Years since detection. Infected species. The number of infected US states and Canadian provinces. The ever-increasing body count. The unsustainably high mortality rates (Frick et al. 2010). In some ways, the statistics are sterilizing, objective, and easier to deal with than the stark reality of empty caves, absent roosts, and the silent spring and summer nights. But the numbers are just …
Our Slice of the Carbon Cycle: Down on the Farm
Looking out an airplane window, it is shocking to see how much of the Earth’s surface is farmland – all those irrigated circles and squares, stretching on to the horizon. If this land was not tilled, sowed, sprayed, guarded and harvested – if it was not teased into the tidy, geometric, human shapes we see from the plane – it could be dales …
Plants Without Chlorophyll: It’s Easy Being Green, But Stealing is Even Easier
Featured images, left to right: pinesap, ghost plant, spotted coralroot orchid. Photos: Katie Grzesiak Plants are Plants Plants make their food with energy from the sun; that’s what is often used to define them as plants. If I want to throw my degrees around, I call them “photoautotrophs,” from the Greek for “light,” “self,” and “feed.” Photosynthesis! It’s super neat, …
Parasites of the Mind
Cover photo by Erich G. Vallery, USDA Forest Service – SRS-4552, Bugwood.org Parasites are a beautiful nightmare. The many lineages of parasites have evolved all sorts of twisted, macabre ways of making a living off their host. Some are content to live on our skin and feed off sweat and dead skin, while others must burrow deep inside to get their …
The Romance of the Garden
This post is adapted from the original on my (now-defunct) personal blog “Strange Branches.” If you live in Zone 5-7 in the US (see map), this is a good time to buy seeds and seedlings to start your garden, so I thought I’d give you a gentle nudge. For the past four years now, my partner Jen and I have been …
Symbiosis: What’s in a Name?
In the natural world, no species is an island. Every living thing is enmeshed in a web of interdependency with other species. In the broadest sense, all living things depend on the metabolism of other species to deliver the nutrients they need in a form they can use. Without the photosynthesis of the world’s great forests, coral reefs and algae beds, there would …
- Page 2 of 2
- 1
- 2