Nature Snippets

As the name suggests, drain flies may well emerge from floor drains.  They are not a sign of poor house keeping....rather they are a sign that you have drains.  The larvae inhabit your plumbing in places like shower drains and floor drains.  You may well see them at any time of year and so September is a perfect time to release this episode and kick off a new season.

Whirligig beetles are wonderful little creatures of the summer that zoom about on water surfaces.  This episode get into some of their amazing adaptations to life on water surfaces.

Opossums are moving north in response to human-caused climate change, but the current journey builds upon a far longer and more ancient journey from South America. One advantage of having them about is their talent for eating ticks, many of which have also moved north. Finally we will get into their most famous behavior: playing possum.

Natural wetlands accumulate nutrient-rich sediment carried in by rising floods. The sediments feed the wetland foodweb and are not carried downstream where they can cause algal blooms in lakes.  By providing places for flood water to go, wetlands reduce the potentially damaging impacts of floods.

Have you ever had the urge to send a potentially dangerous centipede  through the mail? Suppress that urge! But at least one person has sent a  fast-moving myriapod through the US Mail, and here is that story.

Spring flowers bloom before tree canopies fill out taking advantage of both accessible light, and early-year pollinators.  This little beetle is one of the earliest and is well protected by a toxic payload.

The leaves that provide breath-taking views in New England Falls are far from ecologically finished when they drop from trees. Many leaves end up fueling food webs in freshwater habitats. This episode covers some of the complex processes that occur under water before a leaf ever feeds a trout. 

Plankton are generally small plant-like and animal-like organisms that  live in the water column of our oceans, lakes, and ponds. Ecologists  have known that they plankton grow actively in lakes all summer and  often produce blooms in warm weather. Until recently, ecologists  considered that plankton died back in winter and were not an important  source of food under ice.  But recent research has made it clear that  plankton grows under ice and is important in the winter food web.  Dr.  Jason Stockwell and Dr. Ariana Chiapella, the first guests on Nature  Snippets, will explain their research on plankton under the ice of  Shelburne Pond Vermont.

An earlier version had some audio issues which have since been ironed out.

In winter, a small black caddisfly emerges from streams to complete its life cycle. The females don't bother with wings, unless, that is, they happen to emerge in summer.  These beautiful little caddisflies spend their larval lives filtering minute particles of organic matter from the water and cleaning the water in the process. 

A phenomenon called "the density anomaly of water" makes it possible for folks to drive trucks out on to Lake Champlain most years.  This episode explains why ice is less dense than water and why this allowed life as we know it to evolve.