Darwin Gets Swine Flu

I had the privilege of attending a seminar yesterday evening presented by author Carl Zimmer for the Department of Organismal and Evolutionary Biology at the University of Massachusetts (Amherst). The title was “Darwin Gets Swine Flu: Celebrating the Origin of Species in an Age of Pandemics.” Zimmer somehow managed to weave together eloquent prose with stunning graphics and a dash of humor. How else would you deftly convey something as sobering as influenza?

I must admit that I have been one of those folks who has brushed aside the hype associated with H1N1. I still wash my hands and take as many precautions as possible without unduly altering my daily life, but I may have to re-think this after learning what Zimmer knew already.

Thankfully, the death toll from influenza pandemics has steadily and dramatically dropped since the global catastrophe of 1918, but even without these periodic spikes, an average of 36,000 people die each year from the regular flu. This year, 10,000 folks have perished from H1N1, in the U.S. alone, since about April. There may be more fatalities yet to come, but we hope not, of course.

Why can’t we seem to conquer influenza? This is where Darwin comes in. Viruses simply evolve to fast for us to keep up with them, at least with our current vaccination technology. We even accelerate their evolution through our global travel, where tropical strains can mix with temperate ones and create new strains within days. The rate at which viruses reproduce is mind-boggling. The rate at which they mutate is staggering. The good news is that the majority of these mutations are fatal to the viruses themselves. Enough mutations survive, however, to create strains resistant to the latest vaccination, or otherwise insulate the virus from our ability to combat it effectively.

Ok, back up a minute. So what do the “H” and “N” and numbers stand for, anyway? “H” stands for hemagglutinin, “N” for neuraminidase, both of which are proteins that coat the exterior of a virus. These proteins are what our immune system antibodies recognize as foreign invaders. The numbers, one through sixteen, represent the known strains of the influenza virus. Where are the rest of the strains? Well, nearly all of them are carried by birds. Birds don’t seem to get sick from these viruses, at least not very often, but of course they have the potential to spread the viruses far and wide with their excrement, and dead bodies (from whatever cause of death).

Zimmer cautioned that “factory farming” of large numbers of poultry birds and pigs in relatively small, confined spaces may mean more flu pandemics in our future. Virus particles (for lack of a better, basic term) are easily passed short distances from one infected organism to another as it is, let alone when they are shoulder to shoulder.

Winter is the time at which we are most vulnerable to infection because viruses sneezed out or coughed out linger in the dry air much longer than in humid air. The viruses also drift farther, and settle on common items like doorknobs and telephones, too. No reason for paranoia here, just caution. After I wash my hands in a public restroom, I use the paper towel to open the door to leave, for example.

Time to switch gears now and encourage you to follow science through Zimmer’s books, website, and blog. The best place to start might be at Carl Zimmer dot com. Be sure to check out his award-winning blog, too, entitled The Loom. What an appropriate name for what Zimmer weaves together in a totally enthralling fashion. Keep up the great work, Carl!

Remember behavior!

This afternoon I attended a seminar in the graduate program in Organismal & Evolutionary Biology at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, entitled “The Evolution of Comparative Cognition.” The presentation was given by Sara Shettleworth, Professor Emerita of the Department of Psychology at the University of Toronto. She gave a delightful and insightful picture of how psychology and the study of animal behavior have evolved (or perhaps not evolved in some ways), and the topic stirred the minds of all in attendance.

One of the most striking aspects of ethology (the study of animal behavior) and psychology is how few species of animals have been studied to date. Initially, it was all rats, all the time, with only a smattering of studies involving other vertebrates, let alone primates or invertebrates. That condition was exemplified in Shettleworth’s talk by a cartoon depicting a “pied piper” rat leading an army of scientists through town.

Today, we collectively study a more diverse lot of species both in the laboratory and in the field, but I can’t help but wonder whether the questions we ask, and the methods by which we ask them, don’t say more about ourselves than about those subjects of experiment.

Students of animal behavior have long been cautioned about the pitfalls of anthropomorphism and assigning human emotions and motivations to the behaviors of another species. Indeed, Shettleworth emphasized the need to take behavior at face value. She also pointed to the need to avoid limiting one’s experiments and observations to the realm of “yes” and “no.” Other animals are generally much more complicated than that.

What may be completely unavoidable, however, is taking an anthropocentric approach to ethology and animal psychology, especially in terms of what we consider “advanced” versus “primitive” attributes. This tendency rears its head frequently, and Shettleworth found humor in colleagues who couldn’t believe that, say, dogs outperform chimpanzees in some tasks. That just isn’t the way it is “supposed” to be!

Personally, I think it may be an overriding concern to prove that Homo sapiens is the most intelligent, highly-evolved species, and we go into our experiments with, and observations of, other species with that bias. The fact is, however, that we are on the planet with a minimum of a million other species that, by virtue of the fact that they also exist here and now, have succeeded at least as well as we have by the only standard that matters: survival. For that matter, even dinosaurs were successful, for the geological period over which they reigned.

Mother Nature (or God, or whatever creative entity you hold dear) wastes nothing, and each species is as complex and intelligent as it has to be to get by. No more, no less. Social species like the other great apes, wolves, and cetaceans may seem to be smarter because they are like us in being social, and do need to master intricate forms of communication in order for each pod, pack or other social unit to prosper.

Still, are solitary species any less successful? No. There are, in fact, vastly more solitary species than social ones. What they may lack in plasticity in learning ability they make up for in instincts and hightened physical senses that have served them for eons. A sand wasp can find its burrow in a seemingly featureless dune, but we can’t remember where we parked the car.

What do you think? Where do you stand? I promise to revisit this topic as often as I can, and welcome your opinions, observations, and shared knowledge. Meanwhile, I may pick up the just-released second edition of Sara Shettleworth’s book, Cognition, Evolution, and Behavior.

Work, Work, Work

I do not like to make excuses for why there are long gaps between blog entries, but right now I am up to my ears in work, and my six month stint here at the University of Massachusetts is winding down.

My current priorities are to finish my tasks in the lab, complete a private project identifying bee specimens, and start packing up to move back to Arizona. Blogging is going to have to be put on the back burner for now, so please bear with me while posts are more infrequent.

Once I return to Tucson, I hope to also return to more creative, philosophical, thought-provoking, and nostalgic themes here at Sense of Misplaced. That is to say that I'd like to share with you some of my memories, and some of the people and experiences that shaped my life over the years.

I also aim to drive more traffic to this blog, and welcome suggestions for how to do so. Thank you.

Heron Encounter

A casual lunchtime visit to the Campus Pond at the University of Massachusetts here in Amherst on Thursday, August 27, brought a sweet surprise. A family had taken up one of the stone benches at my favorite spot under a tree beside the pond. They were feeding the geese and ducks like many folks do, but one of the birds near the shore was clearly not a duck or a goose. It was a great blue heron wading just a couple yards away from them.

It seemed completely absurd that a bird I am usually lucky to spot from a football field away should be right there, like somebody’s pet, or a permanent resident of a wildlife rehab facility. No broken wings on this elegant animal, I saw it fly gracefully across the pond on a later date.

The scene this day reminded me of a story I read many years ago in Natural History magazine about herons and egrets (maybe pelicans, too) in Florida that had taken to hanging out on the docks and begging fishermen for part of their catch. The article was entitled “Brother Can You Spare a Fish?”

I had also heard a story when I first arrived here about an egret that frequents the Campus Pond and is equally habituated to humans. A young boy was tossing popcorn at the bird, which obviously ignored the overture. A professor passing by muttered arrogantly “They eat fish, not popcorn.” The next kernel the boy threw bounced off the egret’s head and into the water. A fish surfaced to investigate the morsel, at which point the egret nabbed the fish and took flight. The boy turned to the professor with a satisfying smirk on his face.

My home town of Portland, Oregon named the great blue heron the official city bird many years ago. There, it is even the emblem on an ale produced by a local microbrewery. I find it ironic that I would have to go across the entire country to get this close to one, but I’ll treasure the memory.

Bullfrogs

I haven’t been to the Campus Pond at the University of Massachusetts in many weeks now, but back on June 8 I was treated to a large, very cooperative amphibian as a photo subject during my lunch hour. The bullfrog, Rana catesbeiana, is native here, but elsewhere in North America, where it has been introduced, it might better be called the “bully” frog.

The species is named for the early English naturalist Mark Catesby who explored the southeast United States in the early 1700s, documenting his findings in words and illustrations published as Natural History of Carolina, Florida, and the Bahama Islands. Just like its human namesake, the frog has had “legs” to parts of the world far removed from its native eastern U.S. haunts.

It has, in fact, been those meaty hind legs that have caused the dispersal of the bullfrog around the globe. Prized as a delicacy, frog legs are a staple appetizer on many a restaurant menu. It is far less expensive to harvest the amphibians locally than to import them, so consequently the bullfrog was introduced to various new territories including the western U.S. and British Columbia, Cuba, Jamaica, Mexico, South America, Europe, Asia, even Hawaii.

That humans prey on bullfrogs, along with herons, raccoons, snakes, and other animals, is not enough to mitigate the effects of what the bullfrogs themselves eat: which is nearly anything and everything. Where bullfrogs have been introduced, native wetland fauna can suffer dramatically.

Bullfrogs have been at the least implicated in the decline of the western pond turtle in the Pacific Northwest (they eat the hatchling turtles), the Mexican garter snake in parts of Arizona, New Mexico, and Mexico, and native frog populations in California.

Any animal smaller than the bullfrog is fair game, though, and even tarantulas are on the menu, along with various large insects, small rodents, and birds.

I have a hard time now hearing that deep bass call of “jug-o-rum” without cringing a bit. Every organism surely has its place, but when Homo sapiens extends the boundaries of place for an animal like the bullfrog, all hell can break loose in the aftermath.

Peregrine Falcons

My friend Jeff Boettner tells the story of how he and his wife Cynthia were visiting Whitefish Point, Michigan during the hawk and owl migration when they met a woman coming back from the dunes. They asked the lady if she had seen anything exciting. She said that others claimed to have seen “a pair of green falcons," but all she saw was one bird.

I don’t have to go all the way to Michigan to see peregrine falcons. There is a resident pair right on the University of Massachusetts campus here in Amherst. They tend to hang out around the Campus Center, which has a high-rise hotel in the middle of it. One morning I spotted one of the birds perched on a light jutting out from the building. I ran back to my lab to get my camera, then spent the next half hour chasing the bird and its mate around the building. All I managed were a few shots from roughly 200 vertical feet away in bad light, including my specialty, “silhouette of bird leaving.”

Ok, I got a few shots and a backache.

As natural nesting sites have dwindled due to development and habitat fragmentation, it occurred to wildlife officials to try introducing falcons to the next best thing to a cliff: a skyscraper. “Hacking” is the term used to describe the process of releasing young falcons raised in captivity from a cage-like shelter placed atop a building. This has worked so well that falcons across the country are now returning on their own to nest in their birthplace cities, using buildings and bridges as sites for nesting.

The pair here on campus has chosen to nest atop the W.E.B. DuBois Library, a building that must be the tallest structure in the state west of Boston. You can’t see the top of it on a foggy morning. The Campus Pond below the library provides plenty of waterfowl for these “duck hawks” to feed on, though they are more apt to go after slightly smaller game like pigeons. There are remarkably few pigeons here, actually, and now I know why. I wonder if the Massachusetts Division of Fisheries and Wildlife would consider loaning some falcons to Tucson?

Should the falcons successfully launch their offspring (and I’m pretty sure I saw a fledgling this past Wednesday), it would mark the twentieth bird to have been reared here.

Meanwhile, on the evening of Tuesday, July 14, I saw the adult falcons over my neighborhood in South Deerfield. I even have a grainy image to prove it: Well, I thought it was the pair from the university. It turns out that there is another male and female nesting on Mount Sugarloaf just down the street. So, I can’t be sure just which birds I was looking at after all. Hey, after decades of declining raptor populations from the effects of DDT, it is a pleasant quandary to have two pairs of peregrines to tell apart.

For more about the UMass couple, see this online article. Watch this space for more falcon memories from yours truly.

Late-breaking

This just in: A raccoon’s butt was sighted this morning in a tree outside Holdsworth Hall on the campus of the University of Massachusetts in Amherst. Authorities declined to arrest the animal for indecent exposure. Passing humans were alerted to the dozing raccoon by a pair of crows that were squawking madly.

Said spectator Eric Eaton “I was hoping it was a hawk or an owl or something exciting like that. Bummer.” Get it? Bum-mer?

Napping away is apparently no day at the beech (or maple, or oak, or whatever kind of tree it was in) for raccoons, and after being so rudely greeted by big black corvids, is it any wonder it was mooning human onlookers?

By the end of the human workday, the raccoon was waking up, grooming itself, and finally showing its face. No word yet on what the animal had for dinner. Stay tuned for further developments.

Campus Pond

The literal center of the University of Massachusetts (Amherst) campus is the Campus Pond. This landmark is much more than I had expected when I saw it on the map, and it has quickly become my favorite place to spend my lunch hour.

What could have easily been landscaped with concrete on all sides and a spectacular fountain in the middle is instead a lush shoreline with periodic breaks where people can gaze across the water, feed the ever-present waterfowl, or just enjoy sunbathing. Yes, the trees and shrubs have been largely planted (and some large trees were removed at some point as evidenced by the stumps), but it provides great habitat for humans and wildlife alike.

A flock of cedar waxwings stole berries from a tree overhanging a bench where oblivious students lunched the other day, and I’ve seen an eastern kingbird and red-winged blackbirds as well. There are squirrels of course, and even chipmunks, like this discriminating fellow hanging out on the steps of the FAC (Fine Arts Center) that lies at one end of the pond.

Here is the view the chipmunk was enjoying.

Yesterday I spied this lovely tiger swallowtail butterfly sipping minerals from the mud at the shore of the pond.

Today I met this little cottontail rabbit as I made my way back to my lab.

I look forward to seeing the seasons change on the Campus Pond, and document the diversity of life that huddles around its shores and plays in the water. I will share my discoveries via this blog, of course!