As I have noted before, I have a fondness for toads, but not like that. At this time of year, newly metamorphosed little toads emerge from a pond on site (in some communities, traffic is redirected when the toadlings put their tadpolish ways behind them and take to the land. The site I typically work at is toad heaven- there is plenty of green space for my batrachian buddies to live their toadly lives.
Last night, I found a half dozen little toads in the stairwell to one of our buildings. While the area is a perfect place for a toad to establish itself, being cool and shady, and full of delicious bugs, it's a dead end for a small toad- they can get down the stairway but they can't get up. I was able to coax the little fellers onto my hand with a gentle finger nudge, and I relocated them to a pachysandra patch. Here's one of my little transportees:
This is not the first time I've had to do a stairwell intervention, and it probably won't be the last.
The post title is the first line of a couplet that I wrote, when I was writing short bits of doggerel in alarming profusion:
Loads and loads of tiny toads,
Live by the sides of country roads.
The same period of bizarre creative ferment also produced the following:
Crepuscular critters give the jitters,
But creatures of night fill me with fright.
Since I was a small lad, I have always had a fondness (not an overfondness, mind you!) for toads... I also have a fondness for Toad's, but that's not germane to the topic. Tonight, I saw a handsome specimen of the common toad of the Northeastern United States, Anaxyrus americanus (formerly Bufo americanus, but Bufo is more properly applied to them fancy elitist You're-a-Peein' toads), holding court behind my workplace. The site abounds in toads, and sighting them never fails to amuse me. I took this portrait, but it totally fails to capture the pretty, golden eyes of the little beastie:
I didn't want to harass the critter, so I didn't go for a closer picture, and, no, I did not lick the toad in order to get high. Toad-licking is a fool's game and can only lead to heartbreak.
I figured I'd take a break from the news media today, so I spent some time poking around the t00bz for interesting reads and interesting podcasts. I found a gruesomely fun podcast, Hynogoria, which deals with scary stories, scary movies, and an occasional macabre folktale. The podcast host, Jim Moon, also contributes to the SFFAudio Podcast, which covers classic Science Fiction and Fantasy literature, with a website which is a treasure trove of PDF scans of classic pulp 'weird fiction'.
I particularly like the folklore episodes, such as this episode about Lancashire river hag Jenny Greenteeth and other legendary monsters around the world which drown people. It includes audio from a particularly creepy PSA narrated by Donald Pleasance:
Another good episode explores the bizarre folklore surrounding toads. As someone who loves toads, the notion that toads used to be considered familiars of the devil, especially by rural people, is mind-boggling... I mean, didn't these people ever notice that these critters were gobbling down agricultural pests?
If you are a fan of weird tales or scary movies, this is a fun podcast hosted by a genial fellow with a pleasant voice. If you need some background audio for doing chores, you might enjoy Hypnogoria.
Last night, I headed down to the beautiful Bell House, in the Gowanus section of Brooklyn, for this month's Secret Science Club lecture featuring Dr João Xavier, computational biologist and director of Sloan Kettering's X-Lab. Dr Xavier's topic was experimental evolution and swarming bacteria.
My eyes are constantly wide open to the extraordinary fact of existence. Not just human existence, but the existence of life and how this breathtakingly powerful process, which is natural selection, has managed to take the very simple facts of physics and chemistry and build them up to redwood trees and humans.
He followed this up with a beautiful tribute to biodiversity, first showcasing the human diversity of New York City's populace with pictures from the subway system, then showing pictures of animal biodiversity, then expanding his focus to include plants, fungi, and bacteria. Dr Xavier then took a brief digression to note that he entered into the field of biology relatively late- he was initially more interested in math and physics, but eventually felt the call to apply his knowledge of those fields to biology. He followed up this digression with a brief overview of Darwin's theory of evolution by means of natural selection: put succinctly, successful individuals will be 'selected' by natural processes to pass on their traits to their offspring, and this selection will drive the direction in which a species will evolve. The basic mechanism of biological inheritance was formulated by Gregor Mendel, who observed the passing of traits in plant lineages. The central dogma of molecular biology, as formulated by Crick et al. is that DNA is the molecular entity behind evolution. DNA encodes genes which make proteins. DNA can be transcribed- it is copied when a cell divides, and sometimes there are errors in the copying, known as mutations. Most mutations are harmful to an organism, but occasionally they may lead to better survival outcomes. Diversity emerges through mutations, and the fittest organisms tend to propagate.
Dr Xavier then noted that everyone alive today descends from a common ancestor, then he amended this statement to note that every living organism on Earth comes from a common ancestor. He noted that this is a hard-to-grasp concept, so some people refuse to believe it. This refusal to believe led to the creation of the 'Intelligent Design' movement, which posits a director/designer in the evolution of life. The bacterial flagellum was considered the icon of Intelligent Design creationism, but Dr Xavier noted that the proteins behind the flagellum are understood- complex structures look precisely adapted to their environment, they look designed, but their evolution in incremental steps is explainable.
This talk of flagella then segued into the real topic of the lecture- the bacterium Pseudomonas aeruginosa, a human pathogen. Dr Xavier uses Pseudomonas to investigate the fundamental facts about evolution and their direct implications in medicine. Bacterial evolution can be deadly- Dr Xavier recounted a case in which a patient needed a bone marrow transplant, which involved suppressing their immune system. Ten days before the transplant, while the patient's immune system was compromised, the patient developed a Pseudomonas infection which was resistant to most antibiotics. The patient was treated with aztreonam, but the bacteria evolved resistance to this antibiotic through a mutation, sepsis set in, and the patient died. Antibiotics select for resistance against themselves- they kill off non-resistant bacteria, then the small population of resistant bacteria propagates. The evolution of antibiotic resistance is fast, and it happens all the time.
“We are going to die, and that makes us the lucky ones. Most people are never going to die because they are never going to be born. The potential people who could have been here in my place but who will in fact never see the light of day outnumber the sand grains of Arabia. Certainly those unborn ghosts include greater poets than Keats, scientists greater than Newton. We know this because the set of possible people allowed by our DNA so massively exceeds the set of actual people. In the teeth of these stupefying odds it is you and I, in our ordinariness, that are here.We privileged few, who won the lottery of birth against all odds, how dare we whine at our inevitable return to that prior state from which the vast majority have never stirred?”
Bacteria evolve quickly because they reproduce quickly. The Pseudomonas bacteria form a swarming collective, they have motility due to their flagella. Dr Xavier studies this swarming behavior in petri dishes. Separate bacterial swarms in a petri dish repel each other. The bacteria need flagella to swarm, and this is the natural condition of the wild type. A non-swarming, non-flagellated form, known as flgK was developed in the lab. Dr Xavier then showed us a series of videos comparing the spread of swarming wild-type bacteria to the spread of non-swarming mutants:
Parallel experiments were conducted in different petri dishes, and they demonstrated the heritable and stable tendency to evolve into hyperswarming bacteria with multiple flagella, a new feature that evolved in the laboratory. Genome sequencing revealed the precise mutations which caused hyperswarming. Some bacteria evolved an excess of flagella, and too many 'tails' prevented swarming... the right number of flagella was needed. Hyperswarmers, though they move more quickly to exploit new resources, grow more slowly than the ancestral type bacteria- multiple tails require more resources.
Dr Xavier likened the petri dishes with different bacterial strains as to 'fighting arenas' in which the strains were pitted against each other. Different strains were stained red or green, and hyperswarmers were pitted against ancestral types. The hyperswarmers expand quickly and find nutrients, while the non-hyperswarmers are stuck in regions in which nutrients are exhausted. Faster speeds can come with a trade-off, though. Dr Xavier cited the invasive cane toad as an example of such a trade-off... in areas in which the toads are expanding their range, they evolved longer legs which enabled a faster spread. Dr Xavier joked that there was an 'Olympic village of cane toads' down under. The trade-off is that the longer legs, while enabling faster movement, also resulted in more spinal injuries among the leggy toads. In the case of Pseudomonas, hyperswarmers are not found in natural environments or in hospitals- while they can move quickly, they are bad at forming biofilms. In the fighting arena of the petri dish, the slow bacteria will eventually take over- in nature, the fast bacteria don't do well. It's difficult to evolve a change in the structure of the flagellum, the icon of the Intelligent Design movement. Dr Xavier got another dig in at the ID crowd- when the New York Times ran the headline “Watching Bacteria Evolve, with Predictable Results”, a creationist publication describing itself as 'a great tool for countering pro-Darwin propaganda' countered with the rejoinder 'They're still bacteria.' CHECK AND MATE, POINDEXTERS!!!!
Dr Xavier then went on to discuss the use of swarming bacteria to study social behavior- how do social behaviors evolve? Social behaviors can have a different impact on actors and recipients. In mutualism, everyone benefits- actors and recipients. Altruism is costly to the actor and benefits the recipients. Selfishness benefits the actor and is costly to the recipients. In the case of spite, everyone loses. Game theory uses mathematics to analyze behavioral choices. Dr Xavier cited the example of the prisoner game to illustrate game theory:
Kin selection explains many altruistic behaviors- altruism is more likely among relatives. When asked if he would lay down his life to save his brother, biologist J.B.S. Haldane was quoted as saying that he wouldn't, but that he would for two brothers or eight cousins. Altruism makes sense when it results in evolutionary fitness benefits.
Among bacteria, the whole population benefits from swarming, but swarming involves sacrifice among individuals. Non-swarming bacteria tend to consume all available nutrients in their environment until they cannot grow their population. Resources are spent to propagate a swarm, and the tiny contributions of individual bacteria can add up to an impressive spread. Alone, on-swarming bacteria cannot spread, but they can hitchhike along with swarming bacteria. In this cooperative situation, the ratio of swarming to non-swarming bacteria remains stable. Cheating is hard due to metabolic prudence- bacteria cooperate when they have excess metabolic resources to devote to swarming. Dr Xavier ended his lecture by joking that metabolic regulation of good behavior is not only found among bacteria- citing a study of judicial records which suggested that judges at parole hearings tended to become less lenient as they got hungrier, but exhibited renewed leniency after lunch.
The lecture was followed by a Q&A session. Some bastard in the audience, thinking back to Dr Paul Turner's SSC lecture on phage therapy, asked if there had been experiments to use selective pressure to 'breed' less harmful versions of pathogenic bacteria by selecting and propagating less virulent individuals. Dr Xavier replied that this hasn't been attempted, but that it would be possible for less harmful bacteria to out-compete their dangerous relatives. There's no good model for this sort of study, but it could be evolved... of course, as in the example of the introduction of the cane toad to Australia, things could go awry, as organisms don't necessarily behave in the wild as they do in the lab. The Bastard missed a bunch of questions while taking a break to micturate, but when he returned to the main auditorium, the question regarded cancer- cancer cells have an initial propagation advantage over 'normal' cells, but are an evolutionary dead end as they kill their hosts... they are successful for a while, then they fail utterly. He also mentioned the transmissable cancer that is devastating Tasmanian devil populations as a particularly horrific example of this sort of thing.
Once again, the Secret Science Club served up a fantastic lecture. I am particularly struck by the sheer coolness of a Professor Xavier setting up clashes among mutants in a battle arena. The multiple videos of the petri dish battles were gorgeous:
Kudos to Dr Xavier, Margaret and Dorian, and the staff of the beautiful Bell House.
It's loud, loud enough to hear while pumping gas at the gas station across the street, but I wouldn't call it a din, because it's really a lovely, musical sound. From close up, one can hear individual voices, but the effect is that of a chorus, as answering calls ring out, and distance and waveform interference and amplification change the pitch. I figured that I'd use my phone camera to obtain an audio recording, though the light was insufficient to get more than a fuzzy impression of a couple of lights from the main road:
I didn't expect it so early in the year, because the spring peepers haven't started peeping, but the American toads (Anaxyrus americanus) having a major orgy in the pond at work. These little critters are sex machines, they breed until May, in ponds, water-filled ditches, and vernal pools.
I believe the low, growly sound is a pickerel frog(Lithobates palustris) that somehow got mixed in with the toads, perhaps looking for a prince. Longtime readers will know that I have a fondness for amphibians, and working at night in a place with extensive grounds with mixed habitats (pond, bit of wetlands, bit of woods, bit of grassland), I encounter them on a regular basis. I am overjoyed that I have a loud musical background to my worknights, and that this music signals the imminent arrival of another generation of little batrachian buddies.
It's a pretty swampy night here in the NY Metro Area... after a real scorcher of a day, it's still 73 degrees Fahrenheit (22.7 Celsius) out and humid to boot. Scattered thunderstorms dumped a considerable amount of rain on my worksite. Yeah, it's pretty dank and swampy, perfect weather for an amphibious visitor:
This is a handsome American toad(Anaxyrus americanus), sitting on the 'safety' painting on the edge of the front steps. We have a lot of toads on site, much to my delight. Pretty soon, we should have this year's baby toads emerging from the pond. We tend to get them a little later than West Virginia does.
Our pond at work is a sexy, sexy place, and the toads in the ponds are singing their seductive songs, a bunch of batrachian Bing Crosbys crooning their little amphibian hearts out. I managed to spy this sizable specimen heading off to the aquatic orgy:
It's an odd performance, as Jones and his collaborator claim that the Las Vegas massacre has been forgotten, and they claim that Elon Musk is a target of the 'elite', never mind that the guy is a multi-billionaire. Yeah, it's an artificial intelligence attempting to prevent humans from getting our asses to Mars. The guy who rants about chemtrails is now ranting about Skynet. This is what happens when you watch The Terminator after licking Sonoran desert toads, which have all been turned gay.
I do like the idea that Donald Trump is humanity's first line of defense against a coldly logical killer AI. As any true Science Fiction fan knows, the best way to destroy a logical AI is to employ nonsense:
We have a small greenhouse behind our main building at my principal workplace. In normal years, when we are open for visitation, a local gourmet market runs a concession stand, and the greenhouse is open for visitors to enjoy their coffee, sandwiches, or pastries amid the potted plants. A few days ago, I noticed that an unauthorized visitor had somehow gotten into the building:
While there may be delicious bugs to eat on the premises, I was concerned that this little critter wouldn't have access to water (I honestly don't know the drinking requirements of toads), so I evicted it from the premises, placing it on the patio out back, near a new planting:
In gratitude, it peed all over my hand...
On a sober note, an appalling number of Americans, facing pandemic-related financial stress, are facing a housing crisis, with one third of Americans being unable to pay their entire rent or mortgage. This could result in an eviction/foreclosure crisis by August, with no financial help for Joe-and-Jane-Schmo coming from this Maladministration or a gridlocked Congress. Hell, even whimsical posts take a dark turn in these awful, awful times.
Great, just great, Chris Christie, America's cafone, just announced that he is indeed running in the 2016 Republican presidential primary, or as Tengrain puts it, The Goat Rodeo. Although Christie is a mendacious bag of protoplasm, he's characterizing his run as "telling it like it is".
I have to confess that I have a fascination with Christie, much like I have a fascination with cane toads, which like Christie are bloated, venomous, and pernicious. I actually sat through his announcement speech this morning while pitting another haul of cherries. Most of Christie's announcement was a repeat of the self-hagiography he indulged in at the 2012 Republican convention, but there were a couple of things that caused my ears to prick up.
Christie, in a move that is sure to alienate the GOP base, paid lip service to diversity, in contrast with the other vulgar Northeasterner running in the primary:
See this place, this place that represents the most ethnically diverse state in the country. The most densely populated state in the country. We're all different and we're on top of each other like you're on top of each other in this gym. And what has come from that, what has come from that is the absolute belief that not only can all of us achieve whatever dream we want to achieve, because of the place where we live and the opportunities that it gives us, but not only can we do it together, but we have to do it together. We have no choice but to work together, this country needs to work together again, not against each other.
Chris, Chris, Chris, this is not going to win you friends in Iowa or South Carolina... it probably won't win you friends in New Hampshire either, seeing as it's the GOP primary you're running in.
Christie had some typical pablum about making the state work, even though one of his first acts as governor was to squash the construction of a trans-Hudson tunnel which would have provided numerous well-paying jobs and vastly improved the traffic flow in the New York Metropolitan Area:
When I became governor six years ago, we had a state that was in economic calamity and an eleven billion dollar deficient on a twenty nine billion dollar budget. A state that had taxes and fees raised on it one hundred and fifteen times in the eight years before I became governor. A state that no longer believed that any one person could make a difference in the lives of the people of this state so we rolled up our sleeves and we went to work.
Further on, Christie started talking like one of the Republican-funded "Third Way centrists" so beloved by the corporate media:
And both parties. Both parties have failed our country. Both parties have stood in the corner and held their breath and waited to get their own way. And both parties have lead us to believe that in America, a country that was built on compromise, that somehow now compromise is a dirty word. If Washington and Adams and Jefferson believed compromise was a dirty word, we'd still be under the crown of England.
I think Michael Bloomberg and the entirety of the Sunday morning talkers just got a "shiver up their legs". I don't see this playing well with the GOP base, though, and I don't see Christie running as a third party candidate, either. Like all "third way" types, though, Christie sure loves punching down on workers and retirees:
And now, as Livingston New Jersey turns it's gaze to the rest of America today, what do we see and what do we have to confront? We need a campaign of big ideas and hard truths and real opportunity for the America people. We need to fix a broken entitlement system that is bankrupting our country. We have candidates that say we cannot confront, because if we do we'll be lying and stealing from the American people. Let me fill everyone else in, the lying and stealing has already happened. The horse is already out of the barn. We've got to get it back in and you can only do it by force.
We've all heard this austerity pitch before, Christie, like Paul Ryan and Scott Walker, must be heavily invested in cat food futures.
Christie then started talking about jobs (which he has a bad record on) and, even more hypocritically, as someone who thinks that eliminating college debt is wrong, started concern-trolling about college graduates:
We need to get our economy growing again at four percent or greater and the reason we do is because we have to make this once again the country that my mother and father told me it was. That as hard as you work, that's as hard and high as you'll rise. That's not the case anymore, we can't honestly look at our children and say that to them. Because we have an economy that is weak and doesn't present them with the same opportunities that Mary Pat and I were presented with in the mid 1980s when we graduated from college. When we graduated from college, we weren't worried about finding a job, we were worried about picking which job was the best for us. We didn't worry about whether we were going to be successful; we knew if we worked hard we were going to be successful. This country and it's leadership owes the same thing to my children and yours I'm ready to give it to you.
Of course, no Republican speech would be complete without a dig at the "Kenyan Usurper":
Well, here it comes. After seven years. After seven years, I heard the President of the United States say the other day that the world respects America more because of his leadership. This convinces me, this convinces me. This is the final confirmation that President Obama lives in his own world, not in our world. And the fact is this. After seven years of a weak and feckless foreign policy, run by Barack Obama, we'd better not turn it over to his second mate Hilary Clinton.
I'd hate to break it to him, but President Obama is much more respected than his predecessor, and it's Christie who lives in his own world. In Christie's world, he thinks he has a shot at the presidency.
While listening to the post-announcement commentary, one thread that ran through the analysis is that Christie's real goal in 2016 is to position himself as the GOP Vice Presidential candidate. His geographic origin, his inability to speak in evangelical dogwhistles, and his suspect conservative credentials will sink his presidential ambitions, but his reputation as a bully and a bloviator will make him the perfect "attack dog" on a GOP ticket.
West Virginia tends to get tiny toads before New York does, but New York eventually catches up:
I found this little critter at the bottom of the basement stairwell of the building in which I typically work. As I do on a regular basis, I relocated it to a nice pachysandra patch at the top of the stairs. Can't have the little beastie stuck at the bottom of a stairwell which it can't get out of... though there are plenty of delicious ants down there, so it's not a bad place to spend some time. I figured I had to do this toad a favor, because it just might be the child of a friend of mine.
The latest rallying cry of the Trump supporters is 'Drain the Swamp', which I find ironic, because Donald Trump is about as corrupt and venal as an individual can get- and his supporters are even worse, the sort of pond-scum that would heap abuse on a 12 year old with cerebral palsy just because he had the nerve to disagree with them politically.
The real joke here is that really draining the swamp would leave a bunch of nasty frogs without a home, especially the loathsome amphibian at the bottom of the morass:
For the record, I love frogs and toads, and am appalled at any attempts to associate these delightful and endangered creatures with a hate movement.
At any rate, my sincerest wish is that there will be a whole ton of crying alt-right bros come Tuesday night:
Let's hope the whole movement croaks with their Leader's electoral hopes.
Here's wishing all of my readers a happy and healthy Easter. I always loved the Easter holiday, because it signals the promise of Spring, with all that it entails. The daffodils and crocuses are in full bloom, the warm-weather birds have come back, my delicious stinging nettles are finally ready to be collected. Everything is coming awake... the toads are singing their love songs. I even saw one of our resident bullfrogs in the pond.
Today has been uncharacteristically warm (85F, 29.4C), so in accordance with recent Easter tradition, I had to yell at a couple who had jumped the fence at work. Seriously, people, there's a sign on the gate that says 'STAFF ONLY', can't you people read? There were a couple of folks in a picnic area adjacent to the parking lot... I have no problem with people on-site as long as they don't jump a fence and they know to clear off at sundown. I don't mind people looking for hidden Easter eggs, I do it myself, but they can do it in their own places.
Tonight, my great and good friends of the Secret Science Club are presenting a topical lecture by marine ecologist and zoologist Dr Christopher Harley of the University of British Columbia at Vancouver, who made the headlines recently when he discovered the mass die-off of tidal organisms due to the recent PNW heatwave. Dr Harley's website is a good resource for coastal ecology.
Dr Harley began his lecture by thanking Margaret and Dorian for a chance to step back from frantically cataloging the damage done by the heat wave, with the assistance of his student. He titled his lecture 'Well that Stunk', describing the die-off as a pungent event... if someone had dumped a wheelbarrow of mussels on your front lawn, and they rotted for a few days, you'd get some idea of the stench. This was an unprecedented event in the PNW. A friend of his described it as the new smell of climate change
Why should we be concerned about climate change? There are a lot of things we care about that are effected by it? Dr Harley cited such organisms as red sea urchins and abalones, which are valuable commodities. Kelp and sea grass are secondarily important- they provide habitats for organisms and protect the coasts from wave erosion. He also cited the wonderful biodiversity in the tide pools of the Pacific- he was hooked into marine biology by hermit crabs. As a human, he gets a charge out of nature, and will work to preserve it.
Rocky shores, and marine benthic systems in general, are ideal for studying the effects of climate change. These coastal organisms already live at the limits of their environments. The interactions of the organisms in this environment are important- organisms such as mussels and barnacles compete for space, sea stars clear mussels to provide niches for barnacles. The combination of environmental and predatory factors results in patterns- there are usually bands of shellfish beds, kelp beds, and grassy areas. These bands can be studied to determine changes, such as temperature changes.
There is a zone where the horn of plenty algae thrives, typically between a layer where the barnacles thrive and where the mussels and grazers thrive. The algae can be moved higher up where the barnacles are, but it will die of lack of hydration. Moved lower, the grazers will devour it. Studying the upper limit of the horn of plenty on Tatoosh island, it was discovered that the limit was stable until about 1993, then dropped, stabilizing at a lower level around 2000. Successive summers of excessive temperatures caused this change. Around 2005, the limit lowered again due to heat exposure. Is the limit dropping, or is it being squeezed, possibly to nothing?
In the 1950s, a marine botanist named Tom Widowson measured the different bands of organisms on the coast. Dr Harley obtained his doctoral thesis to obtain old data, he joked that the thesis "smells like old knowledge", Dr Harley was put into contact with Dr Widowson, who game him Google map coordinates for all of his research sites. He was able to correlate the upper limit of the barnacles and the upper and lower limits of mussels with temperatures, and found that the upper limits of both barnacles and mussels were lower, but the lower limit of the mussels didn't change much, so the habitat of the mussels has been squeezed to about half of its former extent.
Climate change has been going on for a long time, and organisms have been responding to it. Without the data of scientists such as Dr Widowson, these changes might not have been apparent. Climate change is well underway, what can we expect next? Organisms can be brought to labs, and temperatures can be manipulate to see what temperatures will kill them. Dr Harley prefers field work, he studies organisms in a system. One study involves the use of black and white tiles to manipulate temperatures on a micro level (white reflecting light, black absorbing it). On a larger scale, heat can be provided by propane camp heaters, which are suspended over seaweed beds to raise temperatures. In another study, propane turkey fryer kits were used to warm up tide pools.
In general, these experiments warm areas three degrees Celsius, the extent to which the climate is predicted to be warmer by the end of the century. What should we expect to see happen to these organisms in eighty years. With the heat wave in June, Dr Harley wasn't prepared for the die-off. On the first day, he was on a science outreach boat trip, and on visiting a beach, didn't think to photograph the mussel beds. On the second day, he smelled it before he saw it, and knew that a tragedy was unfolding. On the third day, he went out with a grad student, and the conditions were unsafe for working under sunny conditions. While the air temperatures spiked to over 100F, exposed organisms on coastal rocks baked. Temperatures were 28C above normal, high temperature records were shattered. In Lytton, BC, the all-time temp record was shattered by 8 degrees- these records are usually shattered by fractions of degrees. On the coast, rock temperatures were measured at 52.5C (126.5F). On the black mussel shells, he obtained temperatures of 134F (56.7C).
Dr Harley did not foresee this occurrence. He walked, crunching on dead organisms, over the cemetery of an ecosystem he loves. He showed a gallery of the slain- mussels, crabs, whelks, clams. Barnacles (he joked that they look like James Bond villain lairs, being 'little volcanoes with trapdoors that reveal the feet, not doomsday devices) suffered incredibly. Mussels were the poster children of the die-off. Dr Harley showed a picture of dead mussels, still full of meat. Thermal images showed temperatures ranging up to 56.7C (134F).
Dr Harley noted patterns. Near his house, the carnage was relatively light- only about 20% of the mussels died. It was a north-facing beach with small mussels. One of the worst hit areas was a mussel bed on Galliano Island. The angle of incoming sunlight played a role in the die-off, with 90 degree angle sunlight being particularly deadly. Mussels in the shade were safe. The coastal seaweed was also affected, rockweed (bladderwort) was killed. The rockweed provides habitats for other organisms.
How extensive was the die-off? Dr Harley and his team is expanding the scope of the initial study, along with scientists in Washington, indigenous foragers, seafood harvesting companies. The Strait of Georgia, and Puget Sound were hit hard. San Juan Island was relatively unscathed. Inland waterways without access to cold water were hit hardest. There are a lot of gaps, so information has to be collected.
How many animals died? Dr Harley showed a picture of 100 dead barnacles, easily fitting in the palm of his hand. He calculated the amount of good barnacle habitat in the Strait of Georgia, and determined how many dead barnacles could have died, perhaps ten billion dead barnacles. With the mussels, snails, worms, and crabs that live in these habitats, Dr Harley is certain that billions of animals died.
Was there any good news? Hermit crabs might be one of the few winners in the short term- they are mobile enough to avoid dangerous conditions, they had a real estate boom, they are scavengers so they feasted, and they are subject to temperature sensitive parasites which might have died. Other species, such as sea grass, certain clams and oysters, and sea anemones, did okay. Some mussels had refuges, sea stars did okay.
What are the ripple effecs of the die-off? Migrating birds like the surf scoter rely on mussels, will they have enough this winter when they fly through? What abut juvenile salmon that need cover? Without filter feeders, will water quality be impacted?
What are the long-term prospects for the BC coast? Fast growing species with good dispersal, such as barnacles and mussels, may recover in a few years. Rockweed may take longer. The problem is that heat waves will be more common. Species from warmer waters will have a hard time dispersing up the coastline, but invasive species from Asia will thrive. The ecosystem may soon look more like Southern Japan than California.
What can we do? We can pressure politicians to fight global warming. We can make choices to conserve energy? Local conservation efforts can be formed, allowing better chances for regeneration.
The lecture was followed by a Q&A. The first question regarded food shortages. Local indigenous groups will face serious food insecurity risks due to die-offs. Droughts on the prairies would be more dangerous on a global scale. Which is more ecologically dangerous? Changes in average temperature or changes in highs? Changes in average temperature should effect growth. Max temperatures are more significant in mass death events. Eelgrass and kelp are prime habitats for larval organisms, anything which adversely effects them pose dangers to the food web.
Dr Harley stated that working with physiologists is helpful- he is working with researchers studying Dengue fever and notes that the information he obtains studying the rocky coast has utility to studying the African savannah.
What can citizen scientists do? Simply taking photos can help scientists determine the limits of where organisms live. There are more citizens than scientists. People have been contacting him about preservation efforts, such as cloth tents to shade mussel beds, or using pumps on boats to mist coastal areas- these efforts just aren't practical for protecting wide stretches of coastline.
Why not seed species from the south by hand? This is being done with forests- southern genotypes are warmth adapted. Marine larvae are more mobile, so this hasn't been discussed as much. This assisted migration is risky, such as the introduction of cane toads to Australia.
Climate change is providing selection pressure, on an evolutionarily significant scale, which will most likely result in lower genetic diversity. Dorian joked about a 'planet of the hermit crabs' situation.
Some bastard in the audience asked about ocean acidification- he has studied this subject for years, using turban shell snails as a subject- the shells have yearly growth rings, and the snails are growing slower in acidified conditions. Oyster larvae are sensitive to ocean acidification, which worries oyster farmers. The acidification and temperature change could form a one-two punch. The die-off has ensured that his grant money in the foreseeable future will fund warming research.
Another question involved the benefits to invasive species from global warming- most boats coming into British Columbia arrive from warmer ports, so warming gives them an advantage. Also, if native organisms are continually shocked by disasters, they are less resistant.
Another questioner asked about the dangers of seafloor mining- there are manganese nodules on the ocean floor which can be dredged up. This poses danger to poorly known ecosystems such as glass sponge reefs. Can it be done in an environmentally responsible way? This requires a lot of study.
The final question was, how screwed are we climactically? Can coastal ecosystems recover? He recounts students coming up to him with tears in their eyes. The oceans will go on without us, but they won't look like they do now. Coral reefs are forming in the Carolinas, the Mediterranean is looking more like the Red Sea. Ecosystems are resilient, warmth adapted organisms will expand their ranges. Dr Harley is hopeful, but things are changing fast, and it would be nice to apply the brakes.
Dr Harley's lecture was entertaining and informative, and it was most certainly topical. Kudos to Dr Harley, and Dorian and Margaret for another fantastic Secret Science Club presentation. Here is a news presentation which encapsulates the heart of this lecture:
It was a sobering lecture, delivered by an engaging lecturer, which is a perfect example of the Secret Science Club experience.
The Big Bad Bald Bastard is a character played by Monsieur _______ of the City of Y______. The role of the Bastard is a handy one to play on subways, walking the streets, and in dive-bars, when being a nerdy, bookish sort is not to one's advantage.
