Nature Snippets

What sucks the juice out of many plants, leaves a sticky mess that promotes mold growth, and will lay its eggs ANYWHERE. The answer is the spotted lanternfly, a beautiful insect that hails from East Asia and is spreading from an introduction site near Allentown Pennsylvania. Although it is pretty, it can be destructive in its home away from home.

The episode art this week was uploaded by Wikimedia user WanderingMogwai and can be found here: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Spotted_lanternfly_displaying_underwing.jpg

Scuba divers pump compressed air into or out of jackets to hang neutrally buoyant in the water column. Few insects can manage the same feat and must hang onto to plants or expend energy swimming. But one insect can shunt oxygen in and out of an air bubble to "float" anywhere between the water surface and the pond floor. This same insect turns camouflage on it's head to adapt to its unusual back-stroke approach to swimming. Backswimmers do all of this and are also well equipped with a beak that can get your attention if you mishandle them.

The episode art is modified from Didier Descouens' stunning image found here: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Notonecta_maculata_MHNT.jpg

A friend and radio broadcaster in my home town asked me to record something about the process of writing and publishing a book. I suspect that each book develops on a unique trajectory, and mine seems certainly to be unique. It's my first book and so I claim limited expertise on the topic. There were pitfalls, and one major one, but it was nothing I could have avoided. So this podcast is certainly not a how-to, but more of a how-I-did. And when you write your book, I'm sure it will be in a very different way than I did.

Episode art is Adelaide Murphy Tyrol's art on the book cover. The book is available for pre order here:

https://bookshop.org/p/books/turning-stones-discovering-the-life-of-water-declan-mccabe/20598149?ean=9781684751839

and also on Amazon and Barnes & Noble.

We have dramatically changed our climate. It's easy to consider that the change is slight. After all, who can remember what our climate was like back in the 70s? Back when it was "normal"? But consider this, roughly 60% of the US population had not even been born until the 1980s. So, our childhood recollections of "normal" weather occurred when climate change was already well underway. Scientists call this phenomenon the "shifting baseline" - what we each consider baseline conditions is very different from what a pre-industrial baseline might look like. This episode examines long-term data sets to explore how climate has affected important parts of the New England culture like ice fishing, lilac flowering, and maple sugaring.

The episode art is from the Joe's Pond Association website. It shows a concrete block perched on a wooden pallet on the frozen pond. "When the ice breaks, the pallet will fall, and down will come cinder block".....unplugging a clock to establish the precise moment of ice out! Please pay them for their photograph by placing a bet on when the ice will go out in 2024: https://www.joespondvermont.com/ice-out-tickets.html

Ladybugs, Ladybirds, or Lady beetles are familiar to all in art and in reality. These little munchers of aphids and other garden insects are common in many habitats. If the supply of soft-bodied insects on your cabbages dwindles, the adults will fly off to other plants in your garden and elsewhere. Because lady beetles have been collected and sold for as biological control agents, species have been moved from place to place and even between continents. This episode covers such topics and also addresses efforts to document rare native species and even farm them for reintroduction into their former habitats.

Episode art is from iNaturalist contributor Bill Siebert. Bill is a retired biology teacher equipped with a 600mm and macro lens. For more information about his photograph, get a free iNaturalist account and look here: https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/171724937

In colder winters than we are currently experiencing in Vermont, small streams wear thick layers of ice. In the winter of 1997 I attempted to sample some streams year round. I was thwarted by ice so thick that a felling axe made little impression. But spring-fed streams with an endless supply of water at a constant temperature shrug off any ice that may form. These unique flowing-water habitats lack the minute bits of organic material that feed insects in other streams. And so many species simply cant live in springs, freeing up those habitats for spring water specialists found nowhere else.

The art for this episode is a photo of the Well of Dee, the source of Scotland's River Dee. The river emerges from the ground as a large spring in Cairngorms National Park and flows west to the North Sea at Aberdeen. The art is from Wikimedia Commons and full details are here: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Well_of_Dee_-_Source_of_River_Dee_-_geograph.org.uk_-_229032.jpg

With snow on the ground, you might not expect to find many invertebrates about, but there are some exceptions. Long-jawed spiders are among the most common invertebrates found clamoring about for food on Vermont's snow crusts. They come in two common colors and my bias is that the green ones are spectacular. So, grab your phone and perhaps a clip-on macro lens to get up close and personal with these amazing creatures making a living by eating snow fleas.

The episode art this week is from Wikimedia Commons. Full details can be found here: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Tetragnatha_P1060796a.jpg

Calligraphy beetles have beautiful patterns that appear to be inked onto their elytra with a fine-tipped black pen. Their larvae specialize on particular plant species before dropping into the soil to pupate. I find them fascinating, and so when my daughters pointed out that my podcast lacked a proper logo, I suggested the willow calligrapha for inspiration. Lauren, my youngest is an artist and in short order she produced a new logo for the podcast. To see more of Lauren's art please visit her on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/lauren.mcc.photography/ And to hear why some beetles in the genus Calligrapha support the matriarchy, give the episode a listen.

Episode art this week is a willow calligrapha beetle uploaded by user B. Schoenmakers to Wikimedia Commons. Full details here: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Calligrapha_multipunctata_(Chrysomelidae)_-_(imago),_Jefferson_(NY),_United_States.jpg

"A rose by any other name would smell as sweet" - Shakespeare said it best. The subject of this week's episode has many names just in English, but whatever you choose to call them, they are important in processing leaves and decaying wood in the environment. Isopods are ubiquitous crustaceans that you doubtlessly have seen at home, in the woods, in a pond, or in weeds washed up on a beach somewhere. I dig a little into their biology here discuss a few of their very many names.

I also am excited to announce that my first book, "Turning Stones: Discovering the Life of Fresh Water" will be coming out in June. I'm excited to see this project come to life and I look forward to scheduling some book events. You can take a peek or pre-order a copy here on the Down East Books site: http://downeastbooks.com/books/9781684751846

This week's cover art is from Wikimedia user Dat doris and found here: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Kellerassel_001.jpg

If you have seen a freshly felled tree, you may well have noticed the rings in the cross section that mark the passage of the years. But felling trees just as an historical exercise seems extreme and so my students and I cored some trees on campus and nearby to explore succession, competition, and the deep history of organisms far older than ourselves. The pine trees we cored stood in what we now call "Colchester Vermont" when Thomas Edison's first viable light bulbs shed light on the world for about 14 hours before burning out. This podcast describes the process of tree coring and ways we can use this technique to test hypotheses.

Update 12/29/2023: episode art is from a bald cypress found here: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Tree_rings_in_Taxodium_distichum_wood_(bald_cypress)_4_(24518375307).jpg