{"id":5231,"date":"2011-05-26T10:43:10","date_gmt":"2011-05-26T14:43:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/esa.org\/esablog\/?p=5231"},"modified":"2011-05-26T10:43:10","modified_gmt":"2011-05-26T14:43:10","slug":"extreme-weather-campaigning-honeybees-and-tracking-whale-sharks","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/esa.org\/esablog\/2011\/05\/26\/extreme-weather-campaigning-honeybees-and-tracking-whale-sharks\/","title":{"rendered":"Extreme weather, campaigning honeybees and tracking whale sharks"},"content":{"rendered":"

This post contributed by Molly Taylor, ESA Science Writing Intern.<\/em><\/p>\n

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\"\"<\/a>Extreme weather:<\/strong> The rare multi-vortex that hit Joplin, Missouri on May 22 has claimed more than 100 lives and destroyed countless homes and buildings. Unfortunately, this is not the only natural disaster to devastate the U.S. this year. According to a recent Washington Post <\/em>article, this storm season is turning out to be one of the most violent on record. The extreme weather, Brian Vastag and Ed O\u2019Keefe reported in the article, is due at least in part to La Nina: \u201cThe jet stream\u2019s river of cool air high in the atmosphere pulls warmer, more humid air from the ground upward, forming thunderstorm \u2018supercells.\u2019 Such a pattern drove the outbreak of more than 300 tornadoes that swept from Mississippi to Tennessee in late April, killing at least 365\u2026\u201d But according to the Post<\/em>, researchers have also been exploring the potential role of climate change in recent weather patterns. Read more<\/a> at \u201cStorm season on deadly path; Obama to visit Joplin.\u201d<\/p>\n

Campaigning honeybees<\/strong>: In the spring, beehives can reach capacity, basically overflowing with honey and bee larva. This overcrowding can cause the hive to literally burst in two, leaving half of the population in need of a new home. The old queen leads one half of the homeless pack to establish a new colony at a separate location, while a new queen takes charge of the existing hive. But where do the homeless bees go? Despite the royal title, the queen is not ruling a monarchy\u2014worker bees actually vote for their favorite location. \u201cThe older, more experienced bees\u2026fly off looking for options,\u201d wrote NPR\u2019s Robert Krulwich, and upon their return, they \u201cannounce their \u2018finds\u2019 by dancing.\u201d That is the point when the \u201cwaggle dancing\u201d begins (and yes, that is the official term), whereby the scouting bees use dancing to signal their sister bees. This encourages the sister bees to have a peek at the potential new home, and if they like what they see, they start doing the same dance. \u201cThis is how bees \u2018vote,\u2019\u201d wrote Krulwich. \u201cThey dance themselves into a consensus.\u201d Read more <\/a>at \u201cNature\u2019s Secret: Why Honey Bees Are Better Politicians Than Humans.\u201d<\/p>\n

Tracking whale sharks:<\/strong> \u201cWith the help of algorithms designed to guide the Hubble telescope\u2019s starscape surveys, conservation-minded coders have designed software that helps biologists identify whale sharks by their spots,\u201d wrote Brandon Keim in a recent Wired Science<\/em> article. \u201cThe program enlists the help of citizens with cameras, and lets researchers track Earth\u2019s biggest fish across time and oceans.\u201d In the past, researchers have found whale sharks to be too elusive to track as the whales easily shed the plastic tags that are traditionally used by biologists, and their wide migratory range crosses international boundaries and can exceed researchers\u2019 scope. This new approach, primarily relying on identifying whales by their spots, could greatly improve the success rate of re-encountering a tagged individual (currently at less than 1%). The principle of using algorithms to pattern individual characteristics as \u201cpermanent tags\u201d can even be applied to other species, such as whisker patterns of polar bears and fin shapes of humpback whales. Read more <\/a>at \u201cTracking Whale Sharks With Astronomical Algorithms\u201d or listen to an ESA original podcast<\/a> on the beginning of this research.<\/p>\n

Migration patterns:<\/strong> In a study published recently in Global Ecology and Biogeography<\/em>, researchers analyzed the movement patterns of four hoofed mammal species, cross referencing the tracking data with 25 years of satellite data detailing how the landscape changed seasonally and yearly. As Sarah Zielinski explained on Smithsonian\u2019s Surprising Science<\/em> blog, \u201cScientists have traditionally labeled species of hoofed mammals<\/a> as either \u2018migratory,\u2019 meaning they travel long distances from one place to another and back again, or \u2018non-migratory\u2026\u2019\u201d Traditionally, conservation plans have been designed using these two categories. But in this study, scientists analyzed patterns in vegetation across each species and determined some were better labeled in a new \u201cnomadic\u201d category; the findings also have implications for conservation strategies. Read more<\/a> at \u201cVegetation Determines Animal Migration Patterns.\u201d<\/p>\n

Ocean acidification<\/strong>: Researchers in Australia have discovered that corals exposed to higher CO2 atmospheric conditions, such as the conditions expected in the late-21st<\/sup>-century, perished in just 3 weeks. Sarah Zielinski wrote recently on Smithsonian\u2019s Surprising Science<\/em> blog, \u201cif the ocean becomes too acidic [the coral] won\u2019t be able to create their calcified skeletons; the chemical reaction they rely on slows down under lower pH levels.\u201d In an experimental model, a common hard coral species and a common reef seaweed species cohabited tanks in the lab. Each tank had one of four C02 levels in the air above it, ranging from pre-industrial atmospheric CO2 levels at the low end to late-21st<\/sup>-century estimated levels at the high end. Though the experiment did not take into account other reef dynamics, such as plant-eating fish, it did not reveal pleasant news for the future health of coral reefs. That is, the study published in Ecology Letters<\/em> indicated higher CO2 levels could also increase coral\u2019s competition with seaweed. \u00a0Read more <\/a>at \u201cOcean Acidification and the Battle Between Coral and Seaweed.\u201d<\/p>\n

Also, bioluminescence in the deep seas<\/a> , a catalogue of the Davalliaceae<\/a> family of epiphytic ferns, what reproductive secret<\/a> led to the spiny dogfishes\u2019 recovery from overfishing and a classification of science bloggers<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Molly Taylor earned a B.A. in Anthropology and Chinese Language and Culture from the College of William & Mary. She has served as the California Regional Program Coordinator for Jane Goodall\u2019s Roots & Shoots, a program of the Jane Goodall Institute, and has interned with ABC news. She has also participated in archaeological and paleontological digs as well as a primatology study.<\/em><\/p>\n

<\/em><\/p>\n

Photo Credit: Dtraveller<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This post contributed by Molly Taylor, ESA Science Writing Intern. Extreme weather: The rare multi-vortex that hit Joplin, Missouri on May 22 has claimed more than 100 lives and destroyed countless homes and buildings. Unfortunately, this is not the only natural disaster to devastate the U.S. this year. According to a recent Washington Post article, this storm season is turning…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":45,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[1111,661,991,60,447,62,249,7,217,865,92,64,1117,19,504,69,910,1061,1212,908,37],"class_list":["post-5231","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-research","tag-atmosphere","tag-bees","tag-climate-2","tag-climate-change","tag-co2","tag-colony","tag-competition","tag-conservation","tag-coral-reefs","tag-disaster","tag-environment","tag-honeybees","tag-larva","tag-migration","tag-movement-patterns","tag-ocean-acidification","tag-oceans","tag-sharks","tag-storms","tag-vegetation","tag-whales"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/esa.org\/esablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5231","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/esa.org\/esablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/esa.org\/esablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/esa.org\/esablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/45"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/esa.org\/esablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5231"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/esa.org\/esablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5231\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/esa.org\/esablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5231"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/esa.org\/esablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5231"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/esa.org\/esablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5231"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}