I like to get to work early, typically fifteen to thirty minutes early, in order to have a briefing with the co-worker(s) who are working the previous shift. I like my co-workers, so it's a pleasant recap of the day's events, a time to discuss upcoming scheduling, and an opportunity to engage in chit-chat.
Last night, during the shift change, I was talking with my co-worker, who is even bigger than me, when a raccoon climbs onto a stone wall in front of our Visitor's Center, about six feet from where we're standing. After the initial, 'WHOA' and a brief mention of the 'r-word', we calm down and notice that the animal is not acting in an unusual manner, besides its boldness. The raccoon, which had a slightly spindly adolescent look, stopped, stretched out its neck, and gave a couple of inquisitive sniffs. I almost had an impulse to extend my finger as I'd do with a curious cat, but thought better of it. After a couple of sniffs, the raccoon decided we weren't anything to be concerned about, and jumped into the trash barrel not four feet from us. After listening to the raccoon rummaging around in the trash for about thirty seconds, my co-worker kicked the barrel as if to signal, "Hey, get out of there, you." The raccoon simply stuck its head out of the barrel as if to respond, "Hey, mister, I'm not done here." We both got photographs of the fearless furball:
The raccoon simply looked at us, then dove right back into the trash. We were beaten, we weren't going to do more to convince that raccoon to leave. When it was done, it merely ambled off to continue its rounds. The whole incident was rather comical, especially the bit when the raccoon stuck out its nose to 'check us out'... I almost succumbed to reacting to this gesture as I'd react to a friendly dog or cat. If this young raccoon continues to be so bold, it's going to be a long summer, especially for the grounds personnel who have to clean up the area in the morning.
Just imagine, you've found a snug little place to live, within easy walking distance of your favorite dining establishments, then everything goes all to heck when you are rudely awakened by people throwing empty plastic bottles at you... When I arrived at work this afternoon, there was a minor commotion going on- a raccoon had gotten into a can-and-bottle recycling bin outside our visitors' center. The gift shop staff and cleaning contractors decided to wait until I arrived, I'm the guy who's known for dealing with weird animal situations. Sure enough, I looked through the aperture in the lid of the recycling bin and spied a scared, snarling furball under a layer of plastic bottles. I decided that this was no time for subtlety, so I tipped the recycling bin over:
Now, why would anybody pitch a perfectly good little raccoon in the recycling bin?
We were then confronted by a scared and angry raccoon that had no desire to leave the confines of the plastic bag that lined the bin. I stepped on the bag while the gentleman from the cleaning contractor pulled the metal bin away. I then hoisted the bag, with the raccoon in it, over the low retaining wall separating a small ivied area from the main pedestrian walkway in front of the main entrance- it wouldn't do to release a very scared, very angry wild animal into an area with heavy foot traffic. Now I had a very snarly, very scratchy raccoon in a plastic bag to deal with... I grabbed the cul-de-sac and yanked it, depositing the raccoon, one of three immature goofballs on site, in a nice, vegetated area. After giving me a baleful glare, it made its way through the mix of English ivy and poison ivy to a nearby sycamore tree:
As the little critter mounted the tree, I had a fleeting desire to give it a reassuring pat or ear-scritch:
This was outweighed by my desire to keep all of my fingers.
I have a genuine fondness for the three young raccoons on the site, but they sure can be a pain in the neck sometimes. I have to confess, though, that even when they are being difficult, they manage to be very comical... and I seem to be the main butt of their jokes. I'm comfortable playing the Margaret Dumont role in the nightly slapstick routine that is my job.
Last weekend, there was a spot of drama amidst our re-opening for the season... a raccoon which was active during the daylight hours. When you see a raccoon walking around by daylight, it's typical to err on the side of "OMG, RABIES!!!!" Accordingly, on Friday afternoon, the Manager on Duty called the local gendarmes to report this potential hazard to the public health... to compound matters, a coyote recently attacked two children not too far from the site. I arrived on the job before the police arrived, and the raccoon was curled up on top of the sewer grate:
I stood in the vicinity for the rest of the afternoon and waved people away from the area until a police officer arrived. The village doesn't have a dedicated animal control officer, so there was no prospect of trapping the animal. The one time I had witnessed the putting down of a possibly rabid animal took place along the Bronx River Greenway, which falls under County Police jurisdiction- the county sent an officer with a tranquilizer gun, and they shot the raccoon with a dart with a lethal sedative dose. The procedure among the local police is to use a 9mm round loaded with shot, instead of a bullet, to kill an animal. After a brief discussion, we decided that it would be inappropriate to engage in any gunplay until after everyone but myself had cleared the property- it's not good to shoot when people and cars are in the parking lot, and I didn't want to subject nice tourists from France or Japan to see a particularly cute, and exotic, critter being executed, even if for the public good. Luckily, the raccoon climbed back down into the sewer, and I grabbed a couple of benches and used them to block off egress. The responding officer and I then made the plan to have him return after hours so we could deal with the beast.
At dusk, I unblocked the sewer grate and peered into the sewer... not exactly fun. After about twenty minutes, the creature emerged from the sewer and I called the non-emergency number of the police- they were on another call. By the time the original responding officer returned, the raccoon had gone back underground, so we weren't able to resolve the issue.
After the police officer left, I went to my office and texted my boss about the inability to resolve the issue, then sent out a memorandum to all of the MODs for the weekend, plus several other managers. As luck would have it, the raccoon never made an appearance on Saturday afternoon, so I am hoping that it expired in peace. Better yet, I hope it recovered, because, as much as the local raccoons are a pain in the ass, I'd be lying if I said I didn't like the suckers.
A couple of nights ago, while I was receiving the start-of-shift briefing from the evening guy (I'm the night guy), I noticed that a VERY cheeky raccoon decided that it would be a good idea to rummage for dinner though a trash barrel not ten feet from where we were standing. I had meant to take a picture, but mistakenly took a brief video instead:
There was no way this furry goofball couldn't have noticed us standing nearby, conducting a conversation. At one point, while the beast was completely inside the barrel, I contemplated kicking the barrel to see if it would freak out, but decided that being a leg's length from a freaked out raccoon really wasn't a pleasant place to be.
In the daytime, we have a comical squirrel that hovers by the trash barrels, waiting for an opportunity to dash inside for a snack. I guess the squirrel's the day shift... I wonder if it and the raccoon have change-of-shift briefings too.
This being Halloween season, I decided that I'd emulate the cool kids and do a little skull blogging.
I make no bones about describing myself as a descendent of headhunters. Yes, the forebears of my mirthful, moon-faced saint of a paternal grandmother used to chop off the heads of their enemies, and display them:
A magnificent, brown-purple buckler he bore, with five wheels of gold on it, with a rim of pure white silver around it. A gold-hilted hammered sword at his left side. A long grey-edged spear together with a trenchant bye-spear for defence, with thongs for throwing and with rivets of whitened bronze, alongside him in the chariot. Nine heads he bore in one of his hands and ten in the other, and these he brandished before the hosts in token of his prowess and cunning. Medb hid her face beneath a shelter of shields lest Cuchulain should cast at her that day.
Being the descendent of headhunters, the best way to honor this proud tradition is to engage in it. Simply put, I've collected skulls since I was a child. Most of my collection is now in the family camp in Maine in the cabinet of curiosities (my apartment is too small for a large collection of crania). I could not bear to part with one particular skull, though, a gorgeous raccoon skull I found while hiking with my maternal grandmother in a park near my house:
I leave it on the bookshelf, next to Kinsella's retelling of The Táin. Unfortunately, I never saved the brain of the raccoon, in order to fashion it into a weapon for home defense.
If you have some free time, and want to read one of my all-time favorite pieces of literature, The Táin is available online, in all its ultra-violent, scatalogical glory.
POSTSCRIPT: It's a shame that people of Irish descent have given up headhunting- what ancient Celt wouldn't have given his eye teeth to be able to display this giant-sized baby-head as a trophy?
Dr Levesque has studied the birth and death of the most massive stars. The Last Stargazers is her first popular science book. She noted that 2020 was a difficult year for releasing books, and noted that, at a library association meeting, the topic of the importance of first lines in books are extremely important. She joked that the first line of her book is: "Have you tried turning it off and on again?" It was uttered to her while she was a 24 year old grad student working at the Mauna Kea observatory on her PhD thesis on the topic of the environments where stars were dying. There was an unsettling 'bloonk' noise, and the technician noted that she thought it was okay, because she didn't hear the crash of the mirror falling off its supports. In a worst-case scenario, the secondary mirror would crash into the huge primary mirror (about nine meters in diameter).
She was the astronomer in charge and she'd heard horror stories about the destruction of telescopes, such as the Green Bank radio telescope in West Virginia. She knew that leaving the telescope would mean giving up research time if it were a false alarm, but if there was a worse case scenario, she would have presided over the breaking of the world's largest piece of glass.
Dr Levesque noted that images of space are beautiful and fire the public imagination. She briefly touched on the image of the astronomer as a man in a white lab coat, an image she wants to supplant. She wanted to be a scientist ever since she was a six year-old. The summer after her second year as a physics student in MIT, she worked at the Kitt Peak observatory. She was advised by her professors' colleagues to make sure to drink coffee, but not too much, to remember to order a nighttime lunch, and was warned that there were scorpions that matched the color of the carpets. She listened to stories of lightning strikes and raccoon run-ins, and was itching to make stories of her own. These stories of behind the scenes adventures make up her book.
Dr Levesque had adventures of her own while writing the book, visiting telescopes and labs she'd worked in before, interviewing fellow astronomers. She's not an investigative reporter, but she figured out how to glean stories from researchers, and piece together a common thread
What is your most memorable observing story, whether firsthand or tenth-hand? She wanted not only anecdotes, but legends of the field, such as the Green Bank collapse. One major topic of interest was a 2007 discovery by the Parkes Observatory in Australia of weird radio bursts, a strange signal to encounter. The data was filed away to be researched later. A lot of things give off latent radio signals, such as cell phones, spark plugs, all sorts of electronics. A grad student, Emily Petrov, decided to research these mysterious signals, dubbed Perytons. A lot of these Perytons occurred around lunchtime, so the microwave was considered suspect. The scientists acted like astronomers, not hungry people opening the microwave a bit early, which was detected by the radio telescope as a Peryton... except for the initial burst, which was determined to come from Elsewhere. These fast radio bursts occasionally occur, and might emanate from dying stars.
In the case of the LIGO gravitational-wave observatory, which uses miniscule (1/1000th of the diameter of a proton) 'squishing' of the arms of the observatory to detect gravitational waves. The sensors are good at filtering out signals from trucks or footsteps, but one hot summer, suspicious readings were apparent- due to iced over pipes of liquid nitrogen. Local ravens were pecking the ice condensed on the pipes as a source of water in the eastern Washington desert. The raven was caught in the act, and measures were taken to prevent these peckings from occurring in the future.
What would surprise people the most about our jobs? One major thing is that the telescopes now in use typically don't have eyepieces. Also, the job is more exciting than most people would realize. Dr Levesque mentioned the SOFIA flying observatory, a plant-mounted infrared telescope. Infrared light often doesn't reach the Earth's surface, it bounces off of atmospheric water vapor. SOFIA is above that layer, and Dr Levesque used the telescope to research dying stars. She noted how excited six year old her would have been about the prospect of flying in an experimental plane over Antarctica and seeing the Southern Lights. She talked with astronomers who did research at the South Pole and up in Svallbard. She talked about astronomers using weather balloon mounted telescopes. She mentioned George Carruthers, inventor of ultraviolet cameras, including one transported on Apollo 16 to the moon. She also mentioned Doug Geisler, who on May 18, 1980 at the U of Washington's Manastash Ridge observatory, having a lovely clear night... the next day, he woke in the midst of an ash cloud resulting from the Mt St Helens eruption, which resulted in a lost night of observation.
How has astronomy changed since you began observing? The biggest answer was improving technology. Up until the 1980s, images were made using thin glass plates covered in silver nitrate. Kodak would send many plates, but they had to be cut to size and tweaked to improve image quality before being inserted into telescope cameras one-by-one. Amazing research was conducted using these plates. Astronomers using these glass plates figured out the shape of the universe. Now, digital images are created, the difference is incomparable, with dust being visible, and the shape of a galaxy's arms being detailed beautifully. The work of astronomers has differed- astronomers used to have to apply for observation time, and travel to observatories. Now, telescopes such as the Vera C. Rubin Observatory under construction in Chile, will be taking continual images of the night sky through an automated process. Dr Levesque and her colleagues don't have to apply to use the data, they can just log in and download data. The adventure and experience will be differed, involving fewer scorpions and raccoon encounters
Dr Levesque brought up the topic of Thorne-Zytkow objects, binary stars orbiting each other, in the process of dying. One star will collapse into a neutron star and get swallowed by the companion, which transforms into a red giant with a core replaced by the neutron star. Dr Levesque's team discovered a potential Thorne–Żytkow object using the Las Campanas observatory in Chile.
This wouldn't have been discovered using the pre-programmed Rubin observatory, but the Rubin observatory can provide data which can prove to be Thorne-Zytkow objects. Giant observators such as Rubin are needed, as are smll mountaintop observatories, SOFIA type creative telescopes, and radio telescopes. Curious stargazers are needed as well as computational processes. We must combine these approaches to continue the process of discovery.
The lecture was followed by a Q&A session. The first question involved the depiction of celestial phenomena in art, such as a 1054 supernova depicted on a cave painting, the supernova that resulted in the Crab Nebula. Are any of these telescopes open to the public? Kitt Peak observatory in Arizona and Mauna Kea were open to the public during the day, but nighttime visits are off-limits because of light polution from headlights. Another question involved Vera Rubin's discovery of dark matter through observational methods- at the time, women couldn't be lead researchers, though they had made many astronomical discoveries at the time- Vera Rubin noted gravitational anomalies that proved dark matter existed. Regarding the imaging of a black hole, the discovery was made by 'a telescope the size of the entire planet', an array of radio telescopes worldwide that obtained that fuzzy donut picture that everybody loves.
Some Bastard in the audience asked about the James Webb Space Telescope, infrared telescope in space, in a cold, dark place far from Earth. This telescope will be invaluable for studying dying stars. Recently, Betelgeuse dimmed because it puffed off a cloud of dust that is bright in infrared. This is going to fill an important niche in studying dying stars, it's the telescope that might find evidence of extrasolar life, it will look further and further back in time than other telescopes. All astronomers are excited about the 'first light' from this telescope.
Another question involved the collapse of the Arecibo radio telescope in Puerto Rico. She had never visited Arecibo, though it was on her list. She received a lot of anecdotes about Arecibo, but it collapsed the year after she released the book. It was an unparalleled tragedy in the astronomical world... Arecibo detected the first evidence of planets around other stars. It's the dream of many astronomers to rebuild the observatory.
Another question involved the role of time as well as distance- the universe is about 13.8 billion years old... the naked eye can see objects 400 light years away, from 400 years ago. As telescopes become more powerful, they reveal the universe at older time periods.
How about extraterrestrials? Every astronomer dreams of discovering it. Even Dr Levesque had a moment when she encountered a weird signal at an observatory in the Netherlands, but then realized that the signal was stronger closer to the admin building, so it was probably someone heating up a stroopwaffel or sending a fax. She joked that the best phrase in science is not "Eureka!", but "That's weird!" There are people working on the alien issue, and if they ever discover evidence of aliens, they won't be able to keep it secret.
What pending discoveries is Dr Levesque excited about? The possibility of detecting life, even intelligent life... Observing black holes... Gravitational wave detction... The ability to go from 'we found this one weird thing' to a data driven approach.
How about multi-telescope arrays, interferometry (the use of interference to make multiple telescopes act as one) has to involve closely tracking multiple telescopes such as the Event Horizon Telescope under difficult conditions (such as shifting ice near an Antarctic telescope). Astronomers dream of setting up an observatory on the Moon and syncing it up with a terrestrial telescope.
How about crowdsourcing science with programs such as Zooniverse, in which citizen scientists can identify different galaxies, such as spiral or elliptical galaxies. A new form of galaxy was distinguished by citizen scientists.
Where in the universe would Dr Levesque want to go? She can't pick one place, she wants to discover all sorts of weird stars, but she would love to visit Betelgeuse and that Thorne-Zytkow object she discovered.
Another question involved light pollution, which is an unfortunate occurrence. There was also the topic of Starlink satellites interfering with observations of the night sky. These passing satellites rob astronomers of data, producing radio light as well as reflecting visible light. Astronomers have no say in the regulation of satellite launches, and want to fix the problem of running out of space in space, fundamentally changing the appearance of the night sky.
Another question involved the observed expansion of the universe- distant galaxies appear to be speeding away from us, with more distant galaxies moving at a faster rate. This discovery was made by Edwin Hubble, using those glass plates. The best way to determine the possible fate of the universe is through using the Hubble Space Telescope to measure the expansion. This conundrum has been extremely contentious among astrophysicists, and some evidence (numbers not agreeing) suggests that the expansion might have changed over time.
Regarding getting involved in science, Dr Levesque suggested taking all of the math and computer science you can. For astronomical observations, a simple pair of binoculars and astronomy apps on your phone are a good start- no need for expensive telescopes.
Who is regulating what goes up into space, if not scientists. The FCC regulates it, though Dr Levesque notes that there is a conflict of interests. Scientists and people driven by profits should both be involved. The American Astronomical Society should get involved to sort out this chaotic situation (a rich enough person can launch a car into space).
Once again, the Secret Science Club has dished out a fantastic lecture. Dr Levesque's enthusiasm for the topic was infectious, and she hit what I call the 'Secret Science Sweet Spot', that blend of hard science, adventure narrative, and advocacy. Kudos to Dr Levesque, and Dorian and Margaret for a fun, informative program. For a taste of the Secret Science Club experience, here is a video of Dr Levesque lecturing on this topic:
Pour yourself a nice beverage and soak in that SCIENCE!!!
Oh, Nutkin, what are we going to do with you? Nutkin works on the trash-diving day shift:
The night shift is covered by the Fearless Furball. Between the two of them, the custodians have their work cut out for them in the morning.
On a tangential note, there are three young raccoons which have the run of the property... they are of the age when mom kicks them out to fend for themselves. During shift change one night last week, my co-worker and I were shooting the breeze (we call it the shift change briefing), and we saw Moe, Larry, and Curly (natch!) poking around the area. All of a sudden, one of them rushes towards me, and I literally jumped backwards three feet. Oddly enough, I didn't get an aggressive vibe from the raccoon, it seemed like a mix of curiosity and playfulness, but needless to say, I don't want to play with a little fuzzball whose idea of fun is a friendly biting contest.
I wish I'd had my camera out at the time, it was an interesting enough occurrence. Hopefully, these three fuzzballs will learn to distrust two-legs. It may be comical when they approach, and it makes for good blog posts, but I like my wild animals wild.
In a comment on my last post, reader Anathema Device mentioned the plovers that play chicken with the cars in the neighborhood. The timing of the comment was fortuitous, because I've got plover content... After last night's shift change, I walked through the parking lot so I could close off the exit, and while walking on a median, I was chided by a loud, irate parent. Yep, it's perhaps my favorite season, killdeer (Charadrius vociferus) season, and the local killdeer had scraped out their comically inept nest on the median. Immediately, I went into 'killdeer nest detection' mode, and inched along, bearing the angry chattering, until I'd located the precious eggs.
When dawn arrived, I located two traffic cones in order to mark the location the nest, which as you can see, is a perfunctory affair:
Sure, enough, there were the typical four perfect eggs, camouflaged as rocks, and nestled between two exposed tree roots:
Killdeer are famous for their 'broken wing' behavior, feigning injury to lure predators from their nests. When dealing with large herbivores, who pose no threat to an adult bird, but a terrible, though inadvertent, trampling hazard to a nest, the birds straight up charge and stand their ground, seemingly fearless. Since I wasn't making any threatening overtures, but was perilously close to the nest as I flanked it with the cones, this brave bird remained at my feet, so close that the red rims of its eyes are visible in this photograph:
If all goes well, and I'm looking at YOU, local raccoon population, we'll have four adorable, noisy fuzzballs on stilts running around the site in a month and a half or so.
It just might be a local goofball in a mask, making a ruckus:
Last night, I stepped out of my office for a walkabout and I heard an uncharacteristic racket, and saw that one of our shrubs was shaking as if it were being battered by gale-force winds. Apparently, this goofball got stuck in the middle of the shrub, which doesn't even have any appealing fruit on it. Peering closer at the shrub, I noticed the glow of a tapetum lucidum shining back at me. My close presence didn't make this raccoon comfortable, so it commenced some real thrashings and bashings, to no avail.
I decided that the better part of valor would be conducting my periodic inspection tour while formulating a plan to help my masked acquaintance out of the bush. Luckily, while I was contemplating the use of a long, forked tree branch to push it out, the critter managed to extricate itself.
I don't know what's going on, but the raccoons seem to be even more comical than usual this year... I've got to check the property for unusual mushrooms.
You know it's a spectacular night when three of your visitors end up in the pond. One guy somehow walked into the pond in some undefined fashion and lost a shoe (sacrifice to the mud gods?). In an even crazier episode, two girls walking the path to our fundraiser decided that they didn't want to walk back to our visitors' center to use the restroom. They jumped over a small split-rail fence in order to answer the call of nature (okay, they needed to micturate) and fell into the pond. They were soaked up to their waists, no word on whether or not they pissed their pants, but one cannot spell "pond" without "P".
Other than that, it was a low-key night, though someone did report that a raccoon had poked its head out of a sewer grate- uh, lady, they live down there, and they're more unhappy with you being around than you are with them. They do appreciate the spilled kettle corn and dropped candy apples by the concession stand, though.
October is only half over and I'm already feeling a bit of burnout. There are some things which make it all worthwhile, though- a very sweet eight year-old girl who attended the fundraiser with her mom stopped by my desk to write a thank-you note to our education staff for running a Spring after school program that she had attended. Everybody was touched by this lovely gesture, and my co-worker Peter hung it up on the wall.
I'll make it through the month- the little thoughtful gestures outweigh the occasional dumbassitude, and I have to admit that 95% of our visitors are great.
Last night, I headed down to the beautiful Bell House in the Gowanus section of Brooklyn for the monthly Secret Science Club lecture by Dr Jason Munshi-South a professor of Urban Evolutionary Biology at Baruch College and CUNY's Graduate Center. Dr Munshi-South lectured on some of the neighbors that most New Yorkers are unacquainted with.
Dr Munshi-South began his lecture with an admission that he had been somewhat surprised upon his first visit at the amount of "nature" that is present in New York City. He displayed a map of the world's biomes and indicated that, because of the activities of humans throughout the world, it was useful to think of human-altered biomes- anthromes. Because of human activity, it could be said that we are living in the age of human-dominated environments, which could be termed the Anthropocene Epoch. Even though the majority of biomes are human dominated, most ecological studies take place in protected areas. Only four percent of these studies are conducted in an urban environment.
In urban environments, biodiversity decreases. There are fewer species in urban areas, but the populations of the species that remain typically increase. While many species are "urban avoiders", the few "urban adapters" tend to thrive. Besides the ubiquitous eastern gray squirrel (we have a fairly common melanistic variety of this squirrel as well), the most common native small mammals in NYC are the white footed mouse, the meadow vole, and the northern short-tailed shrew. The mice and voles are typically caught in traps baited with birdseed, while the shrews are caught in pitfall traps. In the Q&A, Dr Munshi-South indicated that the infamous rats of the city are not included in his study because he doesn't like them, as any rats caught in the baited traps are smelly and vicious. Additionally, the rats aren't native to the region. Larger mammals, such as racoons, squirrels, striped skunks, opossums, red foxes, feral cats, and coyotes are detected with remote cameras (great images can be found at the Fauna of NYC section of the Encyclopedia of Life. The coyote pictured in the EoL was photographed on the grounds of the New York Botanical Garden in the Bronx. As an aside, coyotes are also present in Van Cortlandt Park in the Bronx. They are fairly abundant in Westchester County- I actually saw one hanging out in the driveway of a Stop-n-Shop near my workplace last Thursday night, it looked like it owned the place.
Dr Munshi-South also discussed salamander species that still inhabit New York City. Redback salamanders (and their gray-backed variety the leadback) are fairly common in parks are areas bordering golf courses. Northern two-lined salamanders and dusky salamanders are not as common, but can be found near springs and streams in extreme Northern Manhattan (being very rocky, the northern tip of Manhattan has extensive undeveloped areas).
As far as the coyote goes, the animals arrived in the New York metro area recently. It is thought that the coyote came to the city by two routes- one population arrived from the west, while another population traveled east through Canada (the reduction of the wolf population made this movement easier, and this population of coyotes engaged in interbreeding with wolves- the coyotes also occasionally interbred with dogs, so the population is more accurately described as "Northeastern wild canids"), then turned south until it established itself in the undeveloped portions of the Bronx. From time to time, a coyote will enter Manhattan, but these incidents tend to be unreported these days, probably to avoid embarrassing coverage of the authorities.
After an overview of the fauna of the city, Dr Munshi-South discussed evolution in the urban environment. The habitats of the wild critters in the city tend to be fractured (this map of the parks of the city shows that the parks are often separated by long distances though Frederick Law Olmstead did design greenbelts to connect the parks. Isolated populations gain genetic variations through the process of genetic drift- changes in allele frequency can eventually become dominant in a population. Such changes in isolated populations accumulate until each population is genetically distinct.
The white-footed mouse is the the go-to animal in urban evolutionary studies. In one study, twenty-five mice each were collected from fifteen city parks, and tissue samples were taken so eighteen locations on the genome could be compared to determine the extent of genetic variation. In the more isolated parks, the populations were distinct, while mice in connected parks showed less variation (there is an extensive green belt in eastern Brooklyn and Queens composed of parks and cemeteries). To model the movement of populations diagrams similar to circuit diagrams can be used (warning: PDF). In the case of New York City's white-footed mice, travel from one suitable habitat to another is most feasible when there is a 70% coverage of an area by the tree canopy. Lesser canopy cover results in an impeded ability to move from suitable habitat to another. Even though the isolated populations of the city's white-footed mice are genetically distinct, they have not been isolated for enough generations for allopatric speciation to occur- they are not distinct species.
Further studies compared mouse populations from more rural areas (such as Harriman State Park) to the city mouse populations (yes, the obligatory joke was made). The city mice tended to have changes in the region of the genome that influences the immune system- remember that biodiversity decreases in urban areas, but the population density of successful urban adapters tends to increase. Natural selection would result in these populations having more robust immune systems.
In the case of the dusky salamander, there are two populations separated by the insurmountable obstacle posed by the Alexander Hamilton Bridge. The populations on either side of the bridge (180th St and 167th St) are genetically distinct.
In the Q&A, Dr Munshi-South addressed such topics as the explosion in the raccoon population in New York City, and the relatively high opossum population in less developed neighborhoods in Queens and Brooklyn. He discussed the discovery of a second beaver in the Bronx (dubbed Justin Beaver). He discussed the movement of fishers from the Albany area to the south (for the record, there's a fisher at one of my worksites in northern Westchester county- luckily, it's nowhere near my primary workplace because fishers tend to kill cats and I would be really upset if anything happened to mah preshuskittehs). Some bastard in the crowd asked about conservation measures taken to protect salamander habitats in city parks and Dr Munshi-South spoke of the need to balance human recreational needs with the needs of animals... a proposed mountain biking path was scratched to protect Northern Manhattan's dusky salamanders.
The lecture was yet another stellar Secret Science Club event. For a taste of this lecture's subject matter, crack open a beer and watch this video featuring Dr Munshi-South:
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.
