Discover Magazine

Exploration in Yellowstone Lake

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Yellowstone Lake at dawn by Wikimedia contributor Seglea

We like national parks, and are surprised to learn that the body of water pictured above hasn’t actually been explored much. The good news is that there are efforts underway to send an underwater drone down into the lake’s depths to better study this interesting site of thermal activity. Jeffrey Marlow reports for Discover Magazine’s blog:

2016 marks the 100th anniversary of the National Park Service, a milestone that has set off a year of celebration for what historian Wallace Stegner called “the best idea we ever had.” The first park, Yellowstone, predates the Service itself, and despite its 4.1 million yearly visitors that are putting real stress on a highly interconnected ecosystem, certain portions of the park remain a nearly unadulterated wilderness.

One of these sites is the floor of Yellowstone Lake, a 350 square-kilometer body of water that reaches depths of 120 meters. And while much of Yellowstone’s thermal activity manifests on the surface – think rainbow-colored hot springs, gooey mudpots that smell of sulfur, and spurting geysers – the same forces create heated water and unique oases of microbial life at the lake bottom.

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Bats can Focus Biosonar by Stretching Mouths

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While in Cockpit Country for our first expedition to Jamaica looking for the Golden Swallow, John, Justin and I watched in awe as hundreds and hundreds of bats flowed out of a cave and flew in a distinct path right by us over the course of half an hour. The slightly shoddy video below can only partly convey the sensation of having the flapping mammals zoom past in a steady stream. We’ve recently featured a couple stories of scientific developments in bat research on the blog, including wing-beat echolocation in fruit bats and singing for communication in other species.

A couple weeks ago, we learned via Discover Magazine’s science blog by Continue reading →

Bees May Sleep to Maintain Learning Brains

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Bee in mid air flight carrying pollen in pollen basket. Credit: Muhammad Mahdi Karim

Bees are incredibly important to much of the world’s flora, and we are always happy to see when research on them is continuing. After all, the better we understand them, the better we can protect them. Elizabeth Preston reports for Discover Magazine’s blog that when young honeybees spend time in the hive, they spend more time sleeping afterwards, probably to absorb whatever they’re learning among all the other bees:

Facing a whole hive of bees at once can be overwhelming—even for a bee. Young honeybees sleep more after spending time in the hive than after being by themselves. They need the extra nap time, it seems, to build and maintain their learning brains.

The first surprising thing about this might be that insects sleep at all. “Since around the 1980s there is good evidence that insects show…characteristics of sleep,” says Guy Bloch, who studies bee behavior at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Yes, their brains are tiny and organized differently from ours. But they rest in a similar way. And just as sleeping helps us sort through the new things we’ve learned each day, there’s evidence that sleep in bees and fruit flies is also tied up with memory and learning, Bloch says.

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Counting Monarchs

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Creating Breeding Habitat for Monarchs: To reverse the breeding habitat loss in the U.S., the Monarch Joint Venture promotes the inclusion of native milkweed and nectar plants in restoration efforts across the country ranging from small gardens to natural areas and corporate landscapes. (Photo by Giuseppina Croce)

We’ve seen some information on how much people value monarch butterflies. Now we’re learning that the beautiful orange lepidopterans have their own citizen science Thanksgiving count and might soon be labeled as a threatened species under the Endangered Species Act if a petition has any effect.

Beloved by tattoo parlors and fantasy princess landscapes, the king of butterflies is in decline. During their annual migration, monarch butterflies are famous for gathering in innumerable flutters as they fly from summer breeding grounds in the U.S. and Canada to warmer sites in Mexico and California. At one time, there were over a billion monarchs making this journey. Now, less than 4% are left.

Over the years, human behaviors, particularly agricultural practices have contributed to the monarch’s decline. In a petition to protect monarchs scientists point to habitat loss as grassland is converted to farmland and overwintering sites are deforested as a major factor. On top of that, the cultivation of certain genetically engineered crops enable farmers to apply broad-spectrum herbicides killing weeds such as milkweed, the monarch caterpillar’s sole food source.

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