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Shark fishing is alive and well, but the fishermen who do it are increasingly prioritizing conservation. And, an unknown ant was spotted in Manhattan in 2011, and it quickly spread through New York City. We now know what it is.Fishing For—And Saving—Sharks off the Jersey ShoreAt an undisclosed beach at 5:30 p.m. in New Jersey, shark fisherman AJ Rotondella and two clients wait for beachgoers to leave. Once the beach is empty, Rotondella cuts up some chunks of fish as bait, and casts lines into the water.“I shark fish, shark fish, shark fish, eat pizza, and shark fish … that's pretty much it,” Rotondella said. “Waking up in the morning … wide open ocean, anything could be anywhere at any time. And I think that's fascinating. No matter how long you've done this, you've never seen it all.”He has always loved fishing, and got into shark fishing 13 years ago, when his brother told him they could catch sharks from the beach. They caught two on their first day and could not catch another shark for the rest of the year.“That really got me interested because I knew it was possible, but I couldn't do it again,” he said. “I … absolutely obsessed over this.”But Rotondella had a steep learning curve ahead of him. By trial and error, sometimes staying on a beach for multiple days, he learned how to read the tides, water temperatures, currents, and even phases of the moon to figure out how to track the sharks.Read the full story at sciencefriday.com.Scientists Identify The ‘ManhattAnt' Spreading Across NYCNew York City is home to more than 8 million people. But there's another massive population below their feet: ants.In 2011, when surveying ant populations on Broadway and Times Square, researchers got quite a surprise: an unidentified species of ant, which was soon dubbed the “ManhattAnt.” Since then, it has become the second-most populous ant species in New York City.Earlier this year, the first study on this unidentified species was released. It concluded that this species, Lasius emarginatus, likely hitchhiked from Europe to the US. Though their populations have grown tremendously, it's unclear how the ants are interacting with New York's native ants.Joining guest host Sophie Bushwick to discuss this ant species is Dr. Clint Penick, assistant professor of insect ecology at Auburn University in Auburn, Alabama.Transcripts for each segment will be available after the show airs on sciencefriday.com. Subscribe to this podcast. Plus, to stay updated on all things science, sign up for Science Friday's newsletters.
Learning from Nature: The Biomimicry Podcast with Lily Urmann
Honeycomb and the hexagon shape is very popular in the biomimicry design space, but what makes it efficient and resilient? In this episode, Dr. Clint Penick dives deep into the function of optimizing space and managing compression, as it relates to bee and wasp nests. There is so much more to the honeycomb shape than most people initially realize, and this conversation sheds light on some of the details behind this "genius" in the natural world. We also chat about urban ecology, social insects, the importance of collaborative research, and so much more.
Clint Penick is a former punk musician and the current head of Penick Lab at Kennesaw State University, where he studies social insects.
Today we find ourselves standing in a major point in history. Research life is not what it looked like just a few short months ago. We are sitting down, virtually, with various members of the research community to hear about their research life in the here and now, and the potential impact they see on the future. These are the stories of science, research and the research landscape in unprecedented times.In this episode Giacomo Mancini welcomes Clint Penick to the show. Clint is an Ecologist and Faculty member of Kennesaw State University in Georgia, USA. The work at his lab, the Penick lab, focuses on the evolution and ecological success of social insects (ants, bees, wasps, and termites). Clint shares how he has adjusted to life under lockdown, from transitioning courses online, to adjusting field courses, and to the impact the pandemic has on his field work. Show Notes: Dr. Clint Penick is an Assistant Professor at Kennesaw State University, where his research focuses on the evolution and ecological success of social insects. Current projects in his lab focus on how ants use antimicrobials to fight disease, how social insects respond to climate change, and how urban ants exploit human foods on the sidewalks of New York City. In addition to research on social insects, Dr. Penick has collaborated with engineers and designers on projects related to bio-inspired design through funding from Google and NASA.You can learn more about Penick’s lab and research at www.penicklab.comJoin Penick in baking sourdough bread while contributing to research. Find out more here: http://robdunnlab.com/projects/wildsourdough/We would like to hear from you. Take this survey to send us your feedback. Now that we are into our 5th episode, we would like to get your input on Research 2030 and find out what drew you to listen and what topics are of interest to you. Click on the link above to take our short, and anonymous, survey.
David Blistein reviews both the benefits and dangers of opium. Benjamin Breen, of the University of California, Santa Cruz, dives into the history of illicit and licit drug use. Karin Kjernsmo of the University of Bristol shares how animals use iridescence as camouflage. Tim Caro explains why zebras have stripes. Clint Penick on the fashion sense of ants.
Clint Penick of ASU on the fashion-forward appeal of ants. Arnaud Chulliat, of Univ of Colorado Boulder, explains why you might need a new compass. Author Gretchen Rubin connects personality and tidiness. Brian Lovett, Univ of Maryland, talks bugs. Adrian Bejan of Duke explains why days seem shorter as we age. BYU's Brian Croxall reveals what computers can tell us about literature.
“Stigmergy is a mechanism of indirect coordination, through the environment, between agents or actions,” according to Wikipedia. “The principle is that the trace left in the environment by an action stimulates the performance of a next action, by the same or a different agent.” Wikipedia should know all about stigmergy, since it’s almost a perfect description of how Wikipedia itself is made. While this model of collaboration is most commonly associated with ants, not global knowledge sharing, we’ll explore both and how they’ve shaped our world through asynchronous collaboration. Join us as we talk to Katherine Maher, the executive director of the Wikimedia Foundation (the nonprofit organization that runs Wikipedia), and Clint Penick, an ant researcher and assistant research professor in the Biomimicry Center at Arizona State University. === All original content in Plays Well with Others is available under a Creative Commons BY license. This episode contains music by Blue Dot Sessions, available under a Creative Commons BY-NC license at the Free Music Archive. We also use sound effects, available under CC licenses and in the public domain, from Freesound. For links to these tracks and for more information about our show, please visit playswellwithothers.org.
This week, we're exploring the ways human-made environments support - and shape - the lives of many species we think of as vermin. We'll talk to Geography and Environmental Studies Professor Dawn Day Biehler about her book "Pests in the City: Flies, Bedbugs, Cockroaches, and Rats." And we'll speak to postdoctoral researcher Clint Penick about his research on the junk food diets of urban ants.
Election season is upon us, and that means choices. If you’re still on the fence about who to vote for, maybe you’d like to take a cue from ants, whose prospective leaders duel with their antennae. We’ve got biologist Clint Penick, PhD on the show to guide us through how strikingly similar animals’ electoral behaviors are to our own.
This week, we're exploring the ways human-made environments support - and shape - the lives of many species we think of as vermin. We'll talk to Geography and Environmental Studies Professor Dawn Day Biehler about her book "Pests in the City: Flies, Bedbugs, Cockroaches, and Rats." And we'll speak to postdoctoral researcher Clint Penick about his research on the junk food diets of urban ants.