First Monarch of the Year!

Had my first monarch visitor to my butterfly garden this year. Not a great picture but I was on my way out, ran back inside to grab my camera.



Could it be the adult of this larva from summer 2005?



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Carnival of Bent Attractions now online!

The 7th edition of the Carnival of Bent Attractions is now online at Ron Hudson's blog 2sides2ron, including my report on the Identity Police. If you are interested in LGBT issues, be sure to check it out at http://ronhudson.blogspot.com/2006/06/seventh-edition-of-carnival-of-bent.html


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The Carnival of Genes (Mendel's Garden)

Update! RPM and I are currently setting up a blog just for this carnival, soon to be at:
http://mendels-garden.blogspot.com/

Carnivals seem like great fun; I have been in several and thought it would be fun to organize one for genetics in the broad sense. So if you have posts about any aspect of genetics, send them on and let's see what happens. The deadline for submissions is 11:59 pm on June 15.

Possible topics could include classical genetics(what ever that is), evo devo, population genetics and evolution, behavioral genetics, viruses, regulation of gene expression, medical genetics , genetic counseling and ethical issues.

Note this Carnival has been renamed Mendel's Garden. A tip of the telomere to RPM at Evolgen.



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Ramble through Prairie Park

Had a nice ramble at Prairie Park which is about 1/2 mile from my house. If you are ever in Lawrence it is worth a visit (map). There are about 5 miles of easily walkable trails, a nice little museum, a state fishing lake called Mary's Lake(Hey it's a large pond but very popular) and a small patch of native prairie.

This dragonfly is the only one of many that cooperated with me. The vertical pose of the abdomen caught my eye. Don't know if that is characteristic of this species, but this one would move and then take up that abdomen up pose.




I was pleased to find this carpenter bee(Xylocopa virginica). I don't think of these bees as being common in this area, but I have seen several around my garden and they were all over this legume.




Another tiger beetle, I know. But this one cooperated very nicely.



Finally a few flowers such as this small phlox. There was not a whole lot in bloom in the native prairie area.



A Prairie Mimosa.



Lastly, a very delicate prairie pink. I like the mottled petals:




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Follow up on Identity Police

As a follow up to my earlier post, Joe Nadeau, the choir director fired from St Agnes, has taken a job at First Lutheran Church in Mission Hills KS. Good to see he found an accepting church. What I find most telling is this quote from the Kansas City Star:

St. Agnes' pastor, Monsignor Gary Applegate, declined to comment on the situation.

The law doesn'’t allow me to comment on personnel matters, he said.

Uh huh.

I wonder how much of this is due to an emboldenment on the part of conservatives with the election of Pope Benedict. OK, the Church does not like homosexuality, but I think She blundered here badly, forgetting Her own teachings about the power of music. I know in my own faith life there have been times, and increasingly now is one of those times, when music is what connects me to God and the Church. I have, by the way, been in choir since I was eight or so. But last night I really questioned how I can do this, given the behavior of the Church on this issue.

Still other details are in this Kansas City Star article.

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Garden things

Getting ready to go out this afternoon for a ramble and decided I'd better see what's on my camera's memory card:

This peony is actually from last month. I have always been fascinated by the association between these flowers and ants. My peonies have been struggling and it is partly a drainage problem, but I think maybe it's the lack of ants in my yard.




Speaking of insects. Here is a tiger beetle. Usually they don't hold still along enough for me to shoot, but yesterday this one perched on a Viburnum twig for about a minute. I only wish I had a macro lens!








This paper wasp, Polistes exclamans, was foraging on my honeysuckle vine yesterday. Not sure what for, as it didn't seem to be finding any prey. A lot of wasps also collect nectar or aphid sap and it is probably an important source of energy for the adults.







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Kansas Guild of Bloggers

From emaw_kc comes news about the Kansas Guild of Bloggers:

Three O'Clock in the Morning: This thing's got legs

Check it out and if you are a Kansas Blogger, show your stuff.

Unintended consequences of invasive species

An interesting article in this week's PLOS Biology reminds us that when we alter ecosystems, or for that matter any complex system, we cannot do just one thing. Stinson et al show through a set of very convincing experiments that an invasive species, the European Garlic Mustard, has an interesting effect on tree seedling in forests. Apparently this non native mustard reduces the growth of native tress seedlings by disrupting the mutualistic relationship between the roots of trees and the fungi that live with the roots. These sorts of mycorrhizal fungi are particularly important for woody plants but the garlic mustard and many other weedy invasive species apparently do not have these sorts of relationships.





Image from http://www.nps.gov/plants/alien/fact/alpe1.htm

The authors did a complex series of experiments to examine the affects of the mustard on woody seedling growth and colonization of roots by the mycorrhizal fungi. They concluded that the mustard does inhibit the colonization of woody seedling roots by the fungi, and that this inhibition is due to a chemical produced by the mustard that somehow inhibits the colonization of roots by the fungi.

What is unsettling is that the authors note that this effect is more pronounce in undisturbed habitats. They write:

"The strongest effects were observed for woody species most typically found in forested sites. These results indicate that the invasion of garlic mustard is more likely to negatively impact highly mycorrhizal-dependent tree seedlings than less-mycorrhizal-dependent plants. Thus, garlic mustard's successful colonization of understory habitat may be attributed in part to its ability to indirectly suppress woody competitors, and its effect on the native flora may be more detrimental in intact forests than disturbed sites. In addition, the data suggest that invasion by garlic mustard may have profound effects on the composition of mature forest communities (e.g., by repressing the regeneration of dominant canopy trees, and by favoring plants with low mycorrhizal dependency such as weedy herbs)."

The reason this is unsettling is that often in ecology we teach that mature, undisturbed habitats are less prone to invasion by weedy non native species and that these invasive species are problem mainly for disturbed habitats. Clearly this may not be the case!

References:

http://www.invasive.org/eastern/biocontrol/29GarlicMustard.html

Stinson KA, Campbell SA, Powell JR, Wolfe BE, Callaway RM, et al. (2006) Invasive Plant Suppresses the Growth of Native Tree Seedlings by Disrupting Belowground Mutualisms. PLoS Biol 4(5): e140

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