Podcasts about neotropical

Looking to start some global birding or natural history travel, but have a limited budget, and not sure where to go first? This episode is for you! Ken and Charley give a global, continent-by-continent overview of what they consider the best destinations for the first-time budget traveller. CORRECTION: Ken stated that Costa Rica is likely the most English-speaking Neotropical country, but while editing the podcast realized that Belize and Guyana are definitely more Anglophone than CR. Banded Broadbill recording courtesy of Peter Boesman, XC290609. Accessible at https://xeno-canto.org/290609. License Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 4.0 Please check out the website of our sponsor Tropical Birding: https://www.tropicalbirding.com/If you wish to support this podcast, please visit our Patreon page: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.patreon.com/naturallyadventurous?fan_landing=true⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Feel free to contact us at: cfchesse@gmail.com &/or ken.behrens@gmail.com Naturally Adventurous Podcast Nature - Travel - Adventure

In this episode, we are discussing Neotropical Bird Snakes with Roy Blodgett.Follow:Zac Loughman @https://www.instagram.com/dr_crawdad/On FB https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100011423011423Clint Bartley @IG: MetazoticsLLC FB: MetazoticsWebsite: metazotics.comExo-terrahttps://exo-terra.comhttps://linktr.ee/exoterrausaMPR NetworkFB: https://www.facebook.com/MoreliaPythonRadioIG: https://www.instagram.com/mpr_network/YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCtrEaKcyN8KvC3pqaiYc0RQSwag store: https://teespring.com/stores/mprnetworkPatreon: https://www.patreon.com/moreliapythonradio ★ Support this podcast on Patreon ★

To protect our migratory birds, it's vital that we understand their behaviors both during the breeding season in North America and when they migrate to the Neotropics — a region that includes Central and South America, and the Caribbean. Yet historical and systemic barriers in scientific research have stifled contributions from local Neotropical scientists and conservationists for centuries. Learn more about how to support Neotropical ornithology on the new season of Bring Birds Back.More info and transcript at BirdNote.org. Want more BirdNote? Subscribe to our weekly newsletter. Sign up for BirdNote+ to get ad-free listening and other perks. BirdNote is a nonprofit. Your tax-deductible gift makes these shows possible.

Today, you'll learn about an injectable pacemaker that dissolves after 5 days, how a black hole is starving a galaxy to death, and the bats with record-high blood sugar levels. Injectable Pacemaker “Injectable pacemaker regulates heartbeat for 5 days then dissolves.” by Michael Irving. 2024. “In situ assembly of an injectable cardiac stimulator.” by Umut Aydemir, et al. 2024. “Arrythmia.” Cleveland Clinic. N.d. Black Hole Starves “Astronomers detect black hole ‘starving' its host galaxy to death.” EurekAlert! 2024. “A fast-rotator post-starburst galaxy quenched by supermassive black-hole feedback at z=3.” by Francesco D'Eugenio, et al. 2024. Bat Blood Sugar “Sugar assimilation underlying dietary evolution of Neotropical bats.” by Jasmin Camacho, et al. 2024. “Some bats are surviving and thriving with blood sugar levels that would be lethal for other mammals.” Stowers Institute for Medical Research. 2024. Follow Curiosity Daily on your favorite podcast app to get smarter with Calli and Nate — for free! Still curious? Get exclusive science shows, nature documentaries, and more real-life entertainment on discovery+! Go to https://discoveryplus.com/curiosity to start your 7-day free trial. discovery+ is currently only available for US subscribers. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In 2023, over 120 contributors published a study in the scientific journal,  Ornithological Applications, about a long history of exclusion Latin American and Caribbean scientists have faced. In the world of ornithology, the Global North is king – but only because they've made it that way. Host, Purbita Saha, speaks with two of the study's leading researchers, Dr. Ernesto Ruelas Inzunza and Dr. Kristina Cockle, about the ways research from the Global South has been undermined, and how regional bias, racial discrimination, and socioeconomic differences have played a role. They discuss how this lack of acknowledgment is harming conservation efforts for birds and – teach us a thing or two about our feathered friends over in the Tropics! To learn more about our guests and their work or to view this episode's transcript and other resources, visit BirdNote.org.Want more Bring Birds Back? Subscribe to our show and follow us on Instagram! For more about BirdNote, sign up for our weekly newsletter. And for ad-free listening and other perks, sign up for BirdNote+ here.BirdNote is a nonprofit. Your tax-deductible gift makes these shows possible.Bring Birds Back Season 6 is sponsored by the Cornell Lab of Ornithology and the American Bird Conservancy.

Diese Woche mit Julia Nestlen und Aeneas Rooch. Ihre Themen sind: - Songtexte werden immer simpler – das hat aber auch Vorteile! (00:42) - Ein brasilianischer Frosch quakt im Ultraschallbereich – aus verrückten Gründen (07:31) - Schulterklopfen motiviert. Julia erklärt, warum. (15:21) - In 500 Jahren heißen alle JapanerInnen gleich. Aeneas ist nicht überzeugt (21:07) Weitere Infos und Studien gibt's hier: Song lyrics have become simpler and more repetitive over the last five decades: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-024-55742-x Ultrasonic distress calls and associated defensive behaviors in Neotropical frogs: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10211-023-00435-3 The power of human touch: Physical contact improves performance in basketball free throws: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1469029224000219?via%3Dihub#kwrds0010 Hier könnt ihr gucken, wo euer Name vorkommt: https://www.kartezumnamen.eu/ Unser Podcast-Tipp der Woche: Consi Calling! Consi klärt absolut alles für euch. https://www.ardaudiothek.de/sendung/consi-calling-abgehoben-und-aufgelegt/13223943/ Habt ihr auch Nerd-Facts und schlechte Witze für uns? Schreibt uns bei WhatsApp oder schickt eine Sprachnachricht: 0174/4321508 Oder per E-Mail: faktab@swr2.de Oder direkt auf http://swr.li/faktab Instagram: @charlotte.grieser @julianistin @sinologin @aeneasrooch Redaktion: Charlotte Grieser und Chris Eckardt Idee: Christoph König

The Andes stands out for its striking species richness and endemicity that characterise many emblematic Neotropical clades distributed in or around these mountains. It's also a vital region, with its highland forests providing water for millions of people downstream.  However, this rich ecosystem is increasingly threatened by rapid development, mining and climate change. With the glaciers melting and forests disappearing, 2023 Earthshot Prize winners Florent Kaiser, CEO of Global Forest Generation and Constantino Aucca Chutas, President & Co-founder of Acción Andina are working hard to restore the degraded ecosystems of the Andes and secure the water supply for local communities.  On this episode of Climate Connections, we go on a journey to find out how they are reviving ancient indigenous practices and galvanising the help of multi-generations of locals and partners to conserve the Andes and beyond. Feature produced and edited by: Yeo Kai Ting (ykaiting@sph.com.sg) Voiced by: Emaad Akhtar Photo credits: Acción Andina, Earthshot Prize  Music credits: pixabay & its talented community of contributorsSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This week, Emily Hart takes you on a sonic tour of Colombia, with the Humboldt Institute's Natural Sound Collection: not only are we going to be hearing about this amazing project, we are going to be listening to some of the more unusual and noteworthy sounds from the collection itself and exploring what they tell us about Colombia's natural environments and those who inhabit them. We'll hear a giant otter's bark, the snore of a fish, a frog cocktail party, and mosquito love songs, plus bizarre and beautiful birds – along with a few other Colombian nature noises. We are joined by the collection's curator, Hoover Pantoja – expert in bioacoustics, technological development, and innovation; and Curator of Birds, Gustavo Bravo - evolutionary ornithologist and expert in the systematics, ecology, and evolution of Neotropical birds. This soundbank – known as the Mauricio Álvarez Rebolledo Collection - is the second largest repository of natural sounds in Latin America, with more than 24,000 audio recordings - of 20 species of mammals, 1064 birds, 131 amphibians, 17 insects, and numerous ambient recordings of Colombia's innumerable ecosystems. It has been built sound by sound since the 1990s, providing a crucial resource on a vastly underrated dimension of Colombia's biodiversity, and ecology more generally. We'll be talking about its evolution, from one man in the wilds of Colombia wielding a tape recorder through to the high-tech solutions – including of course artificial intelligence – being applied to the collection and the discipline more widely today. This sound bank is open to everyone - we'll be sharing the links so you can explore it for yourselves too. We are going to be journeying through the unseen universe of natural sound – sounds we often don't or even can't hear - talking about which animals have evolved to make and hear sounds - and why, and how sound can be used to understand evolution and measure the health of ecosystems. In the next hour, we'll travel across Colombia from the Amazon to the Eastern Plains and beyond – with an unplanned but somewhat inevitable detour through Central Medellin.

More information: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10646-023-02706-y Episode Sponsor: Natural Resource Today Network (Pty) Ltd: Natural Resource Today is a leading research content distributor, reaching thousands of students worldwide. Visit www.naturalresourcetoday.com

Die Themen in den Wissensnachrichten: +++ Hunderte problematische Chemikalien in Recycling-Plastik +++ Nette Kaulquappe wird netter Frosch +++ Smartphone zum Anstecken +++**********Weiterführende Quellen zu dieser Folge:Update ErdeA dataset of organic pollutants identified and quantified in recycled polyethylene pellets/ ScienceDirect Data in Brief, Dezember-Ausgabe 2023EU Nature restoration law: MEPs strike deal to restore 20% of EU's land and sea/ Europäisches Parlament, 09.11.2023Personality traits differentially affect components of reproductive success in a Neotropical poison frog/ Proceedings of the Royal Society B, 20.09.2023Behavioural consistency across metamorphosis in a neotropical poison frog/ Evolutionary Ecology, 13.10.2023Live birth of chimeric monkey with high contribution from embryonic stem cells/ Cell, 09.11.2023Stay connected and informed about the latest from Humane/ Humane 2023**********Ihr könnt uns auch auf diesen Kanälen folgen: Tiktok und Instagram.

For this episode of Object Matters host Dr Craig Barker is joined by zoologist and 2023 Macleay Miklouho-Maclay Fellow Dr Angel Luis Viloria Petit, who has recently completed his research in Sydney, examining historic collections of butterflies.  The Chau Chak Wing Museum houses the natural history collection of Alexander Macleay (1767-1848) largely amassed prior to his arrival in the colony of NSW in 1826. Many of the insects were acquired by Macleay from other naturalists, including Dru Drury (1725-1804) who published three volumes on butterflies. In his three months in Sydney, Venezuelan-based Dr Viloria has examined thousands of specimens in the collection and has successfully identified more than 260 primary type specimens, many from Drury's collections dating back to the 1770-1790s, identifiable from hand-painted illustrations from within those publications. Together they discuss Angel's career and research, the history of insect collecting, and early European collectors and the process of identifying primary type specimens in two hundred year old collections of butterflies using historical hand-painted illustrations. Read more on Dr Viloria's research while in Sydney. Guest: Dr Angel Viloria is a zoologist and entomologist at the Ecological Centre in Caracas, Venezuela and Senior Researcher at the Centre of Ecology of the Venezuelan Institute for Scientific Investigations (IVIC), specialising in South American lepidoptera. He received a first degree in Biology from the Universidad del Zulia, Maracaibo, Venezuela, and his Doctorate of Philosophy (zoology) from a joint program of the University of London (King's College) and the Natural History Museum, UK. He has pursued investigations on a variety of subjects related to zoology, theoretical biogeography, history and philosophy of the biological sciences. However, his main interest is on the systematics of butterflies of Tropical America, especially the Andean browns, members of the subfamily Satyrinae. In 2019-2020 he held the Simón Bolívar Visiting Chair at the University of Cambridge. He is is author and co-author of 110+ scientific papers, 210+ popular science articles and 8 books, including the standard reference, Catalogue of the hostplants of the Neotropical butterflies. Host: Dr Craig Barker, Head of Public Engagement, Chau Chak Wing Museum and Director, Paphos Theatre Archaeological Excavations. Follow @DrCraig_B on Twitter and Instagram. Objects details: The Dru Drury collection of butterflies and moths within the Macleay natural history collections. 

Alberto Peña es un biólogo egresado de la Universidad de Pamplona, con énfasis en ornitología. Es miembro de la Sociedad Ornitológica del Nororiente Andino (SONORA) y socio de la Asociación Colombiana de Ornitología (ACO). También forma parte de la Fundación Neotropical, una entidad dedicada al estudio, cuidado y protección del cóndor andino en algunas localidades de Santander y Norte de Santander. Además, es miembro del grupo de observadores de aves "Ruwásira" de Pamplona y miembro asociado directo de Birding Norte de Santander. En la actualidad, se dedica a buscar y retratar las aves de Norte de Santander, ha estado caracterizando las aves de la región, el cual ha encontrado especies que se creían extintas y nuevos registros de distribución, lo que lo motiva a mostrar lo bueno y bonito que tiene este departamento. Alberto está particularmente interesado en la parte educativa como método de conservación de especies y áreas de interés para especies de gran importancia, como el cóndor andino. Actualmente está realizando estudios sobre las aves del departamento junto con el SENA, en dinámicas como las aves y el arroz en el distrito de riego del rio zulia en Norte de Santander.

Die Themen in den Wissensnachrichten: +++ Recyclinganlagen für Plastik setzen offenbar massenweise Mikroplastik frei +++ Neue Schmetterlingsgattung Sauron soll aufmerksam machen +++ 4-Tage-Woche: ja oder nein - kommt wohl drauf an, wie man fragt +++**********Weiterführende Quellen zu dieser Folge:The potential for a plastic recycling facility to release microplastic pollution and possible filtration remediation effectiveness, Journal of Hazardous Materials Advances, Mai 2023COVID-19 impact on gender equality in research & innovation, Publications Office of the European Union, 2023Eco-evolutionary implications for a possible contribution of cuticle hardening system in insect evolution and terrestrialisation, Physiological Entomology, 17.04.2023Incidence, prevalence, and co-occurrence of autoimmune disorders over time and by age, sex, and socioeconomic status: a population-based cohort study of 22 million individuals in the UK The Lancet, May 05, 2023Combining target enrichment and Sanger sequencing data to clarify the systematics of the diverse Neotropical butterfly subtribe Euptychiina (Nymphalidae, Satyrinae), Systematic Entomology, 10 April 20234-Tage-Woche: Vorteile für Beschäftigte und betriebliche Voraussetzungen, WSI Policy Brief Nr. 79, Mai 2023**********Ihr könnt uns auch auf diesen Kanälen folgen: Tiktok und Instagram.**********Weitere Wissensnachrichten zum Nachlesen: https://www.deutschlandfunknova.de/nachrichten

Ants are perfect models for Manuela Ramalho's research interest in microbiome and host symbiosis. Ants have one of the widest global distribution and habitat diversity of any animal. She captures her enthusiasm and shares it with listeners as she discusses the ecological role of insects and her research on ants. Listen and learn What key questions and ant facts are tied to a better understanding of their microbiome, How elements of an ant's ecosystem such as an ant's habitat and may or may not impact their microbiome, and How microbiomes might differ across different ant species and roles within a colony. Ant scientist Manuela Ramalho grew up in Brazil, an ecosystem flush with insects. Her academic life brought her in touch with all the possibilities of ant research and she's turned that work into a specialization in their microbiome. Now a postdoc researcher at Cornell University, she opens up this research world to listeners, offering an understanding of what we may learn about the impact of the microbiome on the ants themselves as well as how ant ecology, behavior, development, diet, and phylogeny determines the microbes. For example, after she and her colleagues studied the Neotropical species Daceton armigerum, they found that varying their diet had surprisingly no effect on their microbiome. She explains how little scientist understand about the roles of these microbes and how they are beginning to learn more. Some studies, for example, imply symbiotic roles such as microbes providing ants with nutritional benefits. Furthermore, as with most animal species, questions of coevolution may explain the function of microbe–ant symbiotic relationships. Ramhalho is heading in that direction with her latest study using ant phylogeny to map how the diversity of the ants combines with the phylogeny of bacteria, determining if bacteria are evolving together with their hosts. For more details and why these findings might be significant, listen in. For more about Manuela Ramalho, see her web page: manuelaramalho.wordpress.com. Episode also available on Apple Podcasts: apple.co/30PvU9C

Summary: This little known amphibian has 200 different species in its ranks. Join Kiersten as she takes you on a quick tour of the different caecilian species.    For my hearing impaired listeners, a complete transcript of this podcast follows the show notes on Podbean.   Show Notes: The Amphibian Class by Rebecca Stefoff https://www.britannica.com/animal/caecilian-amphibian/classification   Music written and performed by Katherine Camp   Transcript (Piano music plays) Kiersten - This is Ten Things I Like About…a ten minute, ten episode podcast about unknown or misunderstood wildlife. (Piano music stops) Welcome to Ten Things I Like About… I'm Kiersten, your host, and this is a podcast about misunderstood or unknown creatures in nature. Some we'll find right out side our doors and some are continents away but all are fascinating.  This podcast will focus ten, ten minute episodes on different animals and their amazing characteristics. Please join me on this extraordinary journey, you won't regret it. This episode continues caecilians and the fourth thing I like about this unknown animal is the number of species that we know about. I have to admit as I was doing my research into the caecilian I was amazed to discover that we actually know of about 200 species of this amphibian. Most of my friends and family looked at me with blank faces when I mentioned that I wanted to do the next series of Ten Things I Like About on caecilians. I had a few people ask me if it was going to be about people from Sicily. (laughs) Clearly not. This episode will include a lot of scientific names so I apologize in advance but most caecilians don't have common names since they are not very well known.  Let's start off with a little taxonomy, that's the scientific classification of all living things. All caecilians are in Kingdom Animalia, as are humans, Phylum Chordata, because they are vertebrates with a skeletal system, Class Amphibia, because they are amphibians, Subclass Lissamphibia, and Order Gymnophiona also known as Apoda which is Latin for “without foot”. Within this Order there are ten Families of caecilians. The different Families of caecilians are distinguished from each other based on physical characteristics and life history. The extant, or living species, are classified by the absence or presence of a tail, the amount of fusion of the skull bones, the degree of movement in the skull, the nature of the annular grooves (these are the cutaneous grooves that circle the body), and the structure of the phallodeum (which is the male's sex organ). Classification is also based on whether an aquatic larval stage is present in the life history of the caecilian and whether they lay eggs or have live birth. The youngest family of caecilians is Family Caeciliidae. The species in this family date from the Paleocene era which is 65 to 55 million years ago to today. They have no tails and most have no aquatic larval stage. There are 42 species in Family Caeciliidae. They are native to Central and South America and as adults they range in size from 4 to 60 inches. The next seven families all date from the Cretaceous period which is 145 to 65 million years ago to today. Family Dermophiidae includes 13 species. They have secondary annuli with annular scales. They are viviparous which means they give live birth and they are found in Africa and Central and South America. Family Herpelidae, commonly known as the African caecilians, is native to Africa and includes 9 species of caecilian. Family Ichthyophiidae species have tails, an aquatic larval stage and are native to Southeast Asia, peninsular India, Sri Lanka, Sumatra, Borneo, and the Philippines. There are 50 species in this family that range in size from 16 to 20 inches as adults. This family is also known as the Asiatic tailed caecilians or the fish caecilians. I couldn't  determine why they are called fish caecilians but they do have an aquatic larval stage.  Family Indotyphlidae is native to Africa, the Seychelles, and India. There are 21 speices in this family. Some of them are viviparous and some of them are oviparous which means they lay eggs to reproduce. The viviparous species do not have scales or secondary annuli. The characteristics that bond these species together are their non-perforated ear bone and the presence of teeth in the lower jaw. Family Rhinatrematidae has tails and aquatic larvae. The 11 species of this family are native to South America and range in size from 10 to 13 inches as adults. This family is also known as the Neotropical tailed caecilians, the American tailed caecilians, or the beaked caecilians.  Family Siphonopidae, also known as common caecilians, have non-perforated ear bones and no teeth in the lower jaw. The 19 species of this South American caecilian family are oviparous.  Our last family originating in the Cretaceous period is Family Typhlonectidae. These caecilians have no tails. Adults are aquatic, so these caecilians live their entire lives in the water. The young have gills but the adults breathe through tracheal lungs. There are 13 species in this family and adults range in size from 20 to 28 inches. Family Typhlonectidae is native to South America and are also known as rubber eels.  Our last two families are our two oldest species and originate in the Jurassic period which is 200 to 145 million years ago.  Family Scolecomorphidae is native to Africa and only contains 6 species. They have no tail and no aquatic larval stage. Adults range in size from 16 to 18 inches. They are also known as tropical caecilians, the buried-eyed caecilians, or the African caecilians.  Family Chikilidae is the most recently discovered family but they are one of the two oldest living caecilians. The seven species of this family have two rows of teeth on their lower jaw and are native to northeastern India. The year 2012 brought this terrestrial caecilian into the light and is named after chikila, the northeastern Indian tribal name for this amphibian.  Now that we've talked a bit about the different families of caecilians let's talk about colors! In the anatomy episode we learned that all capelins essentially look like earthworms, They have no legs, they have annuli that make their skin look segmented, and they are covered in slimy mucus. But we didn't discuss what colors they come in. Yes! I said colors.  Many caecilians, actually a lot of caecilians, are a gray to black color, but not all. Some caecilians are blue, some are red or orange, some have accentuated annuli that gives them a two-toned ringed appearance. Some even have bright yellow striping that runs from their head to their tails! Considering all caecilians are blind and live in mostly dark places, we're not entirely sure why they have different colors, but boy are they pretty.  Siphonops annulatus is a beautiful azure blue color, the sticky caecilian is dark gray with a yellow stripe down the midline of their body, the Sao Tome caecilian is bright yellow all over, the Panamanian caecilian is lime green! With 200 different species their color possibilities are quite varied. They vary drastically in size as well. The largest caecilian is Caecilia thompsoni and this species measures in at a whopping 5 feet long! Holy Smokes! They can weigh up to 2.2 lbs. If you'd live to get a chance to see this caecilian plan a visit to Columbia, as this is their native country.  The smallest caecilian is a tie between Idiocranium russeli from West Africa and Grandisonia brevis, from the Seychelles. These two species grow to only 4 inches. That is quite a difference in size! Boy caecilians sure as fascinating. Well that's it for caecilian species, try saying that five times fast, and I know you had a great time with this episode because it's my fourth favorite thing about caecilians.     If you're enjoying this podcast please recommend me to friends and family and take a moment to give me a rating on whatever platform your listening. It will help me reach more listeners and give the animals I talk about an even better chance at change.    Join me next week for another thing I like about caecilians!   (Piano Music plays)  This has been an episode of Ten Things I like About with Kiersten and Company. Original music written and performed by Katherine Camp, piano extraordinaire.  

The Perpetual Notion Machine speaks with Nick Bayly, Chief of Migration Biology at SELVA in Bogota, Columbia. He is studying bird migration through the Neotropical Region of Central and South […] The post Research on the needs of migratory birds: The Neotropical Flyways Proj... appeared first on WORT-FM 89.9.

Today's episode is a special treat as we invite our very own, Michael Skvarla to swap his host hat for a guest's chair. For years, Jody has wanted to pick Mike's brain about deer keds, a topic both she and Jonathan know little about. Luckily, over the past few years, Mike has become something on an expert on the topic. Tune in to learn all about these ectoparasitic, wingless, and interesting flies and how they live, thrive, and survive (plus a little about when people run into them). It's us! Talking about deer keds! Also wanted to give a big shoutout to Jody for winning an award for excellence in Extension for her efforts in Nebraska and around the country. We're very proud of her and her commitment to science communication and we hope you will drop her a note of congratulations!Show Notes  CONTENT WARNING: DEAD ANIMALS. All photographs by Michael Skvarla unless otherwise noted.  European deer ked (Lipoptena cervi). Mammal-feeding deer keds emerge with wings but shed them after landing on a host. Photo by Erika Machtinger, Penn State University.  European deer ked on a white-tailed deer. This ked has shed it's wings. The abdomen has expanded after it took a blood meal. European deer ked on a white-tailed deer.European deer keds on the muzzle of an elk. This photo was not staged, the keds were just very abundant.Michael and Penn State Vector Ecology Lab personnel searching for deer keds on a white-tailed deer at deer processors across Pennsylvania. Photos by Erika Matchinger and Michael Skvarla, Penn State University.  We searched through literal piles of deer.   The easiest way to find deer keds on host is to part the hair in sequence like you're sifting through papers in a file folder. We found that the best way to do that quickly was using a louse comb. Fine forceps are then used to grab the ked before it "swims" back into the hair.Pennsylvania elk at the PA Game Commission elk check station. Deer keds will land on any cervid, including deer and elk. Elk season in Pennsylvania is earlier than deer rifle season, so gave us an opportunity to collect deer keds a few weeks earlier than usual.Neotropical deer keds on a white-tailed deer harvested in Tennessee. Similar to European deer keds in Pennsylvania, some deer in Tennessee were loaded with keds while others were comparatively clean.Example of a PA Parasite Hunters collection kit that was sent to hunters to collect ticks and deer keds from deer they harvested.To test if deer keds responded to common insect repellents such as DEET, we marked off sections on a sock, applied the repellent, put the sock over an arm, and allowed keds to freely climb from an arena up the sock. At the end of 5 minutes we scored if they crossed the repellent or not. Questions? Comments? Follow the show on Twitter @Arthro_PodshowFollow the hosts on Twitter @bugmanjon, @JodyBugsmeUNL, and @MSkvarla36Get the show through Apple Podcast, Stitcher, Spotify, or your favorite podcatching app!If you can spare a moment, we appreciate when you subscribe to the show on those apps or when you take time to leave a review!Subscribe to our feed on Feedburner!  This episode is freely available on archive.org and is licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/Beginning/ending theme: "There It Is" by Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0

Charley & Ken continue the 6-part mini-series on Habitats of the world. Today, Andres Vasquez tells Ken & Charley about his favourite 5 (and least favorite 1) habitats from the Neotropical region. Howler Monkey vocalization courtesy of Andres Vasquez. If you wish to support this podcast, please visit our patreon page at: https://www.patreon.com/naturallyadventurous?fan_landing=true Feel free to contact us at: cfchesse@gmail.com OR ken.behrens@gmail.com Naturally Adventurous Podcast Travel Nature Adventure Birding --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/ken-behrens/message

Love science and conservation? Want to discover new ways to protect our species? Elle Kaye chats with guests who work within the science genre, but whose job titles may need a little unpacking. Strap in for entomology, taxidermy, diaphonization, pet remains, human pathology and all those that work with specimens. In episode 034 Elle chats with Dr. Ryan Terrill about his work as an ornithological postdoctoral researcher and the work he does at the Moore Lab of Zoology in California. We discuss the primary focus of his research in molt and character evolution through feather replacement in birds; and the biogeography and natural history of the birds of the New World tropics. Ryan Terrill Socials https://twitter.com/enicurus http://www.ryansterrill.com/ https://www.instagram.com/terrilldactyl_ Research Simultaneous Wing Molt as a Catalyst for the Evolution of Flightlessness in Birds: https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/10.1086/711416 Feather growth rate increases with latitude in four species of widespread resident Neotropical birds: http://www.ryansterrill.com/uploads/1/0/3/7/103769142/auk-17-176_crx.pdf Threshold models improve estimates of molt parameters in datasets with small sample sizes: https://academic.oup.com/auk/article-abstract/138/3/ukab038/6304580?redirectedFrom=fulltext Evolution of breeding plumages in birds: A multiple-step pathway to seasonal dichromatism in New World warblers (Aves: Parulidae): https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/ece3.6606 Moore Lab of Zoology https://moorelab.oxy.edu/ https://www.instagram.com/mlzbirds/?hl=en https://twitter.com/oxymlz?lang=en Birding in California https://www.latimes.com/lifestyle/newsletter/2022-05-12/la-tr-best-secret-birding-spot-southern-california-the-wild Ryan Terrill Profile Oxy https://moorelab.oxy.edu/person/ryan-terrill Further Reading Non-breeding changes in at-sea distribution and abundance of the threatened marbled murrelet (Brachyramphus marmoratus) in a portion of its range exhibiting long-term breeding season declines: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/35446906/ A Matter of Timing: Can Birds Keep Up With Earlier and Earlier Springs?: https://www.audubon.org/magazine/spring-2022/a-matter-timing-can-birds-keep-earlier-and Birding Organisations California https://ca.audubon.org/ https://www.labirders.org/about.html https://www.instagram.com/fbc.la/ https://www.laaudubon.org/ Elle Kaye socials  www.instagram.com/ellekayetaxidermy Podcast socials www.instagram.com/specimenspod www.twitter.com/specimenspod www.patreon.com/specimenspod www.ellekayetaxidermy.co.uk/product-page/specimenspodmerch Artwork © 2021 Madison Erin Mayfield www.instagram.com/madisonerinmayfield https://twitter.com/MEMIllustration Music Giraffes - Harrison Amer via premiumbeat.com Researched, edited and produced by Elle Kaye Concept/Title © 2020 Elle Kaye

Klimaforandringer er på alles læber og for mange betyder klimaforandringer udryddelsen af levende organismer på jorden. Men det vigtigste vi skal forstå ved klimaforandringerne er at de er værst for os selv. Det er ikke for sjovt at man siger at jorden er ligeglad, for rundt omkring i dyre- og planteverdenen overlever og tilpasser organismer sig til de forhold vi har ændret jorden til. Og det betyder liderlige blæksprutter og flyvende øgler!Hør med når Mark fortæller om hvordan klimaforandringerne har sat gang i en lynende tilpasning hos både dyr og planter, og hvordan nogle organismer har ændret deres krop og genetik for at tilpasse sig vores miljø. Hvis du vil være med til at optage live med os på Discord kan du støtte os på 10er og blive en af vores kernelyttere https://bit.ly/VU10er - hvis pengene er knappe kan du også bare tjekke vores Facebookgruppe ud, vi hygger max!Du kan også tjekke vores webshop: bit.ly/vushop. Vi har T-shirts, kaffekopper og tasker! Og meget mere! Der er også en hønsetrøje!Send os vanvittig videnskab eller stil et spørgsmål på facebook, Instagram eller vudfordret@gmail.comTak til Christian Eiming for disclaimer.Tak til Barometer-Bjarke for Gak-O-meteretHusk at være dumme

Winter is approaching, and that will soon translate into the arrival of millions of birds to the rice fields and wildlife refuges in the Sacramento Valley. For many, including Suzy Crabtree, it's a magical time. Suzy has visited Gray Lodge Wildlife Area in Butte County thousands of times over the years, to photograph the amazing array of ducks, geese, shorebirds, raptors and other animals there. “There's so many things to see there,” she remarked. “We find it to be a place of refuge and solace. The drive down through the rice fields and the orchards is just the beginning of bringing us peace.” In addition to viewing Bald Eagles and other stunning birds, Suzy is among those who has seen a rare white deer at the refuge, as she's had four sightings over the years. Tim Hermansen is wildlife area manager at Gray Lodge. He has worked to help the Sacramento Valley ecosystem since 2008, including working with rice farmers to maintain and enhance waterbird habitat in their fields, which are vital to hundreds of wildlife species and millions of birds. Gray Lodge Wildlife Area has a long history as a wildlife sanctuary. Initial land was purchased in the 1930s. The area and scope has expanded over the years, including nearly 9,300 acres covered today. It's home to upwards of one million waterfowl at its winter peak. A highlight for visitors is a three-mile long auto loop, which includes more than $1 million in improvements carried out by Ducks Unlimited and the Wildlife Conservation Board. Hermansen said the improvements include widening the road and flattening the shoulders, with wider turnouts so visitors don't need to feel rushed. Also, they added islands and enhanced the topography in the ponds to make it more suitable to birds and draw them closer to viewers. “You can drive around and there are pullouts for people to stop and observe the wildlife that is out there,” Hermansen said. “It gives you a chance from your vehicle to be up close and personal with the birds and not scare them away. They're not as scared of a vehicle as someone walking. In some cases, they will stay within 10 to 20 yards from your vehicle.” The entire Pacific Flyway has struggled due to prevailing drought in the west. Fortunately, rice growers have worked with conservation groups and other stakeholders to do what they can to provide enough shallow-flooded fall and winter habitat.   “We continue to be concerned with issues like disease and starvation as more birds arrive and they may not have the habitat that they need,” remarked Luke Matthews, Wildlife Programs Manager with the California Rice Commission. As steps are taken to protect the millions of birds that will visit the Sacramento Valley, their presence here is a joyous sight for many. Gray Lodge Wildlife Area is one of the best places to enjoy this annual gift. Episode Transcript Suzy Crabtree: I have been to Gray Lodge probably thousands of times over the years. We find it to be a place of refuge and solace. Just the drive down through the rice fields and the orchards is just the beginning of bringing us peace. Jim Morris: Suzy Crabtree is among those who appreciate wildlife refuges in the Sacramento Valley. Gray Lodge Wildlife Area near Gridley is indeed a special place. Ducks, geese, raptors and eagles are just the beginning of your wildlife viewing. Suzy Crabtree: There's so many things to see there. There's deer, there's muskrat, there's mink, there's fox. We've seen bobcat there. Probably the most magical time I've had at Gray Lodge has been when we have come across the white deer, a leucistic deer. We usually see her in the evening and we've seen her probably about four times. It's pretty magical to see her. Jim Morris: This magic - an affordable, memorable outing, great for families, is only part of the benefits that come from wildlife refuges, and we're entering the time with the absolute best viewing. Welcome to Ingrained, the California Rice Podcast. I'm your host, Jim Morris, proud to have worked with California farmers and ranchers for more than 30 years to help tell their stories. I've lived in the Sacramento Valley my entire life, and my appreciation for our ecosystem continues to grow. I've learned the awe-inspiring sights that come from living along the Pacific Flyway. We'll find out more about fantastic ways to see wildlife right from your vehicle, but first, an update on how birds are faring during this drought. Luke Matthews, Wildlife Program's Manager with the California Rice Commission, what are you seeing and hearing from the field about the wildlife migration? Luke Matthews: There's definitely a lot of birds here already. We're not at the peak of the migration on the Pacific Flyway yet, but we're nearing that. Numbers are continuing to build, but there's definitely experiencing some issues with drought conditions across the west. Jim Morris: That is a factor. So by the time the birds are arriving here, they haven't really had their full rest and refuel capability. What have you seen elsewhere in the west that really impacts their health as they head to the Sacramento Valley? Luke Matthews: Drought conditions throughout Oregon, Washington, Utah, a lot of these areas where birds normally rest have been pretty significant. And so, we're assuming that when they get there, they're struggling and needing habitats. So when they arrive here, it's even a greater need. Jim Morris: So the value is great in the Sacramento Valley every year, but particularly in a year like this. And there is a program with the Rice Commission and the State Department of Water Resources that is helping. Can you tell us a little more about that effort? Luke Matthews: So we have a program that looks to create more flooding on the landscape with a shallow amount of water, both on rice fields and wetlands. For total, the program has about 50 to 60,000 acres across both components. And it's really just a strategic effort to increase flooding on the landscape because, in a normal year we would have on the order of 300,000 acres of flooded rice and this year, even with the program, we expect to only have probably 100,000 acres of flooded rice. Concerns are that we will not have enough habitat. And as we reach the peak migration, that will just get worse, less habitat, but more birds. So there is our effort and other efforts down in the San Joaquin Valley, for example, to increase flooding for the migration, for the duration of this winter. But we are just worried about disease and starvation and other things like that as birds arrive and may not have the habitat they need. Jim Morris: Time to learn more about one of the jewels of the Sacramento Valley, Gray Lodge. I'm visiting with Tim Hermansen, Wildlife Area Manager. Tim, let's start with your background and your experience with our valley ecosystem. Tim Hermansen: So I got the start in the Sacramento Valley ecosystem in 2008, when I became the wildlife biologist for the Colusa Natural Resources Conservation Service office, working with private land owners in the Sacramento Valley to enhance habitats on their private ground. That included habitats in the areas such as the Butte Sink, but also private rice growers throughout the valley. In 2011 and 2012, I was working with the California Rice Commission to pilot some of the initial waterbird enhancement programs throughout the Sacramento Valley to enhance that waterbird habitat across the private landscape. In 2013, I became the area manager for the Upper Butte Basin Wildlife Area, located just north of Gray Lodge along Butte Creek. And then about a year ago, I became the area manager for Gray Lodge. Jim Morris: Gray Lodge was established many decades ago. Can you give me a little bit of background on the history, how much land we're talking about and other important details? Tim Hermansen: The initial purchase was in about 1931. It actually used revenues generated from pari-mutuel horse betting through the Lee Act. The design was to provide sanctuary habitat for migratory birds to draw them off of the surrounding private rice grounds and reduce depredation issues. For a few decades it was just a sanctuary where people could come out and enjoy seeing the birds. In the 1950s, they through one of the expansions, started to allow hunting. And since the initial purchase in the 1930s, we're now up to about almost 9300 acres. It's about 9260 acres where we have both sanctuary habitat for wintering waterfowl to rest and still do that depredation. But we also provide public hunting across about two-thirds of the wildlife area. Jim Morris: Your job is to balance all that, to make sure that we can enjoy this ecosystem for many years to come, I imagine? Tim Hermansen: We try to balance that. A lot of our revenue comes from hunting, license sales and things of that sort. We want to continue to provide opportunities for the hunters to come out, enjoy the area that their licenses are going to fund. But we also want to make sure that the people that just want to come out and enjoy seeing the wildlife have an opportunity also. So we have a large auto tour loop public trail system. That's open 365 days a year that people can come out and go for a hike, go for a drive, see all sorts of wildlife in our sanctuary area and still enjoy that. And it provides that sanctuary for the wintering waterfowl. Jim Morris: What can people expect when they come out? It is an amazing array of wildlife, but what are some of the things that people would see this time of the year? Tim Hermansen: We can have up to a million waterfowl on the wildlife area. A lot of snow geese, a lot of white fronted geese, pintail, mallards, but we also get other birds in the area. Last winter for example, we had six bald eagles using our closed zone all winter long. There're other raptors. In the springtime, you'll start seeing some of the Neotropical migrants, the songbirds moving through. And then year round, we have deer, quail, turkeys can be found out here, all sorts of local wildlife that don't migrate away. But this time of year the primary attraction is the waterfowl. Jim Morris: I was distracted coming in on this foggy day because right across the road from your office, there was a deer just sitting there waiting for its photo to be taken. So it is really fun to see and a great way for people to experience this is the auto loop, which is about three miles. And tell me about what that offers and also the improvements that have been done on it. Tim Hermansen: It's about a three mile auto tour loop where you can drive around. We have pullouts for people to stop and observe the wildlife that are out there. It gives you a chance from your vehicle to have an opportunity to get up close and personal with the birds and not scare them away. They're not as scared of a vehicle as they are of someone walking. So, for three miles you can drive around and from your vehicle and with your binoculars or spotting scopes or cameras see the wildlife from, in some cases, they'll stay within 10 or 20 yards of your vehicle. Tim Hermansen: Over the last two years, we've partnered with Ducks Unlimited and the Wildlife Conservation Board to do improvements to our auto tour loop that widen the road and flatten the shoulders out a bit, for safety. Before, you could easily drive off into the canals or ditches and they improved all of that. And it also made those turnouts wider so you don't have to feel rushed if someone's coming up behind you. Out in the ponds, we added islands and enhanced the topography to make it more suitable for the birds and draw them in closer to you in your car. So that project just finished up this summer. It was a huge success, huge project, over a million dollars worth of funding went into it. And I just can't thank our partners enough for that. Jim Morris: A few suggestions when you're driving through, please drive slowly out of respect for everyone. And of course the birds that are there. Also, my wife always suggests go a second time if you can through a loop because you often see different wildlife that you can appreciate. This has been a tough go for our world, with the pandemic and other stressors. And I am jealous of your work environment. So what is it like to work out here regularly? Tim Hermansen: When you drive in you see deer right off the side of the road. From our office we can look up from the computer if we're stuck in the office for the day. And oftentimes seeing those deer, seeing the waterfowl flying by, ducks and geese. In the springtime, you have California Quail right outside making their calls and having a good time. So it's great. You get to see the wildlife from your office. And then when you aren't in the office, you're still working. So you get to drive around, if we're checking water or doing a survey, or just seeing how the wildlife area is doing and you're out there in the wild, you have the great view of the Sutter Buttes in the background and you're still doing the job and getting paid for it. So can't beat that. Jim Morris: You mentioned it right up top. There's a coordinated effort to help the Pacific Flyway Migration and our entire Sacramento Valley ecosystem. What have you seen in terms of cooperation among rice growers, conservation groups, state, and federal government, water districts, and other stakeholders in this area? Tim Hermansen: There's a huge partnership in this area between all of those groups you just mentioned. Through this last year in the drought, we were having coordination calls between the state agencies, California Department of Fish and Wildlife, US Fish and Wildlife Service. We had other partners like USGS, Ducks Unlimited, California Waterfowl Association, and the California Rice Commission was involved with those calls, trying to help coordinate where we might strategically place the limited water supplies on the landscape during this critical drought year. It was a very large effort. We met regularly to try to coordinate. And, it seems like when you look around the valley, that those coordination efforts paid off because the birds are spaced out. We're not having any disease issues yet. Thankfully. Let's hope it stays that way. We have the partnership with the rice growers to pump water and have it on their fields, through programs that California Rice Commission or DWR have worked on. We've been able to meet many of the needs of the waterfowl that came down from the north lands this year. Jim Morris: So good to hear about this great partnership. And a lot of the refuges are right around the rice fields. A quick comment, if you would, about how important the rice fields are, those surrogate wetlands. They've largely replaced the original wetlands that California had. How important are the rice fields to maintain this ecosystem? Tim Hermansen: Like you mentioned, most of the natural historic wetlands in the basins around here, they did large reclamation projects to turn it into agricultural ground. So, we have small postage stamps of state and some privately owned wetland habitats, moist soil management wetland habitats, but we also have hundreds of thousands of acres of rice. After the harvest is complete, those rice fields, if they are flooded or even if they're not, if they're properly managed, they can provide great food resources for waterfowl. Both the waste grain that doesn't get picked up by the combines, but also invertebrates that are in the soil that the birds will eat. It's important, not just for ducks and geese, but also waterbirds, shorebirds, the little sandpipers and killdeer, black-neck stilts. All of those really rely on those fields in the wintertime for those supplemental food sources that our wildlife areas just can't provide. Tim Hermansen: We don't have enough space. Rice fields also provide some good habitat for resident nesting and breeding wildlife in the spring and summer months. A lot of birds will use the checks for nesting habitat. More barren checks are used by some of the shorebirds, like the stilts and avocets to nest on. If they're allowed to get more weedy cover, mallards, and some of the other local ducks will nest on them. And then they can use the flooded rice fields to raise their young in and have a bit of a supplemental habitat, in addition to the wildlife areas. The fields that are closer to the wildlife areas, the state areas and the federal refuges they're generally used more, but they're important throughout the valley. Jim Morris: The other day, I was at Sacramento National Wildlife Refuge, and it was great as always, but across I-5 in a rice field were tens of thousands of snow geese so I understand exactly what you said in that last comment. Probably unfair of me to ask, but do you have a favorite sighting that you ever had here or a favorite bird or mammal that you've seen at Gray Lodge? Tim Hermansen: A sighting that stands out to me. I had a friend, he was actually a mentor from when I worked in the Midwest. He came out to visit. It's been close to a decade ago before I worked for the department, but I took him out here and he wanted to see Gray Lodge. And as we're driving the tour loop, he had never seen a Eurasian Wigeon before, and I would drive the tour loop regularly just to see what's out here before going hunting. And I told him usually right around this corner, there's a Eurasian Wigeon. So we came around the corner and sure enough, there he was. I got proven right on that account and my friend from the Midwest got to see his first Eurasian Wigeon which was pretty neat. And it still stands out in my mind as a neat sighting. Tim Hermansen: That's something to keep note of. If you come out for our auto tour loop or our public trails, or if you come out to go hunting, we do get those odd visitors from other flyways from time to time. The Eurasian Wigeon, blue-winged teal - some of the birds you normally wouldn't see in the Pacific Flyway, we will get through here. And you have an opportunity to perhaps see the bird for the first time in your life. Jim Morris: Take your time, enjoy it. And then when you see a lot of birds, look carefully, because there may be an unusual visitor in the mix. Hopefully after what you heard today, you will soon plan a trip to a wildlife refuge near you. Before we wrap up, a few final suggestions from Suzy Crabtree on how you can get it the most out of your Grey Lodge experience. Suzy Crabtree: If you are going to Gray Lodge the one thing that I would suggest is to take the walking hiking trail first, and then take the auto loop. And when you are going to take the hiking trail, always make sure that when you're walking to take a moment to stop and look back from where you've just been. It's a good way to find things that you may have passed that you didn't see. Owls are really great at hiding and blending in with their surroundings. If you go and park at Lot 14, and you head out on the dirt trail, not on the asphalt trail and just that first trail that you go along right across from the canal, there is a pair of great horned owls that you, if you're really good at looking, they're very hard to find, but you can find them. And they're right before you make the first right hand turn on that trail. Suzy Crabtree: Bald eagles are really a thrill to see at Gray Lodge. You can see the adults as well as the juveniles. And it's really interesting to watch the adults training the juveniles on how to hunt. And it's really fun to watch them teach the juveniles and the next upcoming ones that are coming onto the lodge. Jim Morris: We will continue to chronicle the Pacific Flyway Migration and drought impacts in the coming weeks. You can go to podcast.calrice.org to find out more information. Thank you to Suzy Crabtree, Luke Matthews, and Tim Hermansen for their time and expertise. Be sure to subscribe for future episodes. We appreciate your comments and reviews. Thanks for listening.

When it comes to coffee and birds there's a surprising amount we can learn. Many of our beloved migrant birds spend their winters in southern climes. In coffee plantations in fact. Shade-grown, organic, fair-trade, and bird-friendly coffee – what's up with all the certifications? What difference does it make if my coffee is certified bird-friendly?Dr. Ana Gonzalez grew up among the coffee plantations of Colombia and is now living in Canada. Ana tells us about her work and the important role coffee plays in the lives of many bird species that are in trouble. And the role we can play in helping them.Research and conservation actions by Ana and collaborators have been supported by Environment and Climate Change Canada, Selva, Birds Canada, University of Saskatchewan, Nature Canada, Selva and other local partners.Ready to get your bird-friendly coffee? Visit www.birdsandbeans.ca/warblers - using this link will automatically apply the code. You can also use the code "Warblers" when you check out. The code helps us measure the positive impact of the podcast on bird-friendly coffee sales. Please note this option is only valid for purchases in Canada.  Dr. Ana González-Prieto  is an avian conservation ecologist. She integrates behavioural and demographic field data with tracking techniques; providing foundational scientific information needed to support international and local conservation strategies for Neotropical migrants of conservation concern. Ana's work has been recognized recently through receipt of several awards including the BioOne Ambassador Award and the James G. Cooper Early Professional Award, presented by the American Ornithological Society. She obtained her PhD and MSc degree from the University of Saskatchewan, and has held postdoctoral fellowships at Simon Fraser University (Mitacs), the Smithsonian Migratory Bird Research Center, and Environment and Climate Change Canada.  Her research experience spans from her natal Colombia to North America during the full annual cycle of migratory birds. Ana has lived in 6 different provinces from Quebec to British Columbia but has now settled in White Rock BC, where she currently works for the Science and Technology Branch of ECCC.  Andrea Gress studied Renewable Resource Management at the University of Saskatchewan. She pivoted towards birds, after an internship in South Africa. Upon returning, she worked with Piping Plovers in Saskatchewan and now coordinates the Ontario Piping Plover Conservation Program for Birds Canada. Follow her work at @ontarioploversAndrés Jiménez is a Costa Rican wildlife biologist with a keen interest in snakes, frogs, birds and how human relationships are interconnected with the living world. He studied Tropical Biology in Costa Rica and has a Masters in Environmental Problem Solving from York University. He is Birds Canada's Urban Program Coordinator and you can follow him at @andresjimoFriendly Day by Kevin MacLeod is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 license. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/  Source: http://incompetech.com/music/royalty-free/index.html?isrc=USUAN1100223  Artist: http://incompetech.com/ 

Spraying salt while chilling next to the shoreline –the M.O. of marine iguanas. But how do they cope with the harsh reality of life in 2021, like dramatic climate fluctuations and the increased pressures from humans? We also check out a tiny new Species of the Bi-week. Become a Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/herphighlights FULL REFERENCE LIST AVAILABLE AT: herphighlights.podbean.com Main Paper References: French SS, Neuman-Lee LA, Terletzky PA, Kiriazis NM, Taylor EN, DeNardo DF. 2017. Too much of a good thing? Human disturbance linked to ecotourism has a “dose-dependent” impact on innate immunity and oxidative stress in marine iguanas, Amblyrhynchus cristatus. Biological Conservation 210:37–47. DOI: 10.1016/j.biocon.2017.04.006. Wikelski M, Thom C. 2000. Marine iguanas shrink to survive El Niño. Nature 403:37–38. DOI: 10.1038/47396. Species of the Bi-Week: Torres-Carvajal O, Parra V, Sales Nunes PM, Koch C. 2021. A New Species of Microtegu Lizard (Gymnophthalmidae: Cercosaurinae) from Amazonian Ecuador. Journal of Herpetology 55. DOI: 10.1670/20-142. Other Mentioned Papers/Studies: D'souza A, Gale GA, Marshall BM, Khamcha D, Waengsothorn S, Strine CT. 2021. Space use and activity of Boiga cyanea – a major songbird nest predator in a seasonal tropical forest in Thailand. Global Ecology and Conservation:e01875. DOI: 10.1016/j.gecco.2021.e01875. Moravec, J., Šmíd, J., Štundl, J., & Lehr, E. (2018). Systematics of Neotropical microteiid lizards (Gymnophthalmidae, Cercosaurinae), with the description of a new genus and species from the Andean montane forests. ZooKeys, (774), 105. Wikelski, M. and P.H. Wrege. 2000. Niche expansion, body size, and survival in Galápagos marine iguanas. Oecologia 124: 107–115 Other Links/Mentions: Cassella, C. 2021. Injecting Algae Into Suffocated Tadpoles Brings Their Brain Cells Back to Life: https://www.sciencealert.com/injecting-algae-into-the-brains-of-suffocating-tadpoles-keeps-their-neurons-alive  Music: Intro/outro – Treehouse by Ed Nelson Species Bi-week theme – Mike Mooney Other Music – The Passion HiFi, www.thepassionhifi.com

Kalau Anda sering mendengarkan tentang kekayaan alam Indonesia, mungkin Anda pernah punya pertanyaan, "Lalu, kenapa?" Diskusi kali ini dengan Sabhrina Gita Aninta (@sagitaninta) membahas tentang proses inventarisasi data biodiversitas dan hal-hal yang bisa dilakukan dengan data tersebut. Iga, panggilannya, juga bercerita tentang penelitiannya di bidang biodiversity informatics yang mencakup pemodelan dari level genom hingga spesies. Setelah mengetahui pentingnya penelitian-penelitian seperti ini dilakukan, lantas apa saja yang menjadi PR kita ke depan? Ternyata, sebagai orang awam kita juga bisa terlibat dalam penelitian seperti ini melalui inisiatif yang digagas Iga dan teman-teman yang bertajuk Tambora Indonesia. (1:30) Riwayat studi (2:46) Cakupan penelitian biodiversity informatics (6:47) Mengukur tingkat kesehatan suatu ekosistem (12:20) Keterbukaan data biodiversitas dalam publikasi ilmiah dan citizen science (16:38) Pemodelan dari data biodiversitas (20:15) Kalau biodiversitas Indonesia kaya, lalu apa? (26:19) Pengalaman penelitian kelelawar di Kep. Mentawai dan proses sampling (32:25) Erosion of phylogenetic diversity in Neotropical bat assemblages (37:22) PR besar dalam penelitian biodiversitas di Indonesia

Dr. Thiago da Silva Moreira is an Adjunct Faculty at George Washington University in Washington, DC. He talks to me about his recent paper published in the Zoological Journal of the Linnean Society and his descriptions of six new species from Central America and the Caribbean. We discuss common names for linyphiid spiders, web structure, sexual selection of the genitals of these spiders, spider porn as a pickup line (!!), what it's like trying to find tiny spiders in tropical habitat, a spider named after famed author Neil Gaiman, a species named after a famous Brazilian soccer team, and how describing new species is a scientific hypothesis! The title of the paper is “Systematics of the Neotropical spider genera Jalapyphantes and Selenyphantes and the circumscription of the Pocobletus clade (Araneae: Linyphiidae).” The paper is currently available here: https://academic.oup.com/zoolinnean/article-abstract/192/3/896/6070718?redirectedFrom=fulltext To learn more about Dr. Thiago da Silva Moreira, follow him on Twitter, @tsmoreira, or check out his faculty page or Research Gate page: https://biology.columbian.gwu.edu/thiago-da-silva-moreira https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Thiago-Da-Silva-Moreira Be sure to follow New Species on Twitter (@PodcastSpecies), like the podcast page on Facebook (https://www.facebook.com/NewSpeciesPodcast), and music in this podcast is "No More (Instrumental)," by HaTom (https://fanlink.to/HaTom). If you would like to support this podcast: https://www.patreon.com/NewSpeciesPodcast

Sloths are a group of mammals native to South America that are actually quite a bizarre animal that seems like it shouldn't exist. How is it normal for a species to have a weekly poo with a poo dance? And that isn't even the weirdest thing about them. First thing first, this episode is coming out on the last day of Pride 2021, so let's talk about some good things that happened this Pride Month.Then we get into sloths, which are a weird animal that while can't walk on the ground, and move slower than any other animal on the planet. Surprisingly, though, they are good swimmers. Two-toed sloths and three-toed sloths aren't that closely related to each other and are only so similar due to Convergent evolution. Their ancestor, and the largest known sloth to ever exist, is the extinct ground sloth, which was as big as modern elephants. (Picture that). Listen now to learn about the curious Sloths, one of the strangest animasl of South America, and probably the world, too. For more information on us, visit our website at betterthanhumanpodcast.comFollow us on Twitter @betterthanhuma1on Facebook @betterthanhumanpodcaston Instagram @betterthanhumanpodcasthttps://www.tiktok.com/@betterthanhumanpodcastor Email us at betterthanhumanpodcast@gmail.comWe look forward to hearing from you, and we look forward to you joining our cult of weirdness!#betterthanhuman #cultofweirdnes

The asteroid that slammed into the Yucatan Peninsula some 66 million years ago marked the end of the Cretaceous and the reign of the dinosaurs. As famous as this extinction event is, we know considerably less about how such disturbances affected ecosystems like tropical rainforests. That is where people like Dr. Mónica Carvalho come in. Together with her colleagues, Dr. Carvalho is using vast amounts of fossil evidence from both before and after the asteroid impact to paint a picture of how the tropical rainforests of what is now Colombia were affected by this global catastrophe. From the rise of angiosperms to a complete overhaul of insect/plant interactions, you will be amazed at what these fossils can tell us. This episode was produced in part by Arek, Chellie, Paul, Dani, Tara, Elly, Colleen, Natalie, Liam, Ario, Nathan, Laura, Cari, Laura, Kali, Margaret, Mary, Connor, Nathan, Jan, Jerome, Brian, Melody, Azomonas, Ellie, University Greens, Cynthia, John, Ashley, Peter, Cathrine, Melvin, OrangeJulian, Porter, Grif, Jules, Joan, Les, Marabeth, Ali, Margaret, Southside Plants, Robert, Keiko, Bryce, Brittany, Helen, Amanda, Mikey, Rhiannon, Michelle, Kate, German, Joerg, Alejandra, Cathy, Jordan, Judy, Steve, Kae, Carole, Mr. Keith Santner, Dana, Chloe, Aaron, Sara, Kenned, Vaibhav, Kendall, Christina, Brett, Jocelyn, Kathleen, Ethan, Kaylee, Runaway Goldfish, Ryan, Donica, Chris, Shamora, Alana, Laura, Alice, Sarah, Rachel, Joanna, Griff, Philip, Paul, Matthew, Clark, Bobby, Kate, Steven, Brittney, McMansion Hell, Joey, Catherine, Brandon, Hall, Vegreville Creek and Wetlands Fund, Kevin, Oliver, John, Johansson, Christina, Jared, Hannah, Katy Pye, Brandon, Gwen, Carly, Stephen, Botanical Tours, Moonwort Studios, Liba, Mohsin Kazmi Takes Pictures, doeg, Clifton, Stephanie, Benjamin, Eli, Rachael, Plant By Design, Philip, Brent, Ron, Tim, Homestead Brooklyn, Brodie, Kevin, Sophia, Mark, Rens, Bendix, Irene, Holly, Caitlin, Manuel, Jennifer, Sara, and Margie.

National Geographic Explorer Joe Martinez is a Ph.D. student in the McGuire Center for Lepidoptera and Biodiversity in the Florida Museum of Natural History at the University of Florida. He talks to us about his paper published in ZooKeys in which he describes six new species of jaguar moths! We talk about why these are called “jaguar” moths, why do they fluoresce (they glow!) in UV light, and what these moths are doing at high altitudes! The title of the paper is “A new Andean genus, Lafontaineana, with descriptions of four new species and two new Neotropical species of Panthea (Noctuidae, Pantheinae).” The paper is in the April 6 issue of ZooKeys: https://zookeys.pensoft.net/article/56784/ To learn more about Joe Martinez, follow him on Twitter, @Jose_IMartinez, on Instagram @owletmothman, or Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ismaelmartinez.papilioslayer/ Be sure to follow New Species on Twitter (@PodcastSpecies), like the podcast page on Facebook (https://www.facebook.com/NewSpeciesPodcast), and music in this podcast is "No More (Instrumental)," by HaTom (https://fanlink.to/HaTom). If you would like to support this podcast: https://www.patreon.com/NewSpeciesPodcast

Ants are perfect models for Manuela Ramalho's research interest in microbiome and host symbiosis. Ants have one of the widest global distribution and habitat diversity of any animal. She captures her enthusiasm and shares it with listeners as she discusses the ecological role of insects and her research on ants. Listen and learn What key questions and ant facts are tied to a better understanding of their microbiome, How elements of an ant's ecosystem such as an ant's habitat and may or may not impact their microbiome, and How microbiomes might differ across different ant species and roles within a colony. Ant scientist Manuela Ramalho grew up in Brazil, an ecosystem flush with insects. Her academic life brought her in touch with all the possibilities of ant research and she's turned that work into a specialization in their microbiome. Now a postdoc researcher at Cornell University, she opens up this research world to listeners, offering an understanding of what we may learn about the impact of the microbiome on the ants themselves as well as how ant ecology, behavior, development, diet, and phylogeny determines the microbes. For example, after she and her colleagues studied the Neotropical species Daceton armigerum, they found that varying their diet had surprisingly no effect on their microbiome. She explains how little scientist understand about the roles of these microbes and how they are beginning to learn more. Some studies, for example, imply symbiotic roles such as microbes providing ants with nutritional benefits. Furthermore, as with most animal species, questions of coevolution may explain the function of microbe–ant symbiotic relationships. Ramhalho is heading in that direction with her latest study using ant phylogeny to map how the diversity of the ants combines with the phylogeny of bacteria, determining if bacteria are evolving together with their hosts. For more details and why these findings might be significant, listen in. For more about Manuela Ramalho, see her web page: manuelaramalho.wordpress.com. Episode also available on Apple Podcasts: apple.co/30PvU9C

Our second episode with Gabi Fleury. In this one, we talk more specifically about their experiences being non-binary, Black, and queer in conservation, and include only one tangent to talk about cool bugs. (Leafcutter ants have a Neotropical distribution; they don't live in Africa) Gabi was named in 2021 as one of Forbes Magazine's 30 Under 30 for science: https://www.forbes.com/30-under-30/2021/science/?profile=gabi-fleury You can see more about their work and other appearances on their website: https://fleurygs3.wixsite.com/gabifleury We have a transcript and show notes for this episode on our website: https://asabpodcast.com/2021/03/11/episode-23/ Charles is on Twitter @cockroacharles and Tessa @spacermase. The show is on Twitter @ASABpod and our website asabpodcast.com.  Thank you for listening! 

Luis Germán Naranjo es un naturalista colombiano con 30 años de experiencia profesional. Después de graduarse como Biólogo Marino en la Universidad Jorge Tadeo Lozano, obtuvo un Magister en Ecología Animal y un Ph.D. en Ecología Evolutiva de New Mexico State University. Fue profesor e investigador en la Universidad del Valle durante casi 20 años, en donde llevó a cabo y dirigió numerosos proyectos relacionados con la historia natural y la ecología de comunidades de aves residentes y migratorias en diferentes ecosistemas incluyendo manglares, planos lodosos, selvas lluviosas, valles interandinos, bosques de niebla, páramos y desiertos templados. Entre 1999 y 2001 dirigió los Programas Internacionales de American Bird Conservancy, antes de iniciar su trabajo en WWF, en donde coordinó el Programa Ecorregional para los Andes del Norte hasta 2006 y actualmente es Director de Conservación para Colombia. Luis Germán es autor/coautor de 135 artículos y libros científicos y de divulgación y ha dirigido numerosas tesis de pregrado y maestría en ciencias. Actualmente es miembro del consejo directivo de la Sociedad de Ornitología Neotropical y del comité científico del Instituto de Investigación de recursos Biológicos Alexander von Humboldt y es columnista de la edición virtual de la revista Semana Sostenible.

We finish off Invertebrate August in style, with great suggestions from Rosy and Kim! Also, I was a guest on The Flopcast last week if you want to hear me talking about DragonCon and birding with my friend Kevin! Also, he actually has a few pictures of me if you want to know what I look like (I hate having my picture taken). Further Reading: Why Do Mantids Only Have One Ear? Secrets of the orchid mantis revealed In this new praying mantis group, gender dictates disguise Male (left) and female (right) Hondurantemna chespiritoi (photos from article linked to just above): The female Hondurantemna chespiritoi showing her leaf-like wings: An orchid mantis: Vespamantoida wherleyi looks like a wasp: A Neotropical bark mantis, hiding in plain sight: The Indian domino cockroach is actually kind of cute: A hissing cockroach GET IT OFF YOUR HAND OMG WHY ARE YOU TOUCHING IT: Show Transcript: Welcome to Strange Animals Podcast. I’m your host, Kate Shaw. It’s the last week of Invertebrate August, but what a wild ride it’s been. We’ll round out the month with a few more listener suggestions, so thanks to Kim and Rosy for some awesome topics! Before we get started, though, last week I was a guest on The Flopcast, a hilarious and family-friendly podcast about geeky stuff like old cartoons and TV shows and music from when you were a kid, unless you’re a kid now in which case music from before you were born. I talked with the host Kevin about DragonCon, so if you are interested in hearing me talk about something besides animals, I’ll put a link in the show notes so you can go listen! But now, on to the invertebrates! First, let’s learn about the mantis, also called the praying mantis, which is Rosy’s suggestion. If you play Animal Crossing you’ll be familiar with the orchid mantis, but there are lots of species. Lots. Like, almost 2,500 species. They live throughout much of the world but are most common in tropical areas. All mantises have elongated bodies, enlarged forelegs used for catching and holding prey, and a triangular head with big eyes. The mantis walks on its two rear pairs of legs but holds its big front legs up to use as weapons. Most species have wings and can fly, some don’t, but they are all predators. Most are ambush predators who wait for an insect or other small animal to come near, then grab it with their spiny front legs. Mantises have good vision since they primarily hunt by sight. They’re also most active during the day. The mantis will eat, in no particular order, insects, frogs and other amphibians, lizards, snakes, small turtles, mice, small birds, spiders, other mantises, and fish. That’s right, fish. In 2017 a team researching insects in India observed a mantis catching guppies in a rooftop garden pond. To reach the guppies, it walked across the water-lilies growing on the water. The scientists observed the mantis catch and eat nine guppies over the course of several nights, and surprisingly, it hunted them in the evening and night when mantises aren’t usually active. Mantises can and will catch and eat hummingbirds by climbing onto hummingbird feeders or into flowering bushes, and when a hummingbird comes to feed, chomp! So basically, mantises will eat anything they can catch, and they can catch a lot of things. The eyesight of mantises is interesting, and scientists are discovering more about it all the time. A study published in 2018 reports that the stereo vision, also called 3D vision, that mantises have is very different from that in humans. Whereas human vision is in 3D all the time, the mantis’s stereo vision only kicks in when there’s movement nearby. At that point the mantis has sharp details of exactly where potential prey is, since that’s what’s most important to it. The mantis is also the only insect known to have stereo vision at all. The mantis doesn’t have any kind of hearing organ on its head and for a lo...

En el Emplumados de hoy hablamos del Martín Pescador, una de las aves más emblemáticas de los ríos y lagos en el sur de Chile cuya técnica de caza nos dejó asombrados.Notas del programa:El Martín Pescadorhttps://www.avesdechile.cl/047.htmEl canto del Martín Pescadorhttps://www.xeno-canto.org/17973Créditos: Daniel González Amat

Link to bioRxiv paper: http://biorxiv.org/cgi/content/short/2020.08.04.235788v1?rss=1 Authors: KAJOKAITE, K., Whalen, A., Koster, J., Perry, S. Abstract: Across multiple species of social mammals, evidence is accumulating that sociality is associated with fitness. In long-lived species, like primates, lifespan is one of the main fitness components. Here, we provide the first direct evidence that females who provide more in social services live longer. We used 18 years of data from the Lomas Barbudal Monkey project to quantify sociality in 11 capuchin (Cebus capucinus) social groups using three interaction types: grooming, support in coalitionary aggression, and foraging in close proximity. We analyzed each domain separately to understand how giving and receiving social favors impact survivorship. To estimate female sociality in each of these domains, we built an adaptation of the Social Relations Model. This approach enabled us to estimate individual rates of giving and receiving interactions and take into account the uncertainty in these estimates due to varying amounts of observations of each individual. Subsequently, we modeled adult females' survival as a function of their sociality estimate, rank, age, group size, and maternal kin presence using a Bayesian Cox proportional hazards model. We found that females who provide more grooming to other group members survive longer. There was no strong evidence that females who receive more grooming, participate more often in coalitionary aggression, and forage more often in close proximity of others also have higher survivorship. These results add a neotropical primate species to the growing list of mammals, including humans, where greater sociality is associated with longevity. Copy rights belong to original authors. Visit the link for more info

Estreando a Edição especial Supernovas, Vinícius e Maura vão discutir e refletir sobre algumas novidades da ciência. A quarentena está fazendo a gente comer mais emal? Novo achado fóssil indica mudanças na anatomia de dinossauro conhecido? Há uma tendência hereditária para o homem ter mais filhos homens ou mulheres? Quer saber as respostas dessas perguntas? Achou o título desse episódio estranho? São perguntas d+ e você já está ficando louco? Então fica até o final pra entender o porquê. .Links das notícias Tempo: 7:34 Our ability to focus may falter after eating one meal high in saturated fat. Link: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2020/05/200512134433.htm Tempo: 16:15 Spinosaurus faz história como primeiro caso conhecido de dinossauro que nadava. Link: https://www.nationalgeographicbrasil.com/ciencia/2020/04/primeira-cauda-espinossauro-confirma-animal-nadava Tempo: 25:12 Como o maior buraco na camada de ozônio no Polo Norte finalmente se fechou. Link: https://g1.globo.com/natureza/noticia/2020/05/01/como-o-maior-buraco-na-camada-de-ozonio-no-polo-norte-finalmente-se-fechou.ghtml Tempo: 35:00 The Myth of Precambrian Sponges. Link: https://evolutionnews.org/2020/05/the-myth-of-precambrian-sponges/ Tempo: 46:50 Hurricane effects on Neotropical lizards span geographic and phylogenetic scales. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/32341144 Tempo: 53:00 Fósseis de répteis que viveram antes dos dinossauros são descobertos em SC. Link: https://g1.globo.com/sc/santa-catarina/noticia/2020/05/19/fosseis-de-repteis-que-viveram-antes-dos-dinossauros-sao-descobertos-em-sc.ghtml Tempo: 58:13 Boy or girl? It's in the father's genes. https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/12/081211121835.htm . Nos siga no Instagram: instagram.com/origenspodcast . Envie suas dúvidas, elogios e sugestões no instagram com a hashtag #origensresponde ou no email origenspodcast@gmail.com . A trilha desse episódio é livre de direitos autorais, obtida através da biblioteca de áudio do Youtube. News Theme de Kevin MacLeod está licenciada sob uma licença Creative Commons Attribution (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) Artista: http://incompetech.com/

Last time we talked to Lynette Strickland, she told us all about the work that she was doing to show that tortoise beetles, which vary greatly in their appearances, are actually one species. We play some of that conversation but then we catch up with Lynette to press further into the beauty and importance of diversity within a species. And it’s a short step from talking about beetles to talking about humans. Lynette tells some of her own stories that highlight the ways that science as a discipline can benefit from increased diversity and inclusion.  Lynette Strickland received her Ph.D. from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and her B.S. in Marine Biology from Texas A&M. Her research focuses on how ecological factors and genomic factors shape a naturally-occurring color polymorphism in a species of Neotropical tortoise beetle and her work has been published in journals including Science and Hereditary. Related Links: Without Inclusion, diversity initiatives may not be enough, Science Magazine Why Black Lives Matter for Science and Faith, video recording (with Lynette Strickland) The first part of this interview is from episode 19, broadcast on October 3, 2019. Find a conversation about this episode at the BioLogos Forum.  

On today’s episode, Lynette Strickland joins Jim and producer Colin Hoogerwerf to ruminate on her love for creation. Lynette shares how her childhood curiosity in the natural world grew into a passion for doing science, why variation in a species could help it adapt to changing environments, and how studying beetles has helped her understand God’s creation.  Lynette Strickland is a Ph.D. candidate at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and a Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute PreDoctoral Fellow. She received her B.S. in Marine Biology from Texas A&M. Her research, focusing on how ecological factors and genomic factors shape a naturally-occurring color polymorphism in a species of Neotropical tortoise beetle, has been published in journals including Science and Hereditary. Find a conversation about this episode at the BioLogos Forum.

Salamanders are famous for being slippery and liking water, but we uncover some new and surprising elements in their ecology. Stay tuned for a Species of the Bi-Week that resembles a breakfast favourite. FULL REFERENCE LIST AVAILABLE AT: herphighlights.podbean.com Main Paper References: Mezebish, T. D., Blackman, A., & Novarro, A. J. (2018). Salamander climbing behavior varies among species and is correlated with community composition. Behavioral Ecology, 29(3), 686–692. https://doi.org/10.1093/beheco/ary022 Moldowan, P. D., Alex Smith, M., Baldwin, T., Bartley, T., Rollinson, N., & Wynen, H. (2019). Nature’s pitfall trap: Salamanders as rich prey for carnivorous plants in a nutrient‐poor northern bog ecosystem. The Scientific Naturalist, e02770. https://doi.org/10.1002/ecy.2770 Species of the Bi-Week: Sugawara, H., Watabe, T., Yoshikawa, T., & Nagano, M. (2018). Morphological and Molecular Analyses of Hynobius dunni Reveal a New Species from Shikoku, Japan. Herpetologica, 74(2), 159–168. https://doi.org/10.1655/Herpetologica-D-17-00002.1 Other Mentioned Papers/Studies: Adams, D. C., & Rohlf, F. J. (2000). Ecological character displacement in Plethodon: Biomechanical differences found from a geometric morphometric study. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 97(8), 4106–4111. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.97.8.4106 Other Links/Mentions: Roberts, W. E. (1994). Explosive breeding aggregations and parachuting in a Neotropical frog, Agalychnis saltator (Hylidae). Journal of Herpetology, 193-199. Stuart YE, Campbell TS, Hohenlohe PA, Reynolds RG, Revell LJ, Losos JB. 2014. Rapid evolution of a native species following invasion by a congener. Science. 346:463–466. Music: Intro/outro – Treehouse by Ed Nelson Other Music – The Passion HiFi, www.thepassionhifi.com

Children's book writer and illustrator Tasha Tudor (Books by this author) once said,   It's exciting to see things coming up again, plants that you've had for 20 or 30 years. It's like seeing an old friend. This made me think of the old saying;   Make new friends, but keep the old. One is silver and the other gold.   Perennials are old friends. Gold friends. They are the best kind of garden friends.   They may not be as flashy or exciting as the gardener's silver friends; annuals.   But, they have staying power. Peony, daylily, hosta, iris, baptisia, catmint; these are just a handful of some of the longest lived perennials.     Brevities   #OTD Today is Earth day - a celebration that started in 1970.   Next year will be the 50th anniversary.      #OTD It's the birthday of August Wilhelm Eichler, (born April 22, 1839, Neukirchen, Hesse, Ger.—died March 2, 1887, Berlin).    Eichler was a German botanist and he developed one of the first widely used natural systems of plant classification. Most importantly, it was the first classification system based on evolution. In addition, Eichler divided the plant kingdom into non-floral plants and floral plants.    Eichler spent many years of his life working tirelessly as a private assistant to the naturalist Karl Friedrich Philipp von Martinus. Martinus had traveled to Brazil and collected over 20,000 specimens. He spent the final three decades of his life documenting his findings in a book called Flora Brasiliensiswhich Eichler helped edit. Generally speaking, a Flora is a book describing all plants from a set geographic area. When Martinus died in 1868, Eichler carried on the work of Flora Brasiliensisunassisted. It was a labor of love. After Eichler died, botanist Ignatius Urban continued on with the project until its completion. Today, Wilhelm Eichler Strasse (Street) in Dresden is named in his honor.   Wilhelm Eichler who said, "The felling of the first tree is the beginning of human civilization. The felling of the last is his end."   #OTD On this day in 1958 Gloria Galeano was born.     Known as "The Queen of the Palms," Galeano was a Colombian botanistand agronomistand she devoted her entire career to studying and classifying the palm family. Apassionate teacher and researcher at the National University of Colombia, She classified more than 260 species of Palm in 45 wild genera.    It's difficult to imagine, but at the beginning of the 1980s, Colombian palm taxonomy was almost non-existent. Thus, Galeano worked in concert with her partner Rodrigo Bernal to resolve this issue. After decades of fieldwork, they published their groundbreaking work Palmas de Colombia Field Guide; the most exhaustive Flora of Colombian Palms.    Galeano never tired in her devotion to the subject of Palms, she was the author or co-author of some seventeen books, fifteen book chapters, sixty-eight scientific articles and ten electronic works, mostly on the palm as highlighted by the Institute of Natural Sciences. When Gloria Galeano first saw pictures of the newly discovered Sabinaria magnifica palm (named for her daughter, Sabina with Rodrigo Bernal), she described it as "the most beautiful of all Colombian palms." She was remembered for telling her students, "any project in which we would get involved, should be thrilling and make our blood boil"   Galeano was well aware of the harvest impacts of Colombian plants and Neotropical palms, and she was a leading voice for conservation efforts for Columbian palms. In June of 2015, Galeano co-organized the World Palm Symposium. At the event, Galeano revealed that less than four percent of tropical dry forest remains in the Colombia Caribbean region. Galeano died in 2016. Today, her legacy lives on in the plans for the conservation and sustainable use of the native wax palm.   Unearthed Words #OTD in 1775, William Bartram left Charleston, South Carolina on horseback to explore the Cherokee Nation near Franklin, North Carolina. In addition to his botanical discoveries, his journal describes traveling through a terrible storm during his journey, "It was now after noon; I approached a charming vale... Darkness gathers around, far distant thunder rolls over the trembling hills; ...all around is now still as death, ... a total inactivity and silence seems to pervade the earth; the birds afraid to utter a chirrup, ...nothing heard but the roaring of the approaching hurricane; ...now the lofty forests bend low beneath its fury,... the face of the earth is obscured by the deluge descending from the firmament, and I am deafened by the din of thunder; the tempestuous scene damps my spirits, and my horse sinks under me at the tremendous peals, as I hasten for the plain. I began to ascend the Jore Mountains, which I at length accomplished, and rested on the most elevated peak; from whence I beheld with rapture and astonishment, a sublimely awful scene of power and magnificence, a world of mountains piled upon mountains."  Today's book recommendation The Kew Gardener's Guide to Growing House Plants: The art and science to grow your own house plants (Kew Experts) Hardcover – Illustrated, March 4, 2019 by KAY MAGUIRE Which are delicate and which indestructable? - We show how to find the right home for your plants and the right plants for your home. KEW GROWING HOUSE PLANTS is a beautifully illustrated giftable gardening reference book, combining exquisite botanical illustrations with practical indoor projects. Readers can discover over 70 life-changing plants and 12 home-transforming projects. Each project is described and illustrated with step-by-step photographs. Starting from the premise that we want to show how to grow the right plant in the right place, we demonstrate the benefits of all common house plants and how to care and curate them in the home. Includes cacti, succulents, bromeliads including air plants, foliage house plants, flowering house plants, house plants for scent and air freshening. Today's Garden Chore Prioritize planting trees and shrubs   This is a great tip from gardener Lou Nicholls on twitter. Lou points out that especially if you garden on a windy spot, trees and shrubs should be your first investment. Lou says it best when he says, "You may not notice them as much as other "firework" plants, but they create a backdrop, shelter belt, and cover for birds".   Something Sweet  Reviving the little botanic spark in your heart While researching August Wilhelm Eichler, I ended up on the Berlin Botanic Garden website. Eichler was the director of the Botanic Garden from 1879 to 1887. In one of their annual reports, they shared this interesting tidbit regarding the Eichler tenure in Berlin: "This was an eventful time, with world’s fairs, the invention of electricity, and rapid industrialization. There is no question that the director of a botanic garden would have been preoccupied by such innovations, but a recent find has provided us with absolute proof that this was so. In the attic of a residential building that almost certainly once belonged to the Eichler family, a box of handwritten papers, galley proofs, herbarium material and correspondence was found... This legacy is currently being catalogued by Peter Hirsch."   Thanks for listening to the daily gardener, and remember: "For a happy, healthy life, garden every day."

  Rocco, an African grey parrot has learned to use Amazon’s Alexa to shop.  Rocco's owner Marion Wischnewski told the Daily Mail that she was shocked when she discovered packages arriving at her home that she didn’t order! It turns out Rocco had been using Alexa to order up his favorite snacks including watermelon, raisins, and broccoli.  African grey parrots are known for their ability to mimic human speech and the name Alexa has become a regular part of his vocabulary.  Apparently, Rocco has logorrhea or likes to talk incessantly and Alexa picks up on it and places the orders. Marion says she doesn’t want to keep Rocco from expressing himself, but she does have to check the shopping cart and delete any items he may have inadvertently ordered.  What do you call a person or a parrot who loves to hear themselves talk?  A popinjay!    

John Kricher, Author of numerous books and his most recent book The New Neotropical Companion (2017), a third edition of John’s successful book, A Neotropical Companion joins BCR for this epic conversation.

This fortnight we are delving into the peculiar world of caecilians. Fossorial amphibians that seldom show their faces on the surface. We chat about caecilians' strange adaptations and how a ten-year study has shed some light on their reproductive habits. The Species of the Bi-week is a suitably elongated and slimy critter. FULL REFERENCE LIST AVAILABLE AT: herphighlights.podbean.com Main Paper References: Jared, C., Mailho-Fontana, P. L., Jared, S. G. S., Kupfer, A., Delabie, J. H. C., Wilkinson, M., & Antoniazzi, M. M. (2018). Life history and reproduction of the neotropical caecilian Siphonops annulatus (Amphibia, Gymnophiona, Siphonopidae), with special emphasis on parental care. Acta Zoologica, (March), 1–11. https://doi.org/10.1111/azo.12254 Jared, C., Mailho-Fontana, P. L., Marques-Porto, R., Sciani, J. M., Pimenta, D. C., Brodie, E. D., & Antoniazzi, M. M. (2018). Skin gland concentrations adapted to different evolutionary pressures in the head and posterior regions of the caecilian Siphonops annulatus. Scientific Reports, 8(1), 1–7. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-018-22005-5 Species of the Bi-Week: Maddock, S. T., Wilkinson, M., & Gower, D. J. (2018). A new species of small, long-snouted Hypogeophis Peters, 1880 (Amphibia: Gymnophiona: Indotyphlidae) from the highest elevations of the Seychelles island of Mahé. Zootaxa, 4450(3), 359–375. https://doi.org/10.11646/zootaxa.4450.3.3 Other Mentioned Papers/Studies: Jared, C. et al. (2005). Head co-ossification, phragmosis and defense in the casque-headed tree frog Corythomantis greeningi. Journal of Zoology, 265. Sawaya, P. (1940) Sobre o veneno das glândulas cutâneas, a secreção e o coração de Siphonops annulatus. Bot. Fac. Fill. Ci. Let. Univ. São Paulo. Ser. Zool. 4, 207–270 Wilkinson, M., Kupfer, A., Marques-Porto, R., Jeffkins, H., Antoniazzi, M. M., & Jared, C. (2008). One hundred million years of skin feeding? Extended parental care in a Neotropical caecilian (Amphibia: Gymnophiona). Biology Letters, 4(4), 358–361. https://doi.org/10.1098/rsbl.2008.0217 Wilson, N. J., Stokes, A. N., Hopkins, G. R., Brodie, Jr., E. D., & Williams, C. R. (2014). Functional and physiological resistance of crayfish to amphibian toxins: tetrodotoxin resistance in the white river crayfish (Procambarus acutus). Canadian Journal of Zoology, 92(11), 939–945. https://doi.org/10.1139/cjz-2014-0128 Other Links/Mentions: BBC Life in Cold Blood - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UCF4qmxdkkM Video of caecilian babies eating the skin of their mother: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6K6szXrBHwM Music: Intro/outro – Treehouse by Ed Nelson Other Music – The Passion HiFi, www.thepassionhifi.com

Three scientists discuss the challenges and importance of amphibian conservation in the Neotropics.

Monica Carlsen discusses the evolution and diversity of the large neotropical plant genus, Anthurium.

This work presents chromosome homology maps between Mus musculus (MMU) and 2 South American rodent species from the Cricetidae group: Necromys lasiurus (NLA, 2n = 34) and Thaptomys nigrita (TNI, 2n = 52), established by ZOO-FISH using mouse chromosome-specific painting probes. Extending previous molecular cytogenetic studies in Neotropical rodents, the purpose of this work was to delineate evolutionary chromosomal rearrangements in Cricetidae rodents and to reconstruct the phylogenetic relationships among the Akodontini species. Our phylogenetic reconstruction by maximum parsimony analysis of chromosomal characters confirmed one consistent clade of all Neotropical rodents studied so far. In both species analyzed here, we observed the syntenic association of chromosome segments homologous to MMU 8/13, suggesting that this chromosome form is a synapomorphic trait exclusive to Neotropical rodents. Further, the previously described Akodontini-specific syntenic associations MMU 3/18 and MMU 6/12 were observed in N. lasiurus but not in T. nigrita, although the latter species is considered a member of the Akodontini tribe by some authors. Finally, and in agreement with this finding, N. lasiurus and Akodon serrensis share the derived fission of MMU 13, which places them as basal sister clades within Akodontini. Copyright (C) 2011 S. Karger AG, Basel

Join Host Danny Mendez as he discusses various topics on Neotropical treeboas (Corallus) and welcomes royal guests Kathy Love "The Cornsnake Queen" and Mike Heinrich "The BoaKing of Chicago" to discuss the Amazon Alliance website/forums, one of the best resources for Amazon Tree Boa care information. Visit the website at www.amazon-alliance.com and see what it's all about!

Basic spectral and temporal sound properties, such as frequency content and timing, are evaluated by the auditory system to build an internal representation of the external world and to generate auditory guided behaviour. Using echolocating bats as model system, I investigated aspects of spectral and temporal processing during echolocation and in relation to passive listening, and the echo-acoustic object recognition for navigation. In the first project (chapter 2), the spectral processing during passive and active hearing was compared in the echolocting bat Phyllostomus discolor. Sounds are ubiquitously used for many vital behaviours, such as communication, predator and prey detection, or echolocation. The frequency content of a sound is one major component for the correct perception of the transmitted information, but it is distorted while travelling from the sound source to the receiver. In order to correctly determine the frequency content of an acoustic signal, the receiver needs to compensate for these distortions. We first investigated whether P. discolor compensates for distortions of the spectral shape of transmitted sounds during passive listening. Bats were trained to discriminate lowpass filtered from highpass filtered acoustic impulses, while hearing a continuous white noise background with a flat spectral shape. We then assessed their spontaneous classification of acoustic impulses with varying spectral content depending on the background’s spectral shape (flat or lowpass filtered). Lowpass filtered noise background increased the proportion of highpass classifications of the same filtered impulses, compared to white noise background. Like humans, the bats thus compensated for the background’s spectral shape. In an active-acoustic version of the identical experiment, the bats had to classify filtered playbacks of their emitted echolocation calls instead of passively presented impulses. During echolocation, the classification of the filtered echoes was independent of the spectral shape of the passively presented background noise. Likewise, call structure did not change to compensate for the background’s spectral shape. Hence, auditory processing differs between passive and active hearing, with echolocation representing an independent mode with its own rules of auditory spectral analysis. The second project (chapter 3) was concerned with the accurate measurement of the time of occurrence of auditory signals, and as such also distance in echolocation. In addition, the importance of passive listening compared to echolocation turned out to be an unexpected factor in this study. To measure the distance to objects, called ranging, bats measure the time delay between an outgoing call and its returning echo. Ranging accuracy received considerable interest in echolocation research for several reasons: (i) behaviourally, it is of importance for the bat’s ability to locate objects and navigate its surrounding, (ii) physiologically, the neuronal implementation of precise measurements of very short time intervals is a challenge and (iii) the conjectured echo-acoustic receiver of bats is of interest for signal processing. Here, I trained the nectarivorous bat Glossophaga soricina to detect a jittering real target and found a biologically plausible distance accuracy of 4–7 mm, corresponding to a temporal accuracy of 20–40 μs. However, presumably all bats did not learn to use the jittering echo delay as the first and most prominent cue, but relied on passive acoustic listening first, which could only be prevented by the playback of masking noise. This shows that even a non-gleaning bat heavily relies on passive acoustic cues and that the measuring of short time intervals is difficult. This result questions other studies reporting a sub-microsecond time jitter threshold. The third project (chapter 4) linked the perception of echo-acoustic stimuli to the appropriate behavioural reactions, namely evasive flight manoeuvres around virtual objects presented in the flight paths of wild, untrained bats. Echolocating bats are able to orient in complete darkness only by analysing the echoes of their emitted calls. They detect, recognize and classify objects based on the spectro-temporal reflection pattern received at the two ears. Auditory object analysis, however, is inevitably more complicated than visual object analysis, because the one-dimensional acoustic time signal only transmits range information, i.e., the object’s distance and its longitudinal extent. All other object dimensions like width and height have to be inferred from comparative analysis of the signals at both ears and over time. The purpose of this study was to measure perceived object dimensions in wild, experimentally naïve bats by video-recording and analysing the bats’ evasive flight manoeuvres in response to the presentation of virtual echo-acoustic objects with independently manipulated acoustic parameters. Flight manoeuvres were analysed by extracting the flight paths of all passing bats. As a control to our method, we also recorded the flight paths of bats in response to a real object. Bats avoided the real object by flying around it. However, we did not find any flight path changes in response to the presentation of several virtual objects. We assume that the missing spatial extent of virtual echo-acoustic objects, due to playback from only one loudspeaker, was the main reason for the failure to evoke evasive flight manoeuvres. This study therefore emphasises for the first time the importance of the spatial dimension of virtual objects, which were up to now neglected in virtual object presentations.

Tanytarsus is one of the most abundant and diverse genus of Chironomidae. The delimitation of species is based mainly on features of the male genitalia, supported by pupal diagnostic characters. The main purpose of this study was to review all described Tanytarsus species from the Neotropical Region, including some closely related taxa, in order to contribute to the knowledge of the genus Tanytarsus and to the comprehension of the chironomid systematic. The present dissertation is the first review of the genus Tanytarsus in the Neotropical Region. The revision includes more complete diagnoses, morphological descriptions and diagnostic keys to adult males and pupae, as well as new drawings, more detailed measurements, discussions, notes on distribution and, as far as possible, ecological remarks. Pupae and adult males of Nimbocera patagonica Reiss, 1972, Tanytarsus clivosus Reiss, 1972, Tanytarsus cuieirensis Fittkau & Reiss, 1973, Tanytarsus fastigatus Reiss, 1972, Tanytarsus hamatus Reiss, 1972, Tanytarsus hastatus Sublette & Sasa, 1994, Tanytarsus impar Trivinho-Strixino & Strixino, 2004, Tanytarsus ligulatus Reiss, 1972, Tanytarsus limneticus Sublette, 1964, Tanytarsus magnus Trivinho-Strixino & Strixino, 2004, Tanytarsus marauia Sanseverino, Wiedenbrug & Fittkau, 2002, Tanytarsus pandus Sublette & Sasa, 1994, Tanytarsus revolta Sanseverino, Wiedenbrug & Fittkau, 2002, Tanytarsus rhabdomantis (Trivinho-Strixino & Strixino, 1991), Tanytarsus rinihuensis Reiss, 1972, Tanytarsus waika Sanseverino, Wiedenbrug & Fittkau, 2002, and Tanytarsus xingu Sanseverino, Wiedenbrug & Fittkau, 2002 as well as adult males of Tanytarsus branquini Fittkau & Reiss, 1973, Tanytarsus capitatus Sublette & Sasa, 1994, Tanytarsus cururui Fittkau & Reiss, 1973, Tanytarsus curvicristatus Contreras-Lichtenberg, 1988, Tanytarsus guatemalensis Sublette & Sasa, 1994, Tanytarsus monospinosus Ekrem & Reiss, 1999, Tanytarsus paraligulatus Reiss, 1972, Tanytarsus reissi Paggi, 1992, Tanytarsus riopreto Fittkau & Reiss, 1973, and Tanytarsus tumultuarius Ekrem & Reiss, 1999 are reviewed, redescribed and diagnosed. The pupa of Tanytarsus ligulatus Reiss is described for the first time. One paratype and some specimens of Tanytarsus ligulatus Reiss are slightly different from the holotype, and thus are described separately as Tanytarsus cf. ligulatus. The pupa and adult male of Tanytarsus amazonicus spec. nov. as well as adult males of Tanytarsus digitatus spec. nov., Tanytarsus friburgensis spec. nov., Tanytarsus jacaretingensis spec. nov., Tanytarsus pararinihuensis spec. nov. and Tanytarsus pseudorinihuensis spec. nov. are described as new to science. Caladomyia tuberculata (Reiss, 1972) comb. nov. and Caladomyia alata (Paggi, 1992) comb. nov. were previously placed in Tanytarsus and are transferred to the genus Caladomyia Säwedal, 1981. The pupa and adult male of C. tuberculata as well as the adult male of C. alata are also redescribed and diagnosed, and their placement in the genus Caladomyia is discussed. The Tanytarsus riopreto and Tanytarsus marauia species groups are discussed in the light of imaginal and pupal morphology. The diagnostic characters proposed for each group are discussed and compared among their members. In the past, the immature stages of the Nearctic Tanytarsus limneticus as well as those of the Neotropical Tanytarsus rhabdomantis were erroneous placed in the monotypic genus Nimbocera. A detailed discussion about Nimbocera patagonica, Tanytarsus limneticus and Tanytarsus rhabdomantis is presented, including comparisons of immatures and adults and considerations about the validity of the genus Nimbocera. Some Neotropical species seem to share diagnostic characters with Holarctic Tanytarsus species groups. Thus, some Holarctic groups are also discussed and, as far as possible, figured. It was in the scope of this study the recognition and selection of useful characters in imaginal and immature stages in order to improve the systematic of the genus, to discuss the existence of groups of species, to construct diagnostic keys and to allow systematic predictions. The selected morphological features, measurements and terminology used in the present dissertation are described, commented and figured. Keys to adult males and pupae of the studied species were constructed based on diagnostic characters and are presented here for the first time. Potential morphological characters and their states were tentatively selected and commented in the final discussion of the current dissertation.