Learning About River Mapping

 Did you ever wonder what path a raindrop takes when it falls past your window? Will it reach the ocean? WHICH ocean? I asked that question when we were living on a farm north of Edmonton in Alberta, and investigated with maps and online maps. Turns out, the stream on our farm trickles into a little river called Redwater, which runs into the North Saskatchewan River, out of Alberta, and many many kilometres of rivers and lakes later reaches Hudson Bay via the Nelson River. 

But that journey is not the path taken for ALL the water draining from land around that Alberta farm. About two miles north of the farm is Fairytale Creek. As my friend Billie Milholland confirmed during her mapping project, that creek is part of the watershed for Athabasca River. Many kilometres of rivers and lakes bring that water to the Mackenzie River and the Arctic Ocean. 

Billie's project led to the publication of Living In The Shed, about Alberta's North Saskatchewan River watershed. This is a fascinating book, not only for people living along that waterway, but for people wanting to know more about the natural world where they live. There are many photos and maps which make this book a tremendous resource for learning about rivers and recent history. Here is a link to read more about Billie's book https://www.nswa.ab.ca/resource/living-in-the-shed/ **which includes a link to look at a digital version of her book online!**  And here's another link to read a web page about her other writing https://billiemilholland.ca/

Not everyone is so lucky to have a friend who has mapped the local watershed so thoroughly, but there are many open source projects and datasets for people wanting to learn more about river knowledge. Public libraries and university libraries might have access to paper maps and computerized electronic maps, and online resources. Kayaking and canoeing groups can offer practical knowledge as well as the best maps for paddling and hiking adventures.

Here's a link to River Runner, a terrific website by Sam Learner and his team. Their project is still in beta, which means that though there are improvements to make, a person can have a lot of fun with it already. Check it out at https://river-runner-global.samlearner.com/ and see where a raindrop that falls anywhere on Earth might end up! They have over 20 interesting routes listed at this page.

If you're looking for more details about River Runner, such as the software behind this project, you can go to this link: https://ksonda.github.io/global-river-runner/ 

Good luck learning about your own watershed or interesting places around the world! Water resources are vital for humans and for the natural world.

A Tardigrade Christmas!

 Check out Nina Munteanu's blog for a charming tale about a tardigrade, blending some science facts with her fiction! Here's the link at https://themeaningofwater.com/2022/12/25/a-tardigrade-christmas-a-different-christmas-story-with-a-nod-to-lewis-carroll/

Happy Christmas and other good wishes of the season to all!

Velvet Worms

by Kim Woolcock

When I started writing It’s Tough to be Tiny, I didn’t know what a velvet worm was. I stumbled across a reference to them while researching small creatures with superpowers, and the name immediately hooked me. Velvet worms?? Would they be fuzzy and cute? And why had I never heard of them?
It turns out they are not fuzzy but they are very cute. And they are deadly hunters. I am a sucker for creatures that are cute but deadly, and as soon as I started reading about them, I knew velvet worms needed a place in the book.
 

The velvet worm Euperipatoides flexes its slime glands.
Image by: Andras Kezzei/Flikr

Velvet worms have soft, squishy bodies, and a kind of nubbly appearance (the nubbins are tiny whiskers that help them feel their way through tight spaces). To me, they look like living sock puppets. Their unique way of hunting is what makes them famous, though. They shoot their prey with sticky goo that comes out of two nozzles (slime papillae) on their face. The goo nozzles wiggle back and forth, like a garden hose that no one’s holding onto. The prey gets covered in a layer of sticky goo that rapidly hardens into a stiff cage of glassy threads. The velvet worm can then bite the prey to inject innard-melting enzymes, and drink the prey milkshake at its leisure.

A velvet worm attacking its prey
By: Stacey Thomas

Scientists have been fascinated for almost a hundred years by how the slime transforms from a sprayable goo to a glassy thread (the process is reversible, too—the dried slime melts in water, and can re-harden!). Even cooler, the prey actually helps in its own capture. Its struggles help to dry out and stiffen the threads, similar to how kneading transforms bread from a sticky lump into a stretchy dough.

A velvet worm devouring its prey
By: Stacey Thomas

So how had I never heard of them? They are not exactly the most cosmopolitan creatures. There are only about 200 known species of velvet worms (phylum Onychophora), mostly in the litter layer in tropical and southern hemisphere forests. They hunt at night, and even the scientists who study them say they are kind of hard to find.
Adding to their mystery, velvet worms have recently been found to be related to Hallucigenia sparsa, a puzzling fossil from the Cambrian explosion about 500 million years ago. A tubelike creature with spines on one side and tentacles on the other, it was called Hallucigenia because it was so bizarre looking that scientists couldn’t tell which way was up or which end was its head, never mind what other animals it might be related to.
 

Hallucigenia sparsa fossil
Taken by: Michael Brett-Surman

A recent study used state-of-the-art electron microscopes to examine the claws of Hallucigenia and modern velvet worms, and found that they both have claws with layers like an onion, indicating they are related. I love knowing that Hallucigenia, once so bizarre no one had ANY idea what it was related to, has such adorable descendants.
If you’d like to learn more about the amazing world of minibeasts, check out my book It’s Tough to be Tiny: The Secret Life of Small Creatures, illustrated by Stacey Thomas (Flying Eye Books, 2022). It’s all about the superpowers of small creatures, from springtails to cone snails, and how they stay safe, hunt for their lunch, or buddy up with bigger creatures for the benefit of both. It’s full of glitter and gross, because nature is both.
 

Resources:

A Baer, S Schmidt, G Mayer, and MJ Harrington. (2019) Fibers on the fly: Multiscale mechanisms of fiber formation in the capture slime of velvet worms. Integrative and Comparative Biology 59(6): 1–10. https://doi.org/10.1093/icb/icz048

Baker CM, Buckman-Young RS, Costa CS, and Giribet G. (2021) Phylogenomic analysis of velvet worms (Onychophora) uncovers an evolutionary radiation in the neotropics. Molecular Biology and Evolution 38(12): 5391–5404. https://doi.org/10.1093/molbev/msab251

Garwood RJ, Edgecombe GD, Charbonnier S, Chabard D, Sotty D, and Giribet G. (2016) Carboniferous Onychophora from Montceau-les-Mines, France, and onychophoran terrestrialization. Invertebrate Biology 135(3):179–190. doi: 10.1111/ivb.12130.

Smith, M, Ortega-Hernández, J. (2014) Hallucigenia’s onychophoran-like claws and the case for Tactopoda. Nature 514, 363–366. https://doi.org/10.1038/nature13576

https://theconversation.com/the-worlds-weirdest-creature-finds-descendants-in-cuddly-velvet-worms-30438

https://www.nytimes.com/2015/07/07/science/hallucigenia-cambrian-explosions-strange-looking-poster-child.html

https://www.wired.com/2014/03/the-creature-feature-10-fun-facts-about-velvet-worms/

Eat Bugs, Save the Forest?

by Anne Munier

As a food source, insects have an awful lot going for them. They are extremely nutritious, can be found just about everywhere, reproduce quickly, and -- according to entomophagic enthusiasts (a.k.a. committed bug eaters) -- they taste pretty darn good!

Two billion or so people in the world make insects a regular part of their diet. There are over 2,000 edible species; the most common ones are some kinds of beetles, caterpillars, bees, wasps, and ants. (Note: Never eat an insect that you don’t absolutely know to be edible -- not *all* species of beetle, caterpillar, bee, wasp and ant are necessarily safe to eat.)

A happy entomologist!

Given:

• how widespread and healthy they are

• that about 10 billion of us will be sharing the planet in the next few decades, and most of us really like to eat

• that many people already suffer from food insecurity (i.e. lacking a steady, reliable source of good food)

…increasing the amount of insect-eating we do could make a lot of sense.

For your dining pleasure!

Most edible insects are harvested from the wild. But that can be tricky- if insects are a popular food (and believe it or not, many are), then they can be over-harvested. When too many people collect too many insects, that makes their populations decline (and can damage the ecosystem while they’re at it).

But there’s a really important flip side. When people value the insects they get from these forests, it gives communities incentive to protect them.

Take the mopane worm, for example. It’s an edible caterpillar that is loved in countries in southern Africa. They are an important source of protein, and contribute to food security and household income. Their numbers have been going down though, because they are being overharvested, and their habitat is being damaged by forestry, agriculture, and
climate change.

The beloved mopane worm

But there’s good news. Many communities are organizing to protect important sections of forest and the trees where mopane worms live. That’s great for the caterpillars, great for the people who eat them, and really great for the environment. It means more forests can keep doing all the important things that forests do for the world (like enhancing biodiversity, providing habitat, reducing greenhouse gases, conserving water, and preventing soil erosion).

Here’s another example of people protecting more than just the bugs they want to eat. The Bombay locust is a major pest of corn and sorghum crops in Thailand. Instead of spraying them with pesticides, people came up with the idea of harvesting them for food. Now more people have high quality food (the locust); more money (by selling hundreds of thousands of tonnes of the critters annually); the crops grow better because there are fewer pests (so- even more food); and there are no pesticides contaminating the environment. I call that a win-win-win-win! 

While most edible insects are currently wild-harvested, there’s increasing interest in farming them, including in places- like Canada- where there’s not (yet!) a strong bug-eating culture. This ALSO helps the environment- insects don’t take a lot of space to raise, they produce relatively little waste (and what they do can be put to good use as fertilizer), and they emit far fewer greenhouse gas emissions than conventional animal agriculture.

Mealworm farming in France photo credit Vox

Has all this good news whetted your appetite? Here at this link is a list of edible insect suppliers in North America (there are options like cricket flour if you don’t want to look the real thing in the eye while you eat it). With the basics purchased, take a look at some recipes (like these ones!) to whip up some buggy treats yourself, safely, and tell us how it goes!

Book Launch for Superpower!

 There's a book launch this week for Sci/Why writer Elaine Kachala. If you're in Toronto, come on down to MAKERKIDS Leaside at 1661 Bayview in East York. On Thursday, November 10 from 6:00 to 8:00pm there will be an open house with Elaine Kachala attending. Show up for STEM activities, snacks & drinks at this family-friendly event.

Spongebob and Patrick sighting!

There's a certain sponge and his friend, a seastar, in a television cartoon. If you've ever caught a few minutes of the cartoon show with SpongeBob SquarePants and Patrick, you'll recognise those characters in some real sea creatures filmed by a remotely operated undersea vehicle. Click here for a link to a short article on an Ocean Explorers website, with a 1 minute video. Take a minute to enjoy a live square sponge and a live pink starfish, filmed by a little submarine steered remotely by scientists.

This little video was filmed in 2021 during the North Atlantic Stepping Stones expedition, which you can read about at this link. The goals and objectives of this expedition are summed up on another page, which you can read about at this link, with discussions of mapping and animal observations, and the search for ferromanganese rocks. This expedition by scientists and several young interns was one of many interesting ocean exploration expeditions, which you can find at this link if you're looking for more on ocean science!

 

Backyard Birds

I’ve had a birdfeeder in the back garden for years. I never paid a whole lot of attention to the little brown birds who were attracted to it. Occasional bright red cardinals were an exception, of course. But a silver lining to COVID was that I spent a lot of time in the garden in the last few years and became an avid bird watcher and photographer. I took all of the photographs in this post in my back yard.

I discovered that most of the birds were House Sparrows, the most successful bird species on the planet. I wrote a blog entry on the House Sparrow in May of last year.

 

Males are quite striking, females more restrained, but also pretty if you look up close.

 

 

 

A major problem when feeding birds is how NOT to feed squirrels instead. Squirrels eat a lot more than birds and can empty a bird feeder in minutes. They’re also incredibly smart and athletic, so they’re hard to outwit. For now this feeder is working for me.

The bar that the sparrows are perched on is spring-loaded. The weight of a squirrel drops the bar and a shield that blocks off the bird seed.

 

Undoubtedly this guy is trying to figure out how to outsmart me and get the birdseed.

 

I discovered that not all the sparrows were House Sparrows. We also had occasional Chipping Sparrows, with bright red caps and White-Throated Sparrows, with their yellow eyebrow patches. 

 

Chipping Sparrow

White-throated Sparrow

 

In addition to the Sparrows, I started noticing a lot of Nuthatches, mostly Red-breasted, but also the occasional White-breasted. 

 

Red-breasted Nuthatch

White-breasted Nuthatch

 

Black-capped chickadees are also frequent feeders.

 

On the more colourful side, I get lots of Cardinals. 

 

Spectacular male Cardinal. They particularly like showering when the sprinkler is on.

More restrained and very beautiful female Cardinal.

 

For a change, female Blue Jays are as brightly coloured as the males.

Blue Jays come for the peanuts in a special “wreath feeder”. The two baffles above the feeder have successfully defeated the squirrels ... for now.

 

Brown-Headed Cowbirds are interesting. Like Cuckoos, they lay their eggs in the nest of other species and outsource the raising of their chicks to the unsuspecting hosts.

 

Grackles have shown up occasionally. This female seems be yelling at her spouse for some unknown reason. Perhaps she didn’t like the lawn furniture, because they haven’t been back since.  

 

 

 

 

 

 

An American Goldfinch enjoyed feeding on the seeds of our dappled willow.

I bought a special feeder for tiny niger seed, which is supposed to attract goldfinches. It hasn’t done that, but Chickadees eat a little of the niger seed.

 

 

 

Perhaps the most exciting bird – and only once, so far – a Cooper’s Hawk showed up and posed for a few minutes. I expect he was not here for the food, but for those who were here for the food.

 

I used Photoshop to combine the front and back view of the same bird into one picture.

Winter was a surprise to me. I had believed the common myth that you should stop feeding birds in Fall, because the availability of food might persuade them not to migrate in time, and then they’ll get stuck in the cold and might die. In fact, that’s untrue. Birds are far smarter than that. They know when they need to migrate based on the shortening daylight hours. They’re not affected by an abundance of food. More than that, I discovered that many bird species don’t migrate. I used to think that call of Cardinals in Spring was evidence that they had returned from their winter homes. But  no, Cardinals are here for winter. 

 

 

Dark-eyed Juncos do presumably migrate, but only to “mild” Toronto. I never see them except in Winter.

Woodpeckers also stay over winter. I get Downy and Hairy Woodpeckers. They’re almost the same, except for the size. In both species, the male and female are almost identical, except that the male has a prominent red spot on its head.

Male Downy Woodpecker

Female Hairy Woodpecker

 

Robins are a welcome early spring arrival.

 

Adding a bird bath to the garden also attracted more birds. Juvenile robins were particularly interested in splashing around.

 

Capturing pictures of birds in flight has been a great motivator to explore some of the more complex functions of my camera. Shutter speeds of 1/2500 seconds, continuous shooting and focusing are really useful.

 

If you’re not already a bird-watcher, I hope this inspires you take an interest in the birds in your back yard.

Useful equipment:

• A squirrel-proof bird feeder.
• Binoculars. You don’t need (or want) high-powered one. Magnification of 7 or 8 is ideal (this is the first number in the specification of the binoculars. I’m using very small 8x25. Bigger 8x42 will give a brighter image. 
• A bird recognition guide. This one works well for me

 

 

• The smartphone app Merlin, from the Cornell University Lab, is brilliant. By giving just a few details about a bird you’ve seen – location, size and colours – the app will show you the most likely candidates. It has recently been enhanced to give you amazingly accurate real-time identification of bird calls. 

Happy birding.