Researchers from the Stichting European Invertebrate Survey (EIS Netherlands) and Naturhistorisk Museum in Oslo (Norway) have found a new winter stonefly species in the Netherlands. They discovered a shedded skin and an adult animal in the Roer river in St. Odiliënberg.
It is the first find of this particular insect, the stonefly Taeniopteryx schoenemundi, in the Netherlands and one of the few recent observations in Western Europe. Water quality in the Roer has greatly improved in recent years and more and more special insects such as dragonflies and caddis flies have been found. Yet the discovery of these winter stoneflies is a big surprise because this species is historically unprecedented in the Netherlands. The stonefly, which has a preference for cold, oxygenated water, may have benefited from the relatively recent severe winters. …
The species belongs to the family of winter stoneflies, an exceptional group of winter active insects. Plecoptera are slender, long-winged insects whose larvae live in clean streams and rivers. They are considered to be important indicators of water quality. Previously there were 27 species of stoneflies in the Netherlands, but because of pollution no less than 17 species disappeared. Plecoptera are among the most endangered animals in the Netherlands.
ScienceDaily (Apr. 4, 2011) — Loss of glaciers and snowpack due to climate warming in alpine regions is putting pressure on a rare aquatic insect, the meltwater stonefly, according to a study recently released in Climatic Change Letters: here.
The bronzes of Benin are the outcome of a long tradition of bronze casting which can be traced back over more than two millennia to the ancient Nok people, who lived on the plains of Jos and the Yoruba people who flourished between the 10th and the 19th centuries in the south and west of Nigeria.
Imagine what it must have been like to be at the site 70 years ago where these extraordinary sculptures were first unearthed in the Nigerian city of Ife, the centre of Yoruba culture in the west African state.
Apart from the archaeological excitement, the sheer artistic and technical brilliance of these pieces must have dazzled the first people to set eyes on them for centuries, so much so that one observer – doubtless influenced by European notions of “classical” art – described them patronisingly as “un-African.”
While these works have rightly been compared with some of the great achievements of world art – China’s Terracotta Army, the Parthenon in Athens or the mask of the Egyptian pharaoh Tutankhamun – their provenance is unequivocally African, rivalling the great Benin sculptures which had such an influential impact on 20th-century artists such as Picasso and Modigliani. The latter was ravished by the works he saw in the Musee de l’Homme in Paris.
From the 12th to the 15th century – when much of European art was confined in an ecclesiastical straitjacket – Ife was a powerful cosmopolitan city and spiritual centre which was linked to the long-distance trade networks on which its wealth was founded.
This in turn enabled the development of artists working in terracotta, stone, brass and copper-alloy who created a style unique in Africa, or anywhere else.
Some of the pieces have a spiritual or ritual function associated with the accession of tribal rulers.
These are splendidly conceived and worked with some of the women’s terracotta heads marked with facial striations, regalia or jewelry depicting the subject’s high rank.
But as striking are the revelatory glimpses of a cross-section of Ife society, young, old, healthy, suffering or serene.
As “living history” these are the works which connect even more across the centuries because they give an intriguing glimpse of the Yoruba world of the period. And they have also become icons of pan-African identity.
The dexterity of these craftsmen and women is truly astinishing.
From stone, through terracotta to copper alloys their sculpting techniques are exquisite and the rendering of detai lin the emotional expression is simply a delight.
The sublime knowledge of complex casting technologies makes one aware too of the former greatness and uniqueness of this thriving, rooted culture.
It’s an unmissable exhibition, not only as an antidote to parochial European notions of art traditions but because the technical brilliance of the work is an astonishing font of creativity which is only just beginning to be explored.
BAE hired Michael Chertoff, formerly the US secretary of homeland security, at the end of last week.
The appointment of one of Bush Jnr’s crazy gang to the BAE board was ignored by the British press, but US reporters are shocked such about a high official joining a company that recently had to promise the US government not to bribe any more high officials.
BAE also had to pay $447 million to settle charges about bribing the Saudis. The US press thinks that BAE promising not to bribe government officials while giving jobs to government officials looks a bit tacky.
But when it comes to the unseemly, BAE and Chertoff seem a perfect match.
Chertoff was the head of the criminal division of the US Justice Department from 2001 to 2003. He was promoted to head of homeland security in January 2005.
It was in the former job that Chertoff first covered up torture. And then helped to spread it.
A US District Court accepted guilty pleas on corruption charges from car giant Daimler on Thursday on behalf of its Russian and German subsidiaries: here.
(Mar. 31, 2010) — “Blindsnakes are not very pretty, are rarely noticed, and are often mistaken for earthworms,” admits Blair Hedges, professor of biology at Penn State University. “Nonetheless, they tell a very interesting evolutionary story.” Hedges and Nicolas Vidal, of the Muséum National d’Histoire Naturelle in Paris, are co-leaders of the team that discovered that blindsnakes are one of the few groups of organisms that inhabited Madagascar when it broke from India about 100 million years ago and are still living today.
Blindsnakes comprise about 260 different species and form the largest group of the world’s worm-like snakes — scolecophidians. These burrowing animals typically are found in southern continents and tropical islands, but occur on all continents except Antarctica. They have reduced vision — which is why they are called “blind” — and they feed on social insects including termites and ants. Because there are almost no known fossil blindsnakes, their evolution has been difficult to piece together. Also, because of their underground lifestyle, scientists have long wondered how they managed to spread from continent to continent.
In this study, the team investigated the evolution of blindsnakes by examining the genetics of living species. They extracted five nuclear genes, which code for proteins, from 96 different species of worm-like snakes to reconstruct the branching pattern of their evolution and allow the team to estimate the times of divergence of different lineages within blindsnakes using molecular clocks. “Our findings show that continental drift had a huge impact on blindsnake evolution,” explains Vidal, “by separating populations from each other as continents moved apart.”
Mutations in the genes record the history of these blurry-eyed serpents. The genetic research reveals that the original stock of worm-like snakes arose on Gondwana, the ancient southern supercontinent. The initial split occurred about 155 million years ago as Gondwana divided into East Gondwana (the landmasses of Antarctica, India, Madagascar, and Australia) and West Gondwana (the landmasses of South America and Africa). The residents of East Gondwana — the blindsnakes — then diverged into several lineages including a new family named in this study and found only on Madagascar. Later, East Gondwana further divided into a new paleolandmass — called by the researchers “Indigascar” (India plus Madagascar) — and another comprised of Australia and Antarctica. The research suggests that the new family on Madagascar arose as a result of the break-up of the Indigascar landmass about 94 million years ago.
Madagascar’s long isolation has led to the evolution of many unique endemic animals including this family of blindsnakes, various lemurs, and other rare mammals. Unfortunately, both the animals and plants of Madagascar are now endangered by habitat loss. Says team member Miguel Vences, a professor at the Technical University of Braunschweig, Germany, and authority on the biodiversity of Madagascar, “Finding such ancient roots for a group of animals in Madagascar gives us even more reason to protect their rapidly declining habitat.”
If blindsnakes got their start on Indigascar, leaving an endemic living family as evidence on Madagascar, how did they get to all of those other places in the world that they occupy today — Europe, Asia, Australia, Africa, and the Americas?
The phylogeny constructed by the Hedges and Vidal team shows a series of diversifications within the blindsnakes, outside of Madagascar, that occurred between 63 and 59 million years ago. The period of greatest diversification coincided with a time of low sea levels, when connections between continents were forming and the dispersal of such unlikely animals by floating on flotsam was easier.
Blindsnakes must have moved either out of Africa via Europe and Asia — the ancient northern supercontinent Laurasia — or out of India and then from southeast Asia to Australia at about 28 million years ago. Since there were no land connections between Asia and Australia at this time, these blindsnakes could have reached Australia only by crossing the ocean on floating flotsam. After that point, the splits within the blindsnakes probably occurred because they were following the evolution and spread of their prey — ants and termites — in various geographic regions.
Floating across oceans seems an unlikely mechanism for a burrowing animal to spread to new continents, but there is a second instance of ocean crossing by blindsnakes among the groups left on West Gondwana: West Gondwana broke up about 100 million years ago, making Africa and South America separate continents, but the genetic split between African and South American blindsnakes occurred only at about 63 million years ago. This finding shows that blindsnakes probably were confined to Africa when West Gondwana broke up and only later traveled to South America — and still later to the West Indies — by floating across the Atlantic from east to west.
This journey has rarely been documented. Only six or seven other vertebrates are thought to have crossed the Atlantic in a westward direction. However, the crossing would have taken no more than six months and might not have been too difficult for blindsnakes, which have a relatively low need for food and may have been floating on vegetation rafts along with their insect prey.
“Some scientists have argued that oceanic dispersal is an unlikely way for burrowing organisms to become distributed around the world,” observes Hedges. “Our data now reinforce the message that such ‘unlikely’ events nonetheless happened in evolutionary history.”
A review of E & S African blind-snakes (Serpentes: Typhlopidae): here.
Blindsnake evolutionary tree reveals long history on Gondwana: here.
More than five years after a petition was filed by the Center for Biological Diversity, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service today announced that the Tucson shovel-nosed snake warrants protection as an endangered species under the Endangered Species Act, but that such protection is precluded by listing of other higher priority species: here.
The world’s largest collection of dead snakes, used to create vaccines to protect rainforest coffee workers from fatal bites, has been destroyed in a fire: here.
Paignton Zoo Will Have the Largest Collection of Malagasy Species in the UK: here.
A great white shark tagged by Niwa has set a world record for the deepest known dive at 1200m.
Niwa principal scientist Malcolm Francis said the shark, named “Shack”, was the biggest they had tagged at 4.8m.
He said the deepest dives previously seen were about 1000m, “so it’s quite a substantial extension”.
New Zealand scientists have tagged 25 great whites around Stewart and Chatham Islands over the past five years. The tags are designed to stay on for six to nine months before popping off, floating to the surface and setting off a tracking signal.
Once picked up they offer data on the sharks’ movements, having recorded location depth and temperature.
“Before we started this work, it was thought that great white sharks were cold water animals. But it seems they are taking tropical winter holidays, departing New Zealand between April and September for somewhere warmer,” Dr Francis said.
“The maximum distance migrated was 300km. One shark returned to its Chatham Islands tagging site after spending six months at Norfolk Island.
“Our sharks don’t cross the equator.
“They take long migratory trips making deep dives as they go. They can travel 150km in a day and it takes them just three weeks to get to Australia.”
The research aims to improve understanding of the sharks’ habits and could help prevent them being accidentally killed by the fishing industry.
An oil conglomerate has allegedly spent nearly £16.5 million ($25 million) on campaigns to discredit climate change and clean energy policies, according to a new report.
Despite the relatively small size of the conglomerate, the sum is three times that spent by ExxonMobil, the western world’s biggest oil company, in the same period.
A Greenpeace investigation also claimed that between 2006 and 2009, the company and its owners – Charles and David Koch – spent £25.3 million ($37.9 million) on direct lobbying on oil and energy issues.
According to Greenpeace, Koch foundations had provided substantial funding to at least 20 organisations involved in highlighting “Climategate“, the controversy surrounding climate scientists that was prompted by emails hacked from the University of East Anglia.
A recent survey found that 73 percent of Americans believe global warming is happening, but only 18 per cent believed strongly it was man-made and harmful.
The brothers share 24th place in Forbes magazine’s latest list of the world’s richest people, controlling America’s second-biggest private company from their base in Wichita.
In all, their more than 20 companies employ 70,000 people in 60 countries and earn $100 billion in annual sales.
The business was founded by the brother’s father, Fred, who invented a method of refining petrol from heavy oil but the company, which makes Lycra, is now involved in ranching, mining, paper making and fertiliser production.
Greenpeace, which described Koch as the “financial kingpin of climate change denial and clean energy opposition”, supplied a list of 35 organisations and 21 politicians – 17 Republicans and four Democrats – who it claimed received money, either directly or indirectly, from Koch or foundations it had set up.
“Although Koch intentionally stays out of the public eye, it is now playing a quiet but dominant role in a high-profile national policy debate on global warming”, said the report.
Kert Davis, research director of Greenpeace US, said it was time Koch Industries “came clean and dropped its, behind-the-scenes campaign against action on climate change”.
“Efforts to pass US clean energy and climate policy are being hampered by polluter lobbyists and climate science denial campaigns, and Koch Industries is at the core of this obstruction.”
British investigators say there is no evidence that climate scientists involved in the so-called “Climategate” controversy manipulated data or undermined the peer review process: here.
Bats, Birds and Lizards Can Fight Climate Change: here.
Major environmental groups are coming under criticism from within their own ranks for taking positions that some say are antithetical to their stated missions of saving the planet. In the latest issue of The Nation magazine, the British journalist Johann Hari writes, “As we confront the biggest ecological crisis in human history, many of the green organizations meant to be leading the fight are busy shoveling up hard cash from the world’s worst polluters—and burying science-based environmentalism in return…In the middle of a swirl of bogus climate scandals trumped up by deniers, here is the real Climategate.” [includes rush transcript]: here.
Taking on Shell’s pipeline plans off the coast of Ireland: here.
Ecuadorean President Rafael Correa warned big oil transnationals on Saturday that he will introduce laws to force them to sign fair contracts or face nationalisation: here.
A New Climate Movement in Bolivia; by Naomi Klein: here.
Climate activists have announced that they will target the Royal Bank of Scotland in a series of actions this year over its role in financing fossil fuel firms around the world: here.
The English and Welsh Defence Leagues marched in Swansea on Oct 17, chanting “BNP, BNP, BNP“, burning an Anti-Nazi symbol, and making Nazi salutes. No sensible person was ever fooled by the EDL pretending to be against Fascism, and now what little credibility EDL could have ever claimed is completely destroyed.
The EDL were founded by an alliance of BNP activists, a football hooligan who was jailed for stabbing Manchester United fans, and a self-confessed former drug-dealer… nice! …
EDL supporters gave Nazi salutes in Birmingham, gave Nazi salutes in Harrow, gave Nazi salutes in Glasgow, gave Nazi salutes in Manchester, gave Nazi salutes in Swansea, and attacked Asians, Asian shops and assaulted a Sikh councillor in Luton.
BNP FUNDING ITS PARTY STAFF USING PUBLIC MONEY: here.
ScienceDaily (Apr. 1, 2010) — The way people choose to cope with personal experiences of racism influences the distress caused by the encounter, according to a new study of Filipino-American men and women. Published today in the Journal of Counseling Psychology, the study finds that denying or ignoring racial discrimination leads to greater psychological distress, including anxiety and depression, and lowers self-esteem: here.
Want to help your flock safely fly long distances while looking for food, water, shelter and space? Click on Mission: Migration to accept the challenge and see how birds travel during spring and fall migrations.
Players will help the flock dodge storms and airplanes, catch jet streams and fly faster or slower. They also will choose landing sites when the flock runs out of energy.
Kudos to the designers for choosing to feature a young woman as the birder who introduces the animated game! Unfortunately, the pop-up screen wasn’t adjustable in size, the text appeared in a small font, and the symbols in the farmland landing zone were too small to read as hazards; the game could be better but illustrates some great concepts.
HawkCount.org facilitates the tracking and reporting of raptor migrations. As part of HMANA’s Raptors Online effort, many North American hawk watch sites report their daily raptor counts here.
ScienceDaily (June 8, 2010) — Even tiny patches of woods in urban areas seem to provide adequate food and protection for some species of migrating birds as they fly between wintering and breeding grounds, new research has found: here.
26 April 2010 — A US Military base is being protested by over 100,000 people on the island of Okinawa, located to the south of Japan. Under a 2006 agreement with the US, the US Marines’ Futenma base was to be moved from the centre to the coast. But demonstrators want Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama to stick to an election pledge to remove it completely.
From the Mainichi Daily News in Japan:
Kagoshima island residents protest proposed relocation of Futenma base
TOKUNOSHIMA, Kagoshima — Some 4,200 local residents held a protest rally here on Sunday against the proposed relocation of U.S. Marine Corps Air Station Futenma to the area.
The rally was held in the Kagoshima Prefecture island of Tokunoshima with about one sixth of some 25,000 islanders taking part. Led by the mayors of the three local towns of Tokunoshima, Amagi and Isen, the protesters opposed the central government’s plan to relocate Futenma base in Ginowan, Okinawa Prefecture, to the island.
“The government has never consulted with any of the three mayors about the issue, even though it advocates the decentralization of authority,” said Tokunoshima Mayor Hideki Takaoka, as he criticized the Hatoyama administration’s disrespect for municipal governments.
“We cannot expose our children to noise and crime. We don’t need a base here on this island of children, longevity and mutual cooperation,” said a 39-year-old housewife, while other participants held up signs that read: “Let’s protect our island.” The protest was organized by the municipalities and an organizing committee consisting of over 60 groups from Kagoshima’s Amami Islands.
General Manager of local agricultural cooperative Shigemitsu Kamioka also expressed his resentment, saying: “The Tokunoshima Island is an island of agriculture. With the relocation of the base, local farmers could lose their land and excessive noise could prevent animals from reproducing.”
Also in attendance at the event was local House of Representatives member of the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) Takeshi Tokuda, as well as other lawmakers and prefectural assembly members of the LDP, Komeito and the Japanese Communist Party, making it look like an anti-Democratic Party of Japan campaign.
“The island was once split over an election campaign, and the dispute is finally settling down. I don’t want the locals to clash with each other ever again,” said a 51-year-old woman, expressing her concern that the island may be involved in a political war.
Japanese islanders rally against US base plan: here.
Hundreds of protesters demonstrated in central Tokyo on Sunday against plans to turn a popular public space into a Nike-sponsored skateboarding centre: here.
A bit further: three redshanks, flying around, calling.
In the big a canal: a little grebe, a great crested grebe and a male common pochard.
Around the northern lake, about sixty black-tailed godwits. So, a bit less than last week. They are starting with the last part of their spring migration: to their nesting grounds.
There are more redshanks than last week.
Three barn swallows flying around; my first ones of this spring.
As I walk back, no more cormorants on the windmill. Fifteen starlings sit there now.
More to the south, many butterbur flowers. The first ones of this year for me.
