445 Million Years Old (and Still Having Sex on the Beach)

The Harvard entomologist, photographer, and writer Piotr Naskrecki has a beautiful new book out from University of Chicago Press.  It’s called Relics: Travels in Nature’s Time Machine.  Here’s the publisher’s description:

Naskrecki begins by defining the concept of a relic—a creature or habitat that, while acted upon by evolution, remains remarkably similar to its earliest manifestations in the fossil record. Then he pulls back the Cambrian curtain to reveal relic after eye-popping relic: katydids, ancient reptiles, horsetail ferns, majestic magnolias, and more, all depicted through stunning photographs and first-person accounts of Naskrecki’s time studying them and watching their interactions in their natural habitats.

And here’s an excerpt:

First came the big females. Nearly all had males in tow. In the dimming light we could see spiky tails of hundreds more as they tumbled in the waves, trying to get to the dry land. By the time the sun fully set, the beach was covered with hundreds of glistening, enormous animals. Females dug in the sand, making holes to deposit their eggs, nearly four thousand in a single nest, while the males fought for the privilege of fathering the embryos. Fertilization in horseshoe crabs is external, and often multiple males share the fatherhood of a single clutch. Equipped with a pair of big compound eyes (plus eight smaller ones) capable of seeing the ultraviolet range of the light spectrum, male horseshoe crabs are very good at locating females even in the melee of waves, sand, and hundreds of other males. Scientists studying this behavior suspected at first that males might be attracted by female pheromones, but as it turns out they rely solely on their excellent vision. They do make mistakes, however, and it is not rare to find males forming chains, which disperse as soon as a real female shows up.

Watching the drama of the mass spawning of horseshoe crabs is to me as close to a religious experience as I will ever get. My heart seems to slow down and a natural calmness helps me momentarily forget all the ills of the world. As strange and distant as horseshoe crabs may seem, these majestic organisms remind me that we share the same evolutionary heritage. Although our paths to what we are now diverged early, humans and horseshoe crabs at some point shared the same ancestor. It was a very long time ago. Horseshoe crabs have been around longer than most groups of organisms that surround us now. In the fossil deposits of Manitoba, the recent discovery of an interesting little creature named Lunataspis aurora proves that horseshoe crabs quite similar to modern forms were already present in the Ordovician, 445 million years ago. By the time the first dinosaurs started terrorizing the land in the Triassic (about 245 million years ago), horseshoe crabs were already relics of a bygone era. And yet they persisted. Dinosaurs came and went, the polarity and climate of Earth changed many times over, but horseshoe crabs slowly plowed forward. Yet during this time they changed surprisingly little. Species from the Jurassic were so similar to modern forms that I doubt I would notice anything unusual if one crawled in front of me on the beach in Delaware. Somehow horseshoe crabs had stumbled upon a lifestyle and morphology so successful that they were able to weather changes to our planet that wiped out thousands of seemingly more imposing lineages (dinosaurs and trilobites immediately come to mind). But despite claims to the contrary by creationists and other lunatics, they kept evolving. Modern horseshoe crabs, limited to three species in Southeast Asia and one in eastern North America, differ in many details from their fossil relatives. We know, for example, that many, if not most, fossil horseshoe crabs lived in fresh water, often in shallow swamps overgrown with dense vegetation, and some might have even been almost entirely terrestrial.

You can buy the book here.

 

Why Babies Still Take Daddy’s Surname

Why do kids still typically get their Dad’s surname, 50 years after the rise of feminism?  Today’s New York Times offers an explanation that hadn’t occurred to me:

Traditional practices grew out of a male-dominated culture and a need for simple rules. But there is another, less obvious motive: to hold men accountable for their offspring.

“How do you attach men to children?” said Laurie K. Scheuble, a senior lecturer at Pennsylvania State University who has done several studies on naming practices. Names are “a very functional and practical way” to do so.

The article goes on to suggest that “perhaps, in an age when men wear BabyBjorns, it is no longer always necessary.”  But despite our delusions of modernity, the writer inadvertently reveals that  even college professors apparently still rely on another ancient means of keeping restless and paternity-insecure  males attached to family:  Jocular talk about how much the kiddies look like them..

When Daniel Pollack-Pelzner, 32, an English professor who lives in Portland, Ore., married Laura Rosenbaum, he toyed with the idea of a creative synthesis.

But “Rosenpollackpelznerbaum sounded like a weapon of mass destruction,” he said. When they had a son,

Built for Singing Duets

That old slogan “A woman needs a man like a fish needs a bicycle” always struck me as not nearly as clever as its admirers seemed to think.  The truth, often annoying, sometimes delightful, is that women and men need each other like a fish needs a school.

Or, maybe, like birds need a flock.  Here’s a new study published yesterday in Science:

Long-married human couples may finish each others’ sentences, but the plain-tailed wrens of the Andes take things a step further. Male and female wrens sing intimate duets in which they alternate syllables so quickly it sounds like a single bird is singing. New research shows that the brains of both the male and female wrens actually process the entire duet, not just each bird’s own contribution. These findings are surprising because researchers have generally assumed that the brain activity of each songbird would be largely devoted to that bird’s own singing role. Eric Fortune and colleagues recorded the wrens as they sang while hiding in the bamboo forests on Ecuador’s Antisana volcano. Analyzing these recordings, the researchers learned that the female birds seem to establish the timing of the song and that males, but not females, make occasional mistakes during singing. Next, the researchers recorded the brain activity in the birds’ song center while playing back recordings of bird duets as well as solos. The brain neurons responded most vigorously to the duets, suggesting that certain brain circuits — which are shared by humans — are primed for cooperation.

And here’s an account of the study from Newswise:

The brain was built for cooperative activity, whether it be dancing on a television reality show, constructing a skyscraper or working in an office, according to a study led by Johns Hopkins behavioral neuroscientist Eric Fortune and published in the Nov. 4 issue of the journal Science.“What we learned is that when it comes to the brain and cooperation, the whole is definitely greater than the sum of its parts,” said Fortune, of the Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences at the university’s Krieger School of Arts and Sciences. “We found that the brain of each individual participant prefers the combined activity over his or her own part.”

In addition to shedding light on ourselves as social and cooperative beings, the results have important implications for engineers who want to be able to program autonomous robots to work effectively as teams in settings such as bomb squads and combat.

But Fortune’s work didn’t involve androids or take place on a battlefield. Instead, he and his team took to the cloud forests of Ecuador, on the slopes of the active Antisana Volcano. Why? It’s one of the only places in the world where you can find plain-tailed wrens. These chubby-breasted rust-and-gray birds, who don’t fly so much as hop and flit through the area’s bamboo thickets, are famous for their unusual duets. Their songs — sung by one male and one female — take an ABCD form, with the male singing the A and C phrases and the female (who seems to be the song leader) singing B and D.

“What’s happening is that the male and female are alternating syllables, though it often sounds like one bird singing alone, very sharply, shrilly and loudly,” explained Fortune, who spent hours hacking through the thick bamboo with a machete, trying to

My Favorite Science Headline of the Week

From the folks at Science Daily comes a story headlined “Great Tits Also Have Age-Related Defects.”

Yes, it’s about the birds.

Great Tit Parus major (Credit: iStockphoto/Andrew Howe)

Specifically, Parus major, a songbird common in Europe.

That includes England, where “titting about” means wasting time, and “ta-ta” means “goodbye.”    Such a disappointment.

But “tit” also means breast, and the scientific name of this species means “larger breast.”  I have no clue why it got this name, or why our American species Baeolophus bicolor is named the titmouse.  Neither looks like D-cup material.  More informed readers can perhaps advise?

But enough adolescent sniggering.  On to the science, which is what you’re here for, right?  It’s based on the work of evolutionary biologist Sarah Bouwhuis:

Although great tits can live for nine years, breeding success declines rapidly after the age of two. Nevertheless, older great tits keep on breeding every year, says Bouwhuis: ‘They carry on to the bitter end’. What is remarkable is that at the start of the breeding period there’s very little difference between the nests of older and younger females. Bouwhuis discovered, however, that massive mortality occurs just after the young leave the nest. ‘The parents still have to guide their young in the first crucial weeks after leaving the nest. Perhaps the older mothers have more trouble with that guidance; their young often fall prey to sparrowhawks, for example. Or maybe the older mothers have only been able to find less suitable places in the woods.’

Luddites as Fashion Victims

When I wrote about the birth of the Luddite movement–200 years ago this week– in the current Smithsonian Magazine, I had to leave out one entertaining detail.  So here it is :

The machines the original Luddites smashed were “stocking frames” –that is, looms for making stockings.  It was a thriving business early in the nineteenth century, because men need stockings to wear with their knee breeches.

Then along came that great fashion-maker Beau Brummell, popularizing the idea of full-length pants.

The stocking business sagged, and the loss of business imperiled the jobs of struggling  stocking frame operators, who ultimately began to riot.  Thus the original Luddites were fashion victims.

This hilarious note from Ian Kelly’s Beau Brummel: The Ultimate Man of Style may help explain why the new style of pants suddenly became so popular:

One Persian ambassador to the Court of St. James’s was moved to write that he found the Brummell style of trousers “immodest and unflattering to the figure … [they] look just like underdrawers–could they be designed to appeal to the ladies?”  A more sympathetic or aroused observer noted that they were “extremely handsome and very fit to expose a muscular thigh,” and society hostesses were later said to regret the passing of the fashion because “one could always tell what a young man was thinking.”

Strange Sex

The Natural History Museum in London has a new exhibition called “Sexual Nature,” and The Telegraph recently featured a few of the odd behaviors described there.  Here is the prize for least seductive courtship technique:

Male porcupines also have a rather unpleasant habit. They spray the females with their urine in a bid to attract them. The urine is filled with hormones that cause the females to become sexually attracted.

And this might just be the most, oh, anti-climactic:

Red velvet mites try another ploy often seen in humans – they paint for their partners. The tiny male arachnids lay down intricate trails of silk for the female to follow.

If she likes the artistry of the trail, she will follow it to the end and sit on a deposit of sperm the male has left there.

You can read the whole article here.

Ralph Nader Plays Santa with my Natural History of the Rich

Well, this is very odd.  Ralph Nader has come up with a clever idea called Christmas-by-the Box.  He’ll sell you 100 copies of some of his favorite books  for $100 (shipping included)  and you give them away to friends and strangers.  My Natural History of the Rich:  A Field Guide (hardcover from W.W. Norton) is on Ralph’s list.

O.k., I can hear you cynics grumbling that he’s just clearing out his stock of books purchased on remainder.   But, hey, be nice, it’s coming up on Christmas!

That book has attracted a remarkably diverse assortment of admirers, not just Nader but Dominick Dunne and even Town & Country magazine:  “This book…may change for ever our perception of the urge to make money.” — The Financial Times “Clever, perceptive and unfailingly interesting.” — Jonathan Yardley, Washington Post “Droll and delightful….Conniff’s charm and fun-loving approach make his book a pleasure from start to finish.” — New York Sun   “It is anecdotal, witty, and wonderfully informative.” — Dominick Dunne     “A witty compendium of gossip, anecdotes, history and sociobiological research.” — Town and Country

Here’s Santa Ralph’s sales pitch:

From: Ralph Nader
Subject: Bookstore By The Box
Date: Tuesday, December 7, 2010, 12:33 PM

Let’s try a quick experiment that no one can stop us from conducting.

It is an important experiment that can spread rapidly and start something of consequence that will be fun and gain attention.

Let’s call it Bookstore by the Box.

Here’s how it works.

I’ll give you my list of book titles for your selection.

Each book title–see attached list–fills a box unopened from the publisher’s warehouse.

The average number of these book titles is twenty four.

Twenty four books of the same title.

No assortment.

You can select any box for purchase–$100 per box–(this includes shipping costs.)

On arrival, you can distribute your box or boxes either for free or at a small price per book-as you choose.

You can give them to anyone you want-individual or institutional, such as school classes or libraries.

Then you immediately become a BOOKSHAKER.

A BOOKSHAKER is

Big Cojones

A bush cricket and its testicles (Photograph courtesy Richard Richards, University of Derby)

Here’s a report from the French Tribune about a new study on who’s got the biggest cojones, and just to help you with the math, it’s like a 180-pound man having 25-pound testicles:

A team of Scientists has found that a bushcricket species has the largest known testicles of any creature in relation to its body mass.

The scientists at the universities of Cambridge and Derby measured the tuberous bush cricket, Platycleis affinis and found that its testicles accounted for 14% of the insect’s body weight.

Karim Vahed of the University of Derby and his colleagues measured the testicle size of 21 species of bushcrickets as part of the study of the evolutionary consequences of the insects’ sexual habits.

The scientists also studied the mating strategies of the insects and found that they release only small amounts of sperm at each mating. This indicates that large testicles are for mating with many females and not for producing more sperms.

“Males with bigger testicles are actually producing smaller amounts of ejaculate. This very much favours the alternative hypothesis: that it’s about the number of different females the male can fertilise, rather than getting a greater success per female.” said Dr Vahed.

Oh, Kvakk!

A black-crowned night heron seeking breakfast (© John Skillin)

I love the black-crowned night heron partly because it looks like a nineteenth-century school master patrolling the classroom and preparing to seize some miscreant by the scruff of the neck.

So I was delighted this past spring when a pair of them nested in the woods behind my next door neighbor’s house on the Connecticut Coast.  It took me a while to figure out what was going on.

At first, I just heard that strange shrill dinosaur-colony sound ringing out from the trees:  “kvakk ..”  And again, after a long pause, “kvakk …”

Then one day

Frillier than Austin Powers–and Way More Mojo

Meet Mr. Mojoceratops. (Nicholas Longrich/Yale University)

I am a great fan of colorful scientific names.  (You can read about some of the best of them in my book, just out last week in paperback, Swimming With Piranhas at Feeding Time:  My Life Doing Dumb Stuff with Animals.)  So this new dinosaur, described today by a paleontologist at Yale, is a natural.  It makes Austin Powers, not to mention Triceratops, look like a piker:

Mojoceratops: New Dinosaur Species Named for Flamboyant Frill

New Haven, Conn.—When Nicholas Longrich discovered a new dinosaur species with a heart-shaped frill on its head, he wanted to come up with a name just as flamboyant as the dinosaur’s appearance. Over a few beers with fellow paleontologists one night, he blurted out the first thing that came to mind: Mojoceratops.

“It was just a joke, but then everyone stopped and looked at each other and said, ‘Wait – that actually sounds cool,’ ” said Longrich, a postdoctoral associate at Yale University. “I tried to come up with serious names after that, but Mojoceratops just sort of stuck.”

With the publication of Longrich’s paper describing his find in the Journal of Paleontology, online today, the name is now official.

The dinosaur is one of more than a dozen species belonging to the chasmosaurine ceratopsid family, which are defined by elaborate frills on their skulls. A plant eater about the size of a hippopotamus, Mojoceratops appeared about 75 million years ago during the Late Cretaceous—10 million years earlier than its well-known cousin, the Triceratops. The species, which is related to another dinosaur in Texas, is found only in Canada’s Alberta and Saskatchewan provinces and was short-lived, having survived for only about one million years.

It was only after coming up with the unusual name that Longrich looked into its etymology. Surprisingly, he found