Once the female Caligo lays her eggs, the wasp disembarks, and parasitizes them. Managers of banana plantations within the range of these Xenufens wasps have learned that spraying pesticides affects the wasps more profoundly than it does the caterpillars, and crop damage is far less severe where no pesticides are used.
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upper: A QUESTION OF TIMING--DOUBLE-CRESTED BASILISK & BLUE CALIGO (1993) acrylic 30" x 20"
middle: BAMBOO OWLET BUTTERLY (2005) acrylic 8" x 4"
lower: OPSIPHANES TAMARINDII (1995) acrylic 11" x 7"

A SHINY NEW BANNER

Everyone's got fancy new header banners. After designing one a couple of weeks ago for Coturnix' new A Blog Around the Clock, it didn't even occur to me to do the same for my own blog, until Carl Buell, aka Olduvai George, who recently designed a beautiful new banner for Stoat, made the suggestion. "Good idea!" thought I, and I went to work, with the above result. What do you think? Does it load quickly enough for those with dial-up connections? I still have a bit of fussing to do with it. A million thank-yous to Beth of Firefly Forest for her technical advice.

The original artwork is acrylic on illustration board, 3” x 15¾”. Click on the pic above for a closer look. Here's a list of the organisms depicted, from left to right:
Horsfield's Tarsier (Tarsius bancanus), Great Philippine Hornbill (Buceros hydrocorax), Traveller's Tree (Ravenala madagascariensis), Northern Tamandua (Tamandua mexicana), Long-tailed Paradise Whyda (Vidua interjecta), Spotted Flying Lizard (Draco maculatus), Bhutan Glory Swallowtail (Bhutanitis lidderdalii), Chinese Tiger Beetle (Cincindela chinensis), Leaf-cutter Ants (Atta cephalotes), Red Cicada (Tibicina haematodes), Dark Pitcher (Nepenthes fusca), Drill (Mandrillus leucophaeus), Horned Marsupial Frog (Gastrotheca ceratophrys), Proboscis Bat (Rhynchonycterus naso), Long-tailed Pangolin (Manis tetradactyla), Secretary Bird (Sagittarius serpentarius), Green Tree Monitor (Varanus prasinus), Flammulated Owl (Otus flammeolus), Common Golden-backed Woodpecker (Dinopium javanense).

ARCHIVE CATALOG

MAMMALS
CRYING "WOLF" IN IDAHO
MONKEYS IN THE NEWS
THOSE PLASTIC PREDATORS

BIRDS
BIRDS OF A FEATHER
A CONVERGENCE OF CONVERGENCES
EAGLE OWLS OF OLD ENGLAND
THE ELEMENTARY HOATZIN
GLORIOUS GOATSUCKERS
GOLDEN EAGLE NESTS
I AND THE BIRD #24
IN SUPPORT OF SPUGS
IT'S MURDER, I TELL YA, MURDER!
JACKSON'S MONKEYWRENCH
JUST ANOTHER BIRD IN THE CITY
KILLING TO LIVE OR LIVING TO KILL
KINGFISHERS IN PARADISE
LOSING MY RELIGION
A NEW PERSONAL RECORD FOR MOUNTAIN PRAIRIE FALCONS
OF KAKAPO AND CONDORS
THE OWLBAIT DEBATE
SINGING WINGS
SOME GOOD NEWS ON THE CONDOR FRONT
TEN MOST BEAUTIFUL
TERRIFIC TURACOS
VANISHING OWLS OF THE WASATCH--Part I
VANISHING OWLS OF THE WASATCH--Part II
VISITORS FROM THE NORTH

REPTILES & AMPHIBIANS
APRIL IS FOR AMBYSTOMIDS
COCKTAILS, ANYONE?
COLOR CHANGE IN KALIMANTAN
GIANTS OF GOMERA
IN COLD BLOOD
IT TAKES A GOOD EYE TO SPOT A NEW SPECIES
OH CAECILIAN, YOU'RE RAKIN' MY HIDE
PATERNITY AND PATERNALISM
SAURIANS & SUICIDE BOMBERS
SNAPPERS
UNRAVELING THE MYSTERY OF FROG DECLINE: GETTING WARMER

ARTHROPODS
GIANT ICHNEUMON WASPS
IF YOU CAN'T BEAT 'EM, EAT ,EM!
IMMORTALIZING THE CRUSTACEAN JEAN HARLOW
LEPIDOPTERAN LEVITATIONS
MAN TO MANTIS
MORE ON THE EVOLUTION OF INSECT FLIGHT
A MOTH IN THE NIGHT SKY
OWLET BUTTERFLIES

PLANTS & FUNGI
A BIG BLOSSOM IN BROOKLYN
HEY JOE, WHERE YOU GOIN' WITH THAT POCKETKNIFE IN YOUR HAND?

MICROBES
DEATH AT THE CEMETERY

ECOLOGY
A PINEDALE ANTICLINE PHOTOJOURNAL--Part I
A PINEDALE ANTICLINE PHOTOJOURNAL--Part II
A PINEDALE ANTICLINE PHOTOJOURNAL--Part III

EVOLUTION
ELEMENTS OF PERSPECTIVE
GLIDERS AND THE EVOLUTION OF FLIGHT
A MORE ADVANCED AMBER ALE?
MORE ON THE EVOLUTION OF INSECT FLIGHT
TOTAL PERSPECTIVE VORTEX
TONGUES, TARMAC, AND TATTERED WINGS
WHAT'S THAT APE DOING HERE?

PALEONTOLOGY
EXPLOITING THE CAMBRIAN EXPLOSION
MAKING AN ASS OF U AND ME
ORDOVICIAN FAUNA

TAXONOMY
SIBLEY-AHLQUIST SYNDROME

CONSERVATION
THE BEAR HUNTER
BUILDERS GARNER HABITAT OF BUTLER'S GARTER SNAKE
GROUSING OVER SAGE HABITAT
THE LATEST IN WILDLIFE MANAGEMENT
THE OLD STOMPIN' GROUNDS
AN OPEN SPACE IN THE WOODS
TO DRILL OR NOT TO DRILL

HISTORY & SOCIOLOGY
MORMON MARDI GRAS

POLITICS
HAPPY BIRTHDAY, U.S.A.!
MAY I SPEAK FREELY?
SAURIANS AND SUICIDE BOMBERS
WHERE'S YOUR FLAG?

ART
HAPPY BIRTHDAY, REMBRANDT
INCIDENTAL SUBJECTS
LIFE IMITATES ART
A LITTLE LESS JUMPING AROUND, PLEASE
MYSTERY PRINT
OPTIONS!
PHOTOGRAPHY AND THE PAINTER, Part I
PHOTOGRAPHY AND THE PAINTER, Part II
TO PAINT A TORTOISE
VANISHING CIRCLES

BOOKS & POETRY
THE BOOK MEME
HAPPY BIRTHDAY, NEAL CASSADY
KOSMOS: YOU ARE HERE
LIFE: A JOURNEY THROUGH TIME
OH POOR ORPHANED UTAH POETRY
A RECONSTRUCTION ERA KINSEY REPORT
RIGOR VITAE, THE BOOK
SPIRITS IN THE HOUSE

MUSIC
CHANNELING THE GHOST OF LESTER BANGS
DON'T WALK ON THE GRASS
GOGOL BORDELLO
MORE MUSIC BLATHER

CARTOONS & OTHER ATTEMPTS AT HUMOR
ASK THE SCIENCE PRESIDENT!
THE AXIS OF DANGEROUSLY MISGUIDED DROPS IN
BUSH'S LATEST PREEMPTIVE STRIKE
IT'S ALL A BIG MISUNDERSTANDING...REALLY
SECOND NATURE #1
SECOND NATURE #2
SECOND NATURE #3
SECOND NATURE #4
SECOND NATURE #5
SECOND NATURE #6
SECOND NATURE #7
SECOND NATURE #8
THE TRUTH OF LITTLE RED RIDING HOOD
WHAT HAS 8 EYES, 8 LEGS AND 8 HANDS?

THE BLOGOSPHERE
SCIENCE BLOGGING
TODAY'S A BIG DAY FOR ME!

BICYCLES
THE FURTHER ADVENTURES OF PUFFY GRUBMAN

CARNIVALERT #7

Varkam has posted The Carnival of the Liberals #15, the carnival of...well, liberals, on Neural Gourmet. This is a competitive blog carnival that selects their ten favorite posts.
Meanwhile, Patrick of The Hawk Owl's Nest took a break from watching the World Cup to post edition #26 of I and the Bird, the carnival of birds and the people they fascinate.
Last of all, it's Tangled Bank, the Carnival of the Life Sciences, which went up on Centrerion.

Meanwhile, in the corporeal world, Art of the Animal Kingdom XI just opened at The Bennington Center for the Arts in Bennington, Vermont. This is New England's premier Wildlife Art Show, and includes work from 61 of the world's best practitioners of the genre. The show runs through the end of July. In August, I look forward to participating in the BCFTA's American Artists Abroad exhibition, and once again in this fall's opening of The Society of Animal Artists' annual touring show, Art & the Animal.

Down in Shreveport, Louisiana, the touring 11-person show, Art of the Rainforest has opened in its latest venue, the R.W. Norton Art Foundation. It runs through July 23, followed by venues in Denver, Colorado and Spartanburg, South Carolina.

TERRIFIC TURACOS

I sat on the edge of my seat, wedged uncomfortably between two men and the front passenger seat. Seven of us, including the driver, burdened the little Toyota as it sprayed rufous mud into the verdant forest around us. The car fishtailed, then came to a stop, mired to the hubcaps. The doors opened, and we all exited, happy for the chance to stretch our limbs. This was my initiation to the Central African ritual of pushing a stuck bush taxi out of the mud. Over the next three months I would get to know it well. I had landed at the Douala airport the previous evening, and was making my way toward the little Cameroonian town of Mundemba, gateway to the Korup forest. As the taxi door slammed, a pair of startling crimson wings carried their owner from a roadside Musanga tree into the depths of the jungle. It was my first day in Central Africa, but I recognized the bird immediately as a turaco, a member of an ancient group that has remained little-changed for at least 30 million years.

The typical turaco looks superficially like many of the cuckoo relatives, particularly the Madagascan couas, and for many years they were lumped into the order Cuculiformes, along with the coucals, anis, and the bizarre South American Hoatzin (Opisthocomus hoatzin). DNA analyses have shown them to be quite unrelated, though, and today they are given their own order, Musophagiformes. Turacos' closest living relatives are probably the owls and nightjars, but no other living bird could be rightly called a cousin. Their athletic behavior is their most conspicuous distinction from the Cuculiformes, which, except for the roadrunners of the family Neomorphidae, range from mildly to extremely clumsy. The forest turacos are particularly adept at running and leaping through the branches, often traveling at bullet speed through the jungle without spreading their wings. A number of physical features distinguish them, among which are the lack of a vomer (an internal facial bone) and furcula (wishbone), and an oddly-built foot, whose outer toe juts out almost perpendicular from the rest.

Oligocene turaco fossils have been found as far north as Germany, but today a single family, Musophagidae, is restricted to sub-Saharan Africa. The typical turacos of the subfamily Musophaginae are immediately distinguishable by those deep red wings that caught my eye in the Cameroon bird. This pigment, also present in the crests of many species, is unique to the subfamily, all of whose members produce the copper compound called turacin. It is often stated that this pigment is water soluble, and that bathing turacos will stain their water pink, but I have never been able to reproduce this, even by boiling feathers. I have a number of shed turaco primaries that are well over fifteen years old, and still a deep red. Another unique copper-based pigment is turacoverdin, which is the only green pigment found in birds. The green seen in parrots, trogons, hummingbirds and others is a result of structural irridescence, and not true pigment.

The bird frightened by our bush taxi was one of 10 to 20 or more species in the genus Tauraco, all of which are green, crested, and extremely hard to identify in the field. It was probably a Yellow-billed Turaco (T. macrorhynchus), which is more typical of the thick jungle habitat where it was spotted. However, it might have been a Green Turaco (T. persa), a species that encompasses a complex of birds found from South Africa to Guinea, and should probably be split into half a dozen or so species. A close relative, Bannerman's Turaco (T. bannermani) is restricted to the Bamboutos Mountains in the Bamenda Highlands of western Cameroon. This is one of the most critically endangered African birds, and although I found it common on the top of Mount Oku, ten years ago, forest degradation, even in this rugged country, is happening at a rate that will probably result in the bird's extinction within the next twenty years. The other genus of typical turacos, Musophaga, contains five similar, but less green birds (see the Lady Ross' Plantain-eaters above). The term “plantain-eater” is shared with the genus of gray birds, Crinifer, and is but one confusing term for the Musophaga spp. In southern Africa, they're known as “louries,” a general Afrikaans term for all turacos.

The second turaco subfamily, Criniferinae, contains three genera of gray birds that are common in the drier, open regions of the continent: Crinifer contains the two species of gray plantain-eater, while Corythaixoides and the monotypic genus Criniferoides contain the three species called go-away birds. All five birds are conspicuous savannah birds with the prominent crests and long tails shared by all Musophagiformes. Like the entire order, these omnivores feed on a wide variety of fruits, leaves, buds and invertebrates.

The most unusual turaco is the largest, and the one most commonly seen in the thick Central African rainforests. The Great Blue Turaco (Corythaeola cristata) is a spectacular bird. The size of a leghorn chicken and deep cerulean blue, with a yellow belly, its head bears a thick black crest that looks like a shaving brush. The most social of all the turacos, it is rarely seen alone—more often in noisy groups of about a half dozen. Nesting occurs the year round, and breeding behavior is typical of the whole order. Two eggs are laid in a well-hidden, shallow stick nest that looks much like a fruit-pigeon nest. Incubation is done by both parent birds, and lasts about 30 days. Immediately upon hatching, the chicks are active, and their eyes are open. Both parents regurgitate to feed the chicks, which, like many tropical birds, grow very slowly, remaining in the nest for a couple of months, although much of the latter month is spent exploring the outer branches of the next tree. The feathers are not completely grown until the birds are nearly three months old. In a number of turaco species, it appears normal for just one chick to survive to fledging. Whether or not this is due to siblicide is unknown.
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upper: LADY ROSS' PLANTAIN-EATERS (1999) acrylic 15" x 36"
lower: HARMATTAN HARMONY--BLACK KITE, GRAY PLANTAIN-EATERS & RED-BILLED HORNBILL (2002) ink wash & watercolor 20" x 30"

HEY JOE, WHERE YOU GOIN' WITH THAT POCKETKNIFE IN YOUR HAND?

A couple of months ago, Bev at Burning Silo blogged about arborglyphs, man-made carvings in living trees. It made me think of my old pal Joe Mendiola, who traveled throughout Utah's Wasatch and Uintah mountains from the mid 1950s to the early '70s. I never actually met Joe-- I always assumed he was a sheepherder, though his montane peregrinations could have been motivated by any number of factors. What I do know, and know rather well, is his four-foot-long, vertical signature. In the '50s, a small, horizontal “Joe” sat atop a steeply sloping “Mendiola.” With time, the signature became more flowery and graceful. For a couple of years in the early '60s, he identified himself as “José.” These carvings were invariably in the bark of Quaking Aspens (Populus tremuloides), the tree of choice around here for arborglyphists. The aspen's thin, chalky-white outer bark is easily sliced away, and after about a year, the exposed green cork cambium begins to create a rugose, black scar, and the signature grows ever bolder with time.

The most widespread North American tree species, Quaking Aspens are found throughout the continent, from the Arctic Circle as far south as Guanajuato, Mexico. They are named for their circular, saw-toothed leaves, which connect perpendicularly to flattened petioles in a flexible “joint.” Any slight breeze causes the leaf to flap back and forth at this junction, alternately displaying a dark green upper surface and a pale, bluish venter. The overall effect is a very beautiful shimmering that is conspicuous even from a distance. In fall the leaves turn a uniform apple-gold, losing their shimmering quality, but exchanging it for an equally satisfying esthetic. In the spring, female trees produce catkins filled with tiny windborn seeds. One tree can produce over a million viable seeds in a season, but here in arid Utah, very few of these become trees, since at least two years of persistent rainfall is required for the seedlings to germinate and survive (local sites have been recently discovered where aspens reproduce sexual with regularity; this is still poorly understood). Parthenogenesis is the norm for aspens in the Rocky Mountains. Suckers are sent up from a common root system, and the typical stand of these trees is genetically identical, and usually either male or female, though hermaphroditic clones do occur. The largest known aspen clone is right here in the Wasatch Mountains. Over 47,000 male tree stems cover an area of 43 hectares (17.2 acres), making it one of the largest known organisms on earth, depending on your definitions. The clone has been estimated to be over one million years old, causing some to claim that it's the oldest, as well, even though the oldest tissue up there is no more than a couple of centuries old.

Individual aspen stems can live over a century, but they rarely survive half that long. All of the stems marked “Mendiola” that I remember as a kid have long since toppled. Of the handful of trees I carved on myself (in direct violation of my parents' exhortations) only dry logs remain, without a trace of “CPBvK” or “FTA” (A vulgar anti-military acronym of the day, particularly meaningful when graffitied by a ten-year-old delinquent). Each living stem produces auxins that inhibit sucker growth in the nearby roots. Once a stem dies, and hormonal activity ceases, sucker production is triggered.

Aspens are very tasty and moderately nutritious. Wherever they occur (around here, that's between about 6,500 and 12,000 feet), their leaves, buds, catkins and cambium are important food sources the year round for many insects, birds, and mammals. The soft wood of dead stems is favored for nesting cavities by many woodpecker species, and once abandoned, the holes serve as nesting sites for other birds and insects. I've never found Flammulated Owls (Otus flammeolus) nesting in this region in any other tree species.

While backpacking the other day, I established a camp, then left to explore a small draw. As I neared the summit, I noticed a large aspen with a telltale mark running down much of its length: “Jose Mendiola 1963.” I'd thought of the name many times in recent years, but hadn't seen it for at least a decade. As I prepared myself for kindergarten, my friend Joe carved with a new-found ethnic pride into a stem that had erupted from the ground soon after the death of another stem just like it, early in the FDR administration, and that stands today, still healthy at a diameter of 16 inches: a fading reminder of a sheepherder, deer hunter, or maybe just an avid hiker.
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upper: FLAMMULATED OWL (1990) acrylic 15" x 20"
lower: Photograph of Aspen arborglyph taken by CPBvK in the Wasatch Mountains, June 3, 2006

WHERE'S YOUR FLAG?

I just found out that yesterday, June 14th, was Flag Day in the United States: the anniversary of the adoption of the Stars and Stripes by the Second Continental Congress in 1777. For me, this minor holiday seems particularly apropos, since I've been wondering how to respond to the big, waving US flag that a conservative friend recently sent me to upload onto my sidebar. Even though this was surely meant less as a favor than a challenge, I feel obliged to explain why I won't be displaying the image any time soon, and Flag Day gives me an excuse to present my explanation in the form of a tardy blog post.

Vague proclamations are all the rage, but I have no fondness for them. When a person says to me, “I'm very spiritual” or “I support the troops,” they could just as well say it in Cantonese, because they've communicated nothing at all. Flying a flag is similarly problematic—I guess the message it's commonly meant to invoke is “I'm proud to be an American.” The problem is, I'm not proud to be an American. I'm lucky to be an American, but I've done nothing to deserve the privileges of my citizenship. My father has the right to some pride in his citizenship, since getting it involved some actual work from him; all I had to do was be born here. Nationalistic chest-thumping is one thing if you're Lithuanian or Gambian, but when you're a member of the most privileged and powerful group on Earth, it's more than a little unseemly. I would no sooner don a t-shirt that read “Proud to be an American” than I would one that proclaimed “Proud to be a White Man.”

Another problem with ambiguous declarations is the many ways they can be misinterpreted. The American flag symbolizes so many disparate things. If it fit it in my sidebar, I could get behind the idea of posting the US Constitution there. No way to misread that. A flag, on the other hand, could be taken (for instance) as a signal of approval for an arrogant, knuckleheaded administration that mouths the rhetoric of democracy while consolidating power into an ever-finer focus. I simply can't allow that.

My sidebar is in sore need of a spring clean. I've been meaning to delete that stupid gematriculator thing for ages, and add to my blogroll, and eventually I'll do all of that. But Old Glory stays in my inbox.

TONGUES, TARMAC, AND TATTERED WINGS

The roads were dangerous yesterday. A few hours after my unplanned diversion in a bank parking lot, I passed a freshly-killed woodpecker on 7th East, one of Salt Lake's major thoroughfares. I was heard to shout "Yellow-shafted!" as I applied my brakes. The bird lay on its back, its long tongue protruding, as that of any self-respecting roadkill should be. Woodpeckers use their elastic tongues to probe cavities and retrieve wood-boring insects. The organ is anchored to the Y-shaped hyoid bone, which floats in the throat--as it is in most tetrapods. The two proximal ends of the tongue, however, continue past the legs of the hyoid, wrap around either side of the back of the head, and are finally anchored in one nostril (the bird breathes through the other one).The tongues of the unrelated hummingbirds (family Trochilidae) wrap around the skull in precisely the same manner. Having a long tongue is an advantage for animals that use it to forage, but storing the thing when it's not in use without impeding breathing and swallowing becomes a problem. The tongues of chameleons (family Chamaeleonidae) are bunched up like a sweater sleeve on the hyoid bone by longitudinal muscles running down their center. The tongue is expelled by rows of sphincter muscles that surround the interior longitudinal ones. The tongues of the New World nectar-feeding bats of the subfamily Glossophaginae (family Phyllostomidae) are extended not only by muscles, but by blood engorgement. The most amazing tongues of all belong to the Old World pangolins (order Pholidota), whose termite-trapping tongues run the length of their bodies, and are anchored to the pelvis.
Back to the woodpecker, though. It's the yellow-shafted form of a Northern Flicker (Colaptes auratus). Two centuries ago, the American Great Plains formed a treeless barrier that was impossible for many species to penetrate. As the Great Plains became the Grain Belt, trees were planted throughout the region, and many American birds extended their distribution inland; some of them merging with relatives from the other side of the continent and hybridizing where their ranges met. Among these merging species were Audubon's Warbler (Dendroica auduboni) of the western U.S., and the widespread, white-throated Myrtle Warbler (D. coronata) of Canada and the eastern U.S. The former is now considered a subspecies of the latter. The Western Bullock's Oriole (Icterus bullockii) was similarly merged with the eastern Baltimore Oriole (I. galbula), but recent DNA analysis has determined that the two are less closely related than was previously assumed. Our western Red-shafted Flicker (Colaptes cafer) met the same fate, and is now considered but a race of C. auratus. Intermediate forms of the eastern and western flickers are supposedly common in the midwest, and yellow-shafted birds are increasingly showing up out here, but this male bird was the first one I've ever seen in Utah. It would have been much nicer to see those lemon-yellow wings in flight. Speaking of which, I was struck by the extreme feather wear on this bird. A terminal inch or two of his primaries were worn away, and his tail feathers were similarly hammered. I assume this was caused by moving around inside of tree cavities. Both sexes excavate cavities, and share incubation duties as well, so I wouldn't expect to see much sexual differentiation in feather wear. Flickers normally sleep in tree cavities the year round, but I've never seen this kind of wear before in my limited experience with woodpeckers.
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upper: MELLER'S CHAMELEON & LEAF-TOED GECKO (1993) Acrylic 20" x 26"
lower: Photograph of Yellow-shafted Flicker taken by CPBvK in Salt Lake City, June 13, 2006

THE FURTHER ADVENTURES OF PUFFY GRUBMAN

Puffy Grubman pulled out of the car wash and tooled his shiny white El Dorado down Holladay Boulevard, just as he did every Tuesday morning. Clenching an unlit cigar confidently between phalanges of perfect dentures, he drew a dead bead on his destination: the bank. I've had close calls with lots of cars, and been actually struck by a few, but not one of them was nicer than Puffy's Caddilac.

Most bicycle/auto collisions result from underestimating the cyclist's speed. The driver, often a member of Puffy's generation, remembers bicycles with a huge front wheel, a tiny rear wheel, and top speeds well under 7mph, and when making a right turn, they treat the bike as they would a mailbox or other static object. The sound of a decelerating engine near one's left knee usually serves as a warning, and evasive maneuvers can be taken. This wasn't the case, though, with Puffy Grubman, whose foot never left the accelerator pedal as he squealed into the bank entrance. In a moment of rare grace, I leaned my shoulder into the Caddy's passenger door, and together we skidded as one, describing an elegant arc into the parking lot. I couldn't believe I'd kept the bike upright, and I wobbled to a halt, my heart beating a polyrhythm that would have raised Tito Puente's eyebrows.

The experience didn't phase Puffy a bit, though, and he strode purposefully into the bank, with me quick on his heels. I burst into a discourse of cruising speeds of modern road bikes and the basics of highway etiquette, when he snapped, “Take a quarter and call somebody who gives a shit!”

I was about to explain that the charge for a local pay phone had actually gone up to 50 cents some ten years ago, when he poked a gelatinous pseudopod into my sternum. “You're not even supposed to have that bicycle on the street! These roads are dedicated for cars, not for bikes. You don't even pay street taxes!”

Puffy didn't have a legal leg to stand on, but I couldn't deny a certain perverse logic to his argument. Holladay Boulevard is indeed paved and maintained by taxes levied on gasoline sales. In effect, I am freeloading by riding my bike on it. My best option was to argue the legal angle, but Puffy resorted to the rhetorical equivalent of covering his ears and shouting, “Blah, blah, blah, blah-blaw! I can't hear you! Blah, blah, blah, blaw!” Eventually I conceded, and exited the bank.

I could see where Puffy came from. He was a proud member of a generation that defeated the Nazis and returned home to raise families and work hard to build an economic system that raised Americans' lives from the dust scrabble existence of his Depression-era youth to today's sweat-free world of air-conditioned riding mowers. His entire experience is one of watching the positive effects of the American Economy, and he feels a responsibility to it, a responsibility that he's always lived up to. He doesn't feel like an anachronism; he won't live to see the collapse of the economic paradigm that he so loves, and in his eyes, people like me will always be irresponsible louts, born into a privilege for which we have no appreciation, and he's not entirely wrong. Still, he thinks the best way to teach us a lesson is to run us down, and I couldn't let that stand.

After an appropriate delay in the parking lot, I returned to Puffy, still in line for a teller. With an amicable slap on the back, I grinned broadly and said to him, sotto voce, “I'll bet it takes you at least a week to figure out what I just did to your car.” He was silent as I walked out.

I told Puffy Grubman the truth, too. I'm sure he's thinking about me right now, just as I'm thinking about him, and he'll be worrying for more than a week before he realizes I didn't touch his stupid car. I know I didn't change his mind about the right of a bicycle to use the street, but next time he may decide that vehicular homicide isn't in his own best interest.
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illustration: OVIPOSITION--GIANT ICHNEUMON WASP (2000) Acrylic 20" x 17"

NEW SCIENCE BLOGS

Around the same time this site entered the blogosphere, Seed Magazine started its Science Blogs site, which quickly became the proverbial 300-pound gorilla in its field, home to a dozen and a half great science blogs, including Afarensis, Living the Scientific Life, Pharyngula, and many others. This morning, Science Blogs is unveiling its long-awaited facelift, with a new design on the front page, and 24 (count 'em) new blogs, including old standbys like Carl Zimmer's The Loom, Karmen Franklin's Chaotic Utopia, Mike the Mad Biologist, and Coturnix, former proprietor of The Magic Schoolbus, Circadiana and Science & Politics, who has rolled all three into A Blog Around the Clock, which sports a very nice banner. In addition to these old friends are a number of blogs that are new to me. Enjoy looking them all over, I know I will.
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illustration: BIOPHILIA--CRESTED CHAMELEON & WESTERN LOWLAND GORILLA (2001) acrylic 22" x 17"

CARNIVALERT #6

Well, I really blew it this time around. It's time already for edition #54 of Tangled Bank, the carnival of Life Sciences. I didn't get around to posting anything for it, but that didn't deter Daniel of Get Busy Livin' or Get Busy Bloggin' from publishing another stellar issue.I was a slacker as well with regard to edition #25 of I and the Bird, the carnival of birding. Special thanks to Rob and his Idaho Perspective for slipping something of mine in, anyway. It appears he needed a post from someone living fewer than 500 miles away. Happy to oblige!

A PINEDALE ANTICLINE PHOTOJOURNAL--Part III: Epilogue

To the casual traveler driving across Wyoming, the biological richness of the Sagebrush Steppe is mostly hidden. The most obvious denizens are Pronghorn (Antilocapra americana), relicts from the Pliocene with no living relatives, although an additional twelve extinct genera have been identified within their family.
Famous for speed, they are capable of reaching 55 mph (88kph) in a sprint, with a normal cruising speed around 30 mph (48 kph). On the American Pleistocene plains, such velocity allowed them to outrun giant Miracinonyx cheetahs into the modern age. My friend Scott Carrier established himself as a writer by describing his efforts to run down a Pronghorn. Buy his book and see if he succeeded.

Having lived in large herds during the winter, the bucks begin to establish their own territories in April. Successful males will inseminate all the does in their harem in late summer, and spend much of the intervening six months fighting off challengers, often suffering multiple horn wounds like the one seen here. Right about now (early June) the kids that were conceived last year are being born. Two springs ago, I discovered a single newborn Pronghorn kid (twins are the norm, although first pregnancies usually result in single kids) in the west Utah desert. It cowered in the grasses, ostensibly lacking the strength to flee, while the entire extended family stood several yards away, staring me down. By the time the kid reaches four days of age it can outrun a human.
Other artiodactyls on the Anticline include Moose (Alces alces), Elk (Cervus elaphus), Mule Deer (Odocoileus hemionus), and, I am told, White-tailed Deer (O. virginianus). Barbed wire fences, a deadly threat to large flying birds, form barriers to Pronghorn, which are unable to jump, and hurdling deer often get tangled in them. This photo shows a fence that Steve and I treated with beer cans last year, to make it more obvious to grouse. This Mule Deer died just a few feet from where we ran out of cans--statistically insignificant, but it suggests that the cans may discourage deer from jumping a fence. Despite the dangers these fences represent, many of them serve to keep sheep and cattle out of riparian areas, and ensure that livestock grazing on the Anticline maintains a low impact.
The astonishing population of large raptors here is largely attributable to this little guy, Richardson's Ground Squirrel (Spermophilus richardsonii). This rodent occurs in huge numbers on the Anticline, and though it is less social than many Spermophilus species, in favorable habitat it often dwells in vast colonies. It feeds on the leaves and seeds of sage brush, grasses, and other plants, and includes many insects in its diet. Nesting Ferruginous Hawks feed primarily on this creature, and it's also an important component in the diets of other buteos, Prairie Falcons, and probably Golden Eagles.
The largest member of the huge Anticline rodent community is the White-tailed Prairie Dog (Cynomys leucurus). Very similar to its better-known black-tailed cousin (C. ludovicianus), it does not develop the conspicuous prairie dog "towns" of that species. The raptor population is sustained by other rodents as well, including chipmunks (Tamias spp.), voles (Microtus spp.) and deer mice (Peromyscus spp.).
One can't walk far through the sagebrush without bumping a Nuttall's Cottontail (Sylvilagus nuttalli), another item at the finest hawk diner in the West. White-tailed Jackrabbits (Lepus townsendii) are also abundant, but are too powerful for any raptors to feed on regularly, except Golden Eagles, the most determined Ferruginous Hawks, and maybe an occasional Great Horned Owl that's even more psychopathic than normal. Jackrabbits are actually hares, not rabbits. One major difference between the two is that young hares are precocial, and can move about soon after birth. I've been told that Pygmy Rabbits (Sylvilagus idahoensis) also occur on the Anticline, but I've never seen one. Lest I lead you to think that rabbits are of little interest beyond hawk chow, have a look at this post by Darren Naish.

The Anticline's most conspicuous mammalian predators are the Badger (Taxidea taxus) and the Coyote (Canis latrans), both of which are abundant. Long-tailed Weasels (Mustela frenata) and Striped Skunks (Mephitis mephitis) may also be encountered. On my most recent trip I saw a pied shrew that looked like a Sorex species. I've seen no evidence of cats, though they might occur. Reintroduced Wolves (Canis lupus) are beginning to show up in the area. A few years ago, a local rancher, Billy Mayo, lost a sheep to a canid. Fish & Wildlife officials inspected the kill, and said the culprit was a domestic dog. After losing his third sheep within a week, Billy mounted his snowmobile and followed the tracks, eventually catching up with a wolf, which he lassoed, and dragged back to his ranch, locking it in a trailer: an amazing feat. He called the Fish & Wildlife officials and told them to come get their "dog."

The Anticline fauna is reptile-poor. I've only encountered Short Horned Lizards (Phrynosoma douglasii).
Let's finish up where we started: back with the birds. The large and common Raven (Corvus corax) is the easiest bird to observe on the anticline. It's credited with being the chief predator of Sage Grouse eggs, despite a lack of data on the subject. Likewise, conventional wisdom among Wyoming locals states that Ravens haitually peck out calves' eyes, but I've yet to meet an actual witness to such an event. Ravens certainly are resourceful birds with a combination of brains and versatility, and either act is within their skill set. Upstairs from this hen raven and two fledglings is a Cliff Swallow (Petrochelidon pyrrhonota) nest. Both these and Tree Swallows (Tachycineta bicolor) are common along the rivers.
The region's other common corvid is the Black-billed Magpie (Pica hudsonica). The kind of low trees these birds prefer to nest in are rare here, but along draws, the sagebrush can grow tall enough to provide a perfect site for their spherical mud-and-stick nests.


This nest contained five chicks, maybe three days old.

A number of perching bird species inhabit the Anticline; most of them stick close in the brush and are difficult to observe. These include several sparrows, including the Sage Sparrow (Amphispiza belli), Brewer's Sparrow (Spizella breweri), Vesper Sparrow (Pooectes gramineus) and Lark Sparrow (Chondestes grammacus).
The least bashful perching bird is the Horned Lark (Eremophila alpestris), whose boldness is probably born of confidence; it is among the most athletic fliers I know. As a teenager I participated in an automobile accident that involved trying to keep up with a small group of them. Feeding on a wide range of plant and arthropod foods, they range through much of the northern hemisphere.
Horned Larks build a grass nest on the ground, underneath a sagebrush. Three to five spotted eggs are laid early in April. Both parents provision the chicks, mostly with insects. At about three weeks of age, the young larks begin to run about the vicinity of the nest. Their cryptic coloration provides some protection, but their inability to fly makes these few days the most perilous of their lives.
The Sage Thrasher (Oreoscoptes montanus) is a shy and inconspicuous denizen of the sage steppes. A bit smaller than an American Robin (Turdus migratorius), it is a distant cousin of that bird. It lays its beautiful eggs in a well-built nest, deep within the confines of a thick sagebrush. The incubating female invariable slips away unseen as the nest is approached.
These dry steppes are bisected by a few rivers. The riparian systems along these waterways provide a stark contrast from the surrounding country. Among the most commonly seen perching riparian birds is the Western Kingbird (Tyrannus verticalis), which seeks a prominent perch from which to hawk the flying insects upon which it lives.
Many species of waterfowl live along these rivers, including the Trumpeter Swan (Cygnus buccinator). One hundred years ago, this huge bird was nearly extinct, but thanks to intensive management, some 15,000 individuals live today, most of them in Alaska. A number of pairs nest in this region.

I've devoted three posts to discussing the animals of the Pinedale Anticline, but of course, the most important organism of this system is the Big Sagebrush (Artemisia tridentata). A member of the genus that gave us Wormwood (A. absynthium), and the legendary liquor absinthe, Big Sagebrush also contains complex aromatic oils that prevent most animals from feeding on it. After millions of years, a number of animals have adapted not only to feed on it, but to depend on it. It is quite possible that the camels and ground sloths that once roamed these plains were as addicted to sagebrush as their contemporary the Pronghorn. Two centuries ago, this plant dominated much of the western United States, but today just a fraction of healthy sagebrush community remains--the Pinedale Anticline represents the most vibrant remnant of sagebrush steppe.
So let's say goodbye to the Pinedale Anticline for now, but hopefully not for good. The Cretaceous formation that supports these sage steppes represents the best hope the lower 48 has of substantial new petroleum extraction, and the entire region is currently under lease for gas and oil exploration. Our thirst for gasoline, the fluid that enables me to visit the place, suggests that one day the Pinedale Anticline will no longer be a domicile of jousting Pronghorns, lekking Sage Grouse and soaring Ferruginous Hawks, but of drilling rigs and howling compressors. The choice is ours.
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All photographs in this post were taken by CPBvK on the Pinedale Anticline, May 15-17, 2006

SNAPPERS

I live in the most turtle-free state of the lower 48. To the ecologically distinct Virgin River drainage of Utah's extreme southwest corner, a small population of native Desert Tortoises (Gopherus agasizii) manages to cling, while Spiny Softshell Turtles (Apalone spiniferus), introduced a century ago, bask on the Virgin's banks. Aside from that, Utah's recorded modern turtle fauna is limited to a few Western Painted Turtles (Chrysemys picta belli) collected from Lake Powell, and almost certainly introduced. Despite this, or maybe because of it, I've always felt a bit of special fondness for turtles, the one group of reptiles that no one seems to revile--that is, if you consider them reptiles at all. In their 2002 Standard Common and Current Scientific Names for North American Amphibians, Turtles, Reptiles & Crocodilians, Collins and Taggart proposed giving them a class of their own. Despite a radically modified body plan, where the shoulders and hips have wound up inside the ribcage, most turtles have a charming look about them, like a friendly, if mildly insane old geezer. Only in a few cases do turtles take on an actual monsterish countenance, and in North America, those cases are dominated by the Snapping Turtles. Most spectacularly monsterish of all is the Alligator Snapping Turtle (Macrochelys=Macroclemys temminckii), of the Mississippi Drainage. This is one of the biggest freshwater turtle species, sometimes exceeding 200 lbs. in weight. The northern extreme of the Alligator Snapper's distribution is southern Iowa, and the individuals that have been recorded there have all been very large--in fact, the largest on record. It's not certain why this is so, I've had some very unproductive discussions about it with turtle experts. It seems likely to me that older turtles prefer to orient themselves upstream, and upon reaching a certain age, tend to creep north. This species' most prominent feature is its huge head and powerful, hooked beak. I've been taken to task a few times for designing the above painting with a foreshortened turtle, which minimizes this aspect.
The smaller Common Snapping Turtle (Chelydra serpentina) is found throughout the U.S. east of the Rockies, and Southeastern Canada, south through Central America to Ecuador. A smaller creature than the Alligator Snapper, its maximum recorded carapace length is about 18". The largest one I've ever caught is the 16" South Carolina individual posing with me in the picture. When I was twelve I caught a 12" Common Snapper that someone had let lose in a Utah pond. I transferred him to a smaller pond behind a friend's house where he eventually failed to rouse from his third hibernation there. Normally, reproduction is the main focus of male snappers coming out of hibernation, and after twice awaking 800 miles from the nearest female, my "Herbie" probably just decided to call it quits.
My friend Cole (I rarely call him that) didn't live the turtle-impoverished childhood that I did. He's lived his life in Upstate New York, where turtle life is fairly rich, and he often calls me to rub my nose in the fact that he's caught another snapper in his driveway. Not only is he a marvelous artist, he's a keen observer of nature and a lucky dog. While wandering aimlessly about the New York backwoods, he recently happened upon this pair of male snappers fighting. The males establish fairly rigid territories, and tend not to wander from them, so a sight like this is fairly rare, as far as I know. One of these big males, I assume, still groggy from a long upstate winter, wandered into another's territory. Cole said the reptiles (apologies to Collins & Taggart)allowed him to walk right up to them, and continued to fight for about an hour. He told me he took a lot of pictures, but he's stringing me along, sending me one every couple of days.
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upper: OPTIMISM--ALLIGATOR SNAPPING TURTLE & PIG FROG (1995) acrylic 20" x 16"
second: Photograph taken near Charleston, South Carolina by Lindsey Fogget, Feb. 2000
lower two: Bitchin' photographs taken near Binghamton, New York by Cole Johnson, May 2006