Posted on

Quest Podcast #2: Species are everywhere, but they don’t exist

QuestX is pleased to bring you our second podcast
 .
Species are everywhere, but they don’t exist: Wherein we discuss different methods of defining species, the purpose of separating living things into categories, why it seems like species exist, and why, ultimately, they may not. If species don’t exactly exist, is the concept still meaningful? Yes. Find out why on the Quest podcast.
 .
 .
The voices:
 .
Danaan DeNeve – Evolutionary ecologist, PhD candidate at UC Merced
 .
Nate Fox – Paleontologist, PhD candidate at UC Merced
 .
Taran Rallings – Paleo food web modeler, PhD student at UC Merced
 .
.
We will update this blog post with some exciting accessory information very soon
 .
Next up: Models and Data Collection: the methods, the tension, and the search for reality
 .
<3
The QuestX team
 .
 .
 .
*Temporary theme music: Twilight Zone theme*
Posted on

Our Living Breathing Home, Earth ( a quick 20 year peek)

In 1997 NASA began a continuous “view” of Earth, the entire earth.

The amazing animation from NASA (below) shows, in a few minutes, the last twenty years of Earth’s plant life.  The ebb and flow of the seasons, the breathing in and breathing out, and the changes from year to year.

The living earth (NASA 1997-2017)
Our living Earth (NASA 1997-2017)

White represents snow cover (a good indicator for following the winter season  ) , brown to dark green on land represents low to large presence of vegetation (that light green on land is generally the growth spurt of new plants and the dying back of seasonal plants), and in the ocean purple to dark blue indicate low levels of phytoplankton with the brighter shades from green to yellow indicating high levels of phytoplankton.

In 1997 NASA launched SeaWIFS (the Sea viewing Wide Field-of-view Sensor), which has allowed scientists to record and study, more comprehensively, life on Earth to gather information across all of Earth.

Obviously! …the kind of information/data generated from this type of scientific technology can make a big difference in helping us to monitor and understand life on Earth (and potential life on other planets), climactic events, and longer term impacts.

For more information see NASA’s original article  “The Changing Colors of our Living Planet”.

Posted on

Tapanuli Orangutan, Pongo tapanuliensis, the Rarest Great Ape

A study published today (Nov. 2, 2017) in the journal Current Biology (“Morphometric, Behavioral, and Genomic Evidence for a New Orangutan Species“), lists the Tapanuli Orangutan  (Pongo tapanuliensis) as the rarest great ape on Earth, with population estimates lower than 800 individuals (for more info on the the rarest ape/primate species see Rarest Primates). The great apes are all found in the family Hominidae, and include: orangutans, gorillas, chimpanzees, and humans.

Credit: J. You (SCIENCE)
Credit: J. You (SCIENCE)

Found in the upland forest regions of the island of Sumatra, the Tapanuli orangutan was previously thought to be within the same species as the Sumatran orangutan. Scientists used genetic analysis to confirm the morphometric information ( = analysis of form [shape and size]) to distinguish the Tapanuli from the Sumatran orangutan. Morphologically identifying features included a generally smaller skull, teeth shape, and facial shapes. Interestingly the males long roar call (audio) has a longer duration and higher maximum frequency than the Sumatran or the Bornean orangutan. A bit more obvious to the casual observer, the Tapanuli orangutan has a body build more similar to the Sumatran (linear), but coloring more similar to the Bornean (but even more cinnamon-y). The Tapanuli is also frizzier than both other species, and the female is bearded.

 

Current (as of today) classification for the great apes, Hominidae (only currently extant [ = living] species included), and all but 3 are considered critically endangered and 2 of the remaining 3 are considered endangered:

  • Family Hominidae
  • Subfamily Ponginae
    • Tribe Pongini
      • Genus Pongo
        • Bornean orangutan, Pongo pygmaeus
        • Sumatran orangutan, Pongo abelii
        • Tapanuli orangutan, Pongo tapanuliensis
  • Subfamily Homininae
    • Tribe Gorillini
      • Genus Gorilla
        • Western gorilla, Gorilla gorilla
        • Eastern gorilla, Gorilla beringei
    • Tribe Hominini
      • Subtribe Panina
        • Genus Pan
          • Chimpanzee (common chimpanzee), Pan troglodytes
          • Bonobo (pygmy chimpanzee), Pan paniscus
      • Subtribe Hominina
        • Genus Homo
          • Human, Homo sapiens (modern human is designated Homo sapiens sapiens)
Posted on

Quest Podcast #1: Wait, what are we doing?!

QuestX is pleased to bring you our first podcast!
Wherein we discuss such things as how science & nature documentaries present research (and nature!), a bit about why QuestX does what it does, some of our thoughts about our respective fields, sciencing, how we got into sciencing, and some other fun stuff.
The voices:
<– Danaan DeNeve– Evolutionary ecologist, PhD student at UC Merced

.

 .
 .
 .
 .
.
.
<–Morgan Barnes– Soil scientist, PhD student at UC Merced

.

 .
 .
Nate Fox– Paleontologist, PhD student at UC Merced –>
 .
(with friends ;p )
 .
 .
We discuss several things in this podcast which might benefit from the aid of a visual guide, which we have attempted to provide below, along with some helpful and exciting links:
 .
 .
We start off our magical mystery tour through several grad students’ brains with aplodontids…
.
.
sewele001/419x398px/8/28/09/DS
.
This is a mountain beaver. They are rodents, but they are not beavers. Mountain beavers are the sole surviving members of the Aplodontid family, which notably included the only horned rodents ever known to have existed.

 

 .
 .
 .
.
Morgan thinks the

mountain beavers are the cutest aplodontids… 

 .
 .
 .
.
.
 .
.
Danaan thinks the horned aplodontids are cuter.
 .
 .
 .
 .
 .
Maybe you like them both!
 .
.
.
.
 .
Here’s a timeline showing where aplodontids fall in relation to the rest of the rodent family.
 .
An unexpected foray into reptiles…

.
So apparently when you Google “horned rodent” sometimes armadillo lizards come  up too. They migh be even better than aplodontids, if a little hard to be.
 .
 .
 .
 .
 Other podcast mentions include:
Oreodonts were giant pig-sheep-things of the Miocene and Oligocene. Wikipedia has some good starting information about these guys:
 .
 .
.
.

.

.

Entelodonts were some pretty wild critters too!

.

.

.

And then of course there’s Synthetoceras, another strange Miocene artiodactly (deer-like animal).

 

 

For reference, a lovely geologic era timeline by Ray Troll. Please note this is a very simplified timeline and is NOT TO TEMPORAL SCALE
(we’ll have a better geologic time scale available soon!)

Posted on

Badger caches cow…

Wait! … What?!?

Yep… scientists researching the ecology of scavengers (in other words> studying how animals that feed on dead animal or plant matter interact with each other and their environments) during winter in the Great Basin Desert, Utah, staked out 7 calf carcasses (each with an associated trap camera) and got an unexpected result…
Badgers!
Scientific researchers in Great Basin Desert, Utah, caught American badgers (on trap cameras) caching cows.
While badgers are known scavengers, the researchers hadn’t planned on studying any mustelids, including badgers.

Badgers are hard to study since they are generally active underground or are nocturnal (out and about at night), so their behaviors aren’t well-known. Last winter (January, 2016) the researchers caught two badgers (images, not the badgers themselves! ; ) caching two of the staked out carcasses. This is the first evidence of a badger caching / burying an animal larger than itself.

Here is a video (from a trap camera) of one of those badgers caching /burying it’s find for later:

updating soon…

The original video is on YouTube!

For the research article:
.
 Subterranean caching of domestic cow (Bos taurus) carcasses by American badgers (Taxidea taxus) in the Great Basin Desert, Utah