Cabbage White
Originally uploaded by eclectic echoes.
A Small Cabbage White (Pieris rapae) from our garden. These little beauties are often overlooked because of their plain coloration, but they are among my favorites. I see the adults most often enjoying Queen Anne’s Lace, but the caterpillars feed mostly on plants of the Brassicaceae (cabbage or mustard family). Next year we plan to plant some horseradish in the garden, which will hopefully attract more of these little beauties and let me capture the entire life cycle for Larval Images.
There is a chance to capture some of that life cycle now as the small white will continue to be found here until the hard freeze comes. They hibernate in pupae form and will be the first butters we see in the late winter or early spring.
Of course, this is also one of my favorites, because it’s the N.American cousin of the Large Cabbage White (Pieris brassicae) of Eurasia. P. brassicae is the species that I blogged about at The Other 95%. Some recent research showed it is in the middle of a three way evolutionary arms race with its host plant and a parasitic wasp, because the male’s ejaculate attracts parasites both direct and indirectly.
Classification
- Kingdom
- Animalia
- Phylum
- Arthropoda
- Class
- Insecta
- Order
- Lepidoptera
- Family
- Pieridae
- Genus
- Pieris
- Species
- Pieris rapae
Life Photo MemeMy father is a professional photographer and now has a web site to show some of his works. I love his bear series of photographs and hope you will too. The cool thing is that he is also providing some facts and conservation information about some of these magnificent animals. I often have to wonder if the work he will do as a photographer will have more impact in informing people’s opinion about nature and conservation than my plans as a scientist or science communicator.
My own photography has taken a back seat to school and I do miss it. I especially love doing underwater video and photo work. If I could make an impact by producing a book or being on the team that produces a book on the beauty of underwater life similar to the magnificent and inspirational books Reef by Scubazoo
Speaking of science communication, I will now be participating in a multi-author blog called The Other 95% (TO95% for short). It is a site mostly dedicated to talking about invertebrates and the latest news, science publications, jokes, videos, etc. related to inverts.
I just put up my first posting there, about recent discoveries of social and complex mating rituals in a species of octopus. I hope you will look at it and enjoy. I took this on in part to help myself become a better writer and in part to help spread the beauty of inverts, especially cephalopods.
]]>One of the family’s big presents this year was a nice zoom dissecting microscope with a set of 50 metazoan and 50 plant biology classroom slides. Johann and Tammy have been going through a few prepared slides per session, but whenever he gets on the scopes at the university, he usually gets to look at bacteria through the epifluorescent scopes or all kinds of zooplankton through the dissecting scopes there, so it is not really the same looking at a dead, prepared slide, many of which are largely unrecognizable as being something once alive.
For one of my classes last week, we did a bivalve particle clearing rate experiment using some mussels (Mytilus edulis) gathered from the water just off campus. As I was separating out some of the mussels in the lab, I noticed a ~15mm character in a preying mantis pose — it looked almost like a walking stick doing a Karate kid final kick, a Caprellid amphipod. I separated the small mussel it was on from the rest of the bunch and put it aside in a beaker. After everything was cleaned up from the experiment, I took the mussel and amphipod home to Johann and Tammy.
When I got home, I set the beaker on the kitchen counter while I stripped off the book satchel, laptop, coat, etc… before I was done Johann was already staring closely at the two occupants of the beaker. By the time I had turned back around, he assaulted me with, “Cool! What is that?! That’s mytilus, but what is THAT?!”
He spent the next hour watching both the caprellid and the mussel, (Gotta love low heat light sources!), calling Tammy and me over to examine some detail he had noticed or watching for some new behavior he just witnessed. The caprellid mostly repeated a pretty set cycle: it did its characteristic pose and swayed its upper body through the water, then remained still for minutes at a time. It did occasionally maneuver to a new location with it’s inchworm style motion.
The mussel opened and closed periodically, which allowed Johann to observe the mantle skirt closely. It also began to cement its byssel threads to the beaker using its foot. Johann watched this both through the scope and with the naked eye. After an hour he had sketched both thoroughly and was done for the night. Tammy, Johann, and I decided we can’t tell exactly what species the caprellid was, though we suspect it is a male Caprella mutica, an invasive species known to be here in the Long Island Sound, specifically in the Mystic estuary.
I took the opportunity to see if I could hand hold the camera and get a decent shot through the scope, with and without one of the 15x occulars in place. While not as nice as having a dedicated imager like we have in the teaching lab, it is a decent result for hand held and a good starting point. I’m thinking about modifying a lens cap/body cap to help in alignment and holding the camera in place.
So what is a caprellid amphipod?
Caprellid amphipods (a.k.a. skeleton shrimp) are small marine crustaceans which have been found on diverse habitats from deep ocean hydrothermal vents to shallow estuarine waters. These small amphipods spend their entire life attached to some form of substrate — usually seaweeds, and encrusting or non-mobile invertebrates such as barnacles, bryozoans, and mussels. They are also often found on docks,ropes, and nets used in aquaculture. Using the last three pairs of appendages, they cling to seaweed, bivalves, or other substrate with their claws (gnathopods) spread wide as they bend side to side waving through the water.
“That’s a caprellid,” said Dr. Jon Moore. To demonstrate its behavior, he and Mercer Brugler invented the “Caprellid dance,” holding up both hands and waving them, while shifting hips from side to side. This made clear to everyone what kind of organism they were looking at.
“Oh yes, the caprellid!”Log from the NOAA Mountains of the Sea exploration:
May 15 2004
Caprellids appear to be omnivorous opportunists, eating anything including diatoms, copepods, amphipods, and nematodes. In turn they are eaten by a variety of fish, thus they form a link between the single celled algae and predatory fish.
A Caprella mutica male (top) and female from Dr. Gail Ashton’s work at SAMS
Caprella mutica is a fairly recent invader to Long Island Sound. Originally from the shores of Japan and China, it was confirmed in Connecticut waters when it was found at the Mystic Yacht Yard in 2003. C. mutica has also successfully colonized most of Europe’s shores, the Pacific Northwest, and New Zealand. Part of its success stems from its tolerance for a wide range of temperatures (-1.8 to 30°C) and salinities (15 — 35+psu). (Ashton et al. 2007)
Ashton, G. V., Willis, K. J., Cook, E. J. & Burrows, M. (2007). Distribution of the introduced amphipod, Caprella mutica Schurin, 1935 (Amphipoda: Caprellida: Caprellidae) on the west coast of Scotland and a review of its global distribution. Hydrobiologia 590, 31-41
DOI 10.1007/s10750-007-0754-y
Kingdom: Animalia
Phylum: Arthropoda
subPhylum: Crustacea
Class: Malacostraca
Order: Amphipoda
Family: Caprellidea
Genus: Cabrella
species: Caprella mutica
If you’re looking for just my Photography, you’ll find it on Flickr where I use the screen name EclecticEchoes. Again Thank you for stopping by. Please leave a comment if you like what you see.
Sooo…
The group of people at Earth Shots contacted me to ask about posting A Mother’s Touch a while back (pre Belize)…it looks like they decided to put it up for today. If you’re not familiar with Earth Shots have a look…a nature oriented image a day, and they do a pretty good job of finding some good ones. I’m pretty happy about it as it is a touching image that I hope reaches people.
]]>That state of mind lasted for the first week Eric was home. He wanted to keep wearing shorts and sandals like he did in Belize, never mind that snow was on the ground. He went out to the grocery store to buy coconuts, bananas, and tropical fruit juices. He’s only wanted to listen to the reggae and Caribbean music we have. The funny thing is that I understand. I’ve traveled to places that have affected me the same way.
Johann has enjoyed fresh coconut and coconut water. He now has more coconut shells to play with as instruments or boats in the bathtub. He and Eric have been floating them in the water while shining the underwater flashlight through the ripples in the bathwater, creating water reflections on the walls and ceiling. Johann is going around the house singing Bob Marley songs. We hung up the wooden tropical saltwater fish mobile with chimes that Eric bought. Eric lamented that since he can’t buy Belikins here, he had to go out and buy some Coronas to drink. Johann piped up and said, “What? You’re going to drink some PELICANS, Daddy?”, followed by his infectious laugh. So Eric is slowly readjusting to the reality of our life in Connecticut and we’ve reached a new state of abnormal with Belizean flare. Don’t worry, be happy, man!
What we found was a very unique museum that boasts being the first art museum in America dedicated to American art. Miss Suzanne had also given Johann an activity booklet the museum gives out to children, which we brought with us. They have a very nice collection and as we found the items on the pieces featured, we crossed them off the list. It was a fun treasure hunt. Then we came to the Walter Wick room.
We were drawn to the room like magnets to a refrigerator. All three of us were so taken with the colors, puzzles, and artistry of the photographs that we could not contain our excitement. Johann recognized the pictures from Walter Wick’s book Optical Tricks, which we had inadvertently checked out from the library the week before. The original set-up from one of the book’s photographs was there for people to view. Johann was so excited to see the original set-up, he went back to it many times and one last time before we left that part of the museum. We could not have planned it any better. The photo puzzles that were new to us could not be passed by until we had solved each one.
One of the guests watched us. Eric noticed her oscillating near to where we were several times during the time we were there, so that she was close enough to eavesdrop. She smiled when I enthusiastically told Eric and Johann how I had solved part of the mirror puzzle and asked them to come look and work the rest of the puzzle with me. Another time Johann noticed Walter Wick used a Schleich toy fox just like his in the Puss in Boots setting for the Do You See What I See? book covering fairy tales. She was visibly surprised when Eric not only shared Johann’s interest, but agreed to help him create his own photos like Walter Wick. I laughed when we realized we spent over 3 hours at the museum, the majority of which was spent in that exhibit. As we set out for the day, we figured we’d only be there a maximum of 1 hour. Our next stop was the museum bookstore. The next time we went to the library we looked for another Walter Wick book. Our next physics project will be a balloon popping gizmo based on Walter Wick’s contraption, with a deliberate focus on all the simple machines that go into making it. I’m not sure who’s more excited about the project: me, Eric or Johann.
When we had started out that day, Eric and I were tired and weighed down by all the work we had before us, but that was the only day we could go, and there was a promise to be kept. I’m so glad we didn’t decide we were too tired or give up when it took longer than it should have to find the museum. It was definitely worth it!
The trail through the woods to get to the beach was beautiful. We saw several squirrels, chipmunks, and birds. The most interesting evidence of animals was the footprints I noticed in the mud. Johann studied and recorded them in his notebook. It was exciting for him to take his book-learned knowledge from Field Trips with Jim Arnosky and be able to positively identify the animal tracks. Eric took pictures. Over the following couple of days, they worked on mapping out the animal rush hour traffic jam that we recorded.
Johann learned about Columbus Day. In answering his questions, we got onto the topic of Leif Ericsson. Johann asked why we celebrated Columbus Day if Leif Ericsson was really the first European to come to North America. He thought there should be a holiday for him. At the time, I didn’t know there is now such a day named for him (October 9), and agreed. I confessed that the idea of Columbus Day always bothered me. He wasn’t the first. His mission was a failure. No one corrected him when he called the native people here Indians, they just went along with his mistake, which would really annoy me if I was a Native North or South American. And he only made multiple trips to the New World out of greed. But he was the impetus for Europeans wanting to come to America and settle here.
Johann asked if we could have an Eric the Red Day on October 13 and a Leif Ericsson Day on October 14. He even wrote it on the calendar. I did some minor research to make a Viking-inspired dinner for both nights. Eric took Johann to the toy store to get the small Playmobil Viking boat and men for our table centerpiece. I quipped that a Pippi Longstocking Day would have more meaning to me than Columbus Day. I need to watch what I say. Pippi Longstocking Day was October 23.
Eric had a crunch for schoolwork and exams. We carved the pumpkin for our neighbor down the hall. Then it was already time to pick apples at Holmberg Orchards. We went October 21. The people at the orchard said we missed picking raspberries, but we were welcome to eat what we could find left on the bushes. Boy, was that good! I tried to put the breaks on the volume of apples Eric and Johann were picking, but to no avail. I wasn’t sure we’d be able to eat them all before they went bad, but we did it! With the half bushel we brought home we had apple pancakes, apple pie, apple crisp, apple turnovers, apple fritters, Great Grandma Heupel’s applesauce, applesauce spice cake, and just plain apples! A new favorite snack was all the apple peelings we had while I was baking. Johann said we had apples just like Rebecca Estelle had pumpkins in Too Many Pumpkins from story time on October 19. She had so many pumpkins, that after she had scooped out all the seeds and cooked all the pumpkins into everything imaginable, she had a pile of seeds in the corner of her kitchen that engulfed her rocking chair and stood taller than she was!
Our old neighbor, who owns a pajama store and an angel paraphernalia store at Mystic Village, invited us to the pajama breakfast at VooDoo Grill October 29. If you showed up in your pajamas, you got free coffee or tea. If you showed up in Nami’s Jammies, breakfast was on our neighbor. So Johann and I got a free breakfast and we had fun at the restaurant pajama party. After we helped a friend move some furniture into her storage unit, I put the finishing touches on Johann’s Halloween costume.
Eric and I managed to dress up for Halloween this year too. Johann went as an elephant in his pajamas at bedtime (think Babar’s child getting ready for bed), Eric went as a mad scientist (not much of a stretch there), and I went as a little girl in her pajamas (Johann says I looked like Pippi Longstocking). After trick-or-treating at Mystic Village, we walked in the Halloween parade down Main St. and then trick-or-treated in the neighborhood near the fire station on the way home. Earlier in the day Johann had his dental check-up. Halloween was the only opening they had, so I took it! Johann has 6 loose teeth, one of which is so loose right now, I don’t know what’s holding it in! It didn’t fall out for Thanksgiving, but I think the dentist is right that we will have that super cute Christmas picture with a lot of missing front teeth.
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Panning
Originally uploaded by eclectic echoes.
Finally, the chance to check out Aperture and Lightrooom (oops that’s “Photoshop Lightroom” now…whatever…), head to head so to speak on the same machine with the same photo sets.
I really am impressed with lightroom from a workflow standpoint. Almost everything in on app, and set up fairly logically, though I do have my nits to pick with Adobe about the workflow organization of some items. However… if you have a large library say over 5000 photos… Lightroom becomes slower than a snail. And I mean very slow. Unusably slow. Painful.
Of course that is one of the places that Aperture is supposed to be good at. Should be interesting!
]]>Oddly enough Google Maps reports the distance of the course to be 256 miles. Granted a mouse click is not terribly accurate, so there are a couple of miles…but not 56. I wonder if Google fully takes into account that 1°λ = 111km × cos φ. Either that, or the Fireweed 400 is more like the Fireweed 500! Hm…maybe I’ll see about getting a run at the 200 by the time I’m 40 and verify the distance for myself.
Edit Aug 9th 2006: After watching the DVD from the Fireweed 400, which George Stransky kindly sent to me, I realized that the start line was not in any town setting. The start for all of the Fireweed races is located outside of Sheep Mountain Lodge. Unfortunately, on Google Maps it is located by their PO Box address in Palmer, Alaska but they are actually located some 50 odd miles further east at mile marker 113 on Glenn Highway. So that explains the 56 mile error I got from plotting the route on Google Maps. The DVD by the way was a great introduction to the ride/race. If you are seriously interested in this ride (in any of it’s lengths from 50 to 400 miles, tandem, relay or solo) I suggest contacting George throught the Fireweed 400 site (The announcement of the DVD is on their news page).
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Last year we got Johann his first bike. This year both Tammy and I have taken to riding our bikes more, and now we picked up a used “insta-tandem” so we can go for longer rides as a family this summer and fall. It feels real good too (both cycling as a family and leaving the car behind). The past couple times we have been to the cycling shop was for Johann. First we went to get him his own Camelback Mini-Mule (He kept snagging my CamelBak wearing it all day and drinking it dry), then the insta-tandem.
Two of the young ladies who work there are quite taken with him as he discusses the Tour and his favorite riders with them as well as riding. He declared the other day to one of them that he wanted to grow up to be a scientist and cyclist. Typically they recognize me primarily as his father. When we showed up Saturday morning to pick up some new tubes for my bike (horrible flat Friday on the way home from work). They asked where he was. When I indicated he was in the car (with Tammy) they wanted to say “Hi” to him, so I had to bring him in before I could go. They are conspiring to set him up with a Trek KDR 1000 (or it’s then equivilent) as soon as his legs are long enough.
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