The Japanese Beetle in Vancouver

By Raymond K. Nakamura

The first I heard of the Japanese beetle (Popillia japonica) was on signs in my neighbourhood calling for its eradication. In its native Japan, the green and copper member species of scarab beetle is called “mame-ko-gane” in Japanese, which means “bean yellow gold” or “mini gold money.” Natural predators keep it under control, although recent increases have been associated with the growth of well-manicured golf courses. 

People first noticed it in North America in 1916 on the east coast of the United States, presumably introduced on imported plants, some time before 1912, when screening became a thing. Lacking natural controls in North America, the Japanese beetle has become an invasive pest. The whitish, C-shaped larvae eat the roots of grass, while the adults, which feed on the leaves of about 300 species of plants important for food and gardening.

In 2017, routine insect surveys first detected the Japanese beetle at David Lam Park in Vancouver. Since 2018, the Canadian Food Inspection Agency (CFIA), the City of Vancouver and other cities, along with organizations such as and the Invasive Species Council of BC (ISCBC) have been working to get rid of the beetles before they become a big problem. 

To control the spread of the beetles, the movement of plants and soil is restricted in parts of Vancouver and now Burnaby. Landscapers in the area have to use special transfer stations. Traps have been set up to monitor and remove adult beetles. The fins on the traps have a floral scent and a pheromone to attract the adults. They are weak fliers and when they smack into the fins, they tumble down into the containers below. Technicians check them every few weeks, recording and disposing of any finds. In addition, areas where larvae are suspected, the City of Vancouver is applying the larvicide Acelepryn, which is is supposed to target the larvae, while being safe for people, pets and other preferred creatures.

I may have overreacted in my cartoon because the signage triggered memories of the wrongful incarceration by the Canadian government during World War II of my parents and grandparents, along with more than 20,000 people of Japanese descent, most of whom were naturalized citizens or born in Canada. The province of British Columbia recently acknowledged its role in that time. It also brought to mind the rise in Anti-Asian violence during the pandemic. And on the other side of the Pacific, I had relatives who were affected by the radiation from the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima.

I’m not saying that the treatment of the invasive species has anything to do with that, but after I first posted the comic on social media, Jennie McCaffrey, Director of Engagement at the Invasive Species Council of BC reached out to me,

“I wanted to let you know that the Japanese beetle name is troublesome for many and we (Invasive Species Council of BC) get questions about it. We are limited because it is the official name decided by the international entomological society. However, they are in the midst of making change! Just this year the 'Gypsy Moth' was changed to 'Spongy Moth' so we are hopeful that happens soon for the Japanese beetle common name.”

 

The Science of Wordle

 By Raymond K. Nakamura

Do you play Wordle? If you haven’t heard, it’s a popular online word game. It has become a pandemic diversion and also reminds me of DOING science. It’s not a perfect analogy, of course. As far as I know, nature was not BUILT by an engineer and has not yet been bought up by the New York TIMES.

Starting

I FIRST saw a New Yorker cartoon by Canadian cartoonist and picture book MAKER Zoe Si, of a sleeping person dreaming of a SHEEP jumping over a FENCE made of yellow and GREEN squares. It was CLEAR that the squares must be significant, but at the time, I had no idea why. Then I saw people on my social MEDIA posting images of yellow and GREEN squares on GRIDS of different SIZES. At last, I noticed in someone’s comments that this was a game called Wordle.

A similar combination of curiosity, comraderie, and coincidence led to my main scientific projects. For example, when I was in Japan looking for a research subject, I went to the SHORE with another grad student, to collect edibles for a PARTY. I found out that the species of gooseneck barnacle in Japan had not been well studied, so I decided to take that up. 

 

Problem

The goal of Wordle is to guess the unknown five-letter word (which is why I made the five-letter WORDS in this post in caps — see if I missed any). This is like the challenge of finding a suitable scientific problem that can be solved within grad school. Some graduate students get handed problems to SOLVE, but I THINK half the fun of DOING science is finding a suitable problem.

Wordle has one particular answer on any given day (although apparently some differences have AFTER the switchover to the New York TIMES site). In science, only nature really “KNOWS” the WHOLE answer to your particular problem. This is BASED on an assumption that you are looking at some question that deals with some unchanging aspect of reality, WHICH does EXIST. A variation on Wordle, called Absurdle apparently changes the possible target word according to your guesses. MAYBE this is more like studying psychology or sociology. Another aspect of suitability is finding a challenge that matches your ability, to provide an opportunity for “flow,” the STATE WHERE you are so immersed in your activity that you lose TRACK of time.

Hypothesis

In Wordle, you type in your FIRST five-letter word. Your choice can be quite important to your subsequent success, WHICH is also true of supervisors. It seems reasonable to pick a word with as many vowels as possible. Vowels seem pretty essential, since you know that you’ll need at least one.

In science, your idea should be testable and consistent with KNOWN physical laws. Sometimes, scientists START with more of a survey, perhaps especially in ecology, when you don’t know what is GOING on. But if you look at a WHOLE BUNCH of variables, some MIGHT correlate just by chance. I have only recently realized that I may have done this by mistake in a published PAPER many YEARS ago, WHICH not many people read. Nowadays, some people pre-register THEIR hypothesis before DOING THEIR experiments to PROVE they were testing what they said they were.  

Data

After you have ENTER your GUESS in Wordle, you MIGHT see a yellow square, WHICH SHOWS that the letter is correct but in the WRONG PLACE. Or the tile MIGHT be GREEN, in WHICH case, the letter is both correct and in the RIGHT PLACE.

In science, you might have the sort of result that either supports or does not support your hypothesis. In ecology though, the results COULD be just MESSY. This is WHERE statistics COMES in. I had to figure out a mathematical MODEL to approximate the growth CURVE of barnacles to make it look like something had happened.

Next STEPS

Unless you see all GREEN TILES, you must now consider a next guess, BASED on your results and your vocabulary. Some people insist on reusing the known letters, which some people call the hard RULES. WHILE others see that as a WASTE of information, and try out WHOLE OTHER combinations. Sometimes it is hard to THINK of a word that fits. And sometimes you can THINK of too many WORDS that COULD fit.

In science, if you are working in a field where others have already done some things, then you MIGHT be incorporating THEIR results to make SENSE of the conclusion. As I mentioned before, FANCY statistics MIGHT come into play to reveal some MAJOR patterns. I tested an explanation about the hydrodynamics of sand dollars that I’d seen in a marine biology colouring book.

Success

In Wordle, eventually, you come up with the all GREEN, correct answer. Then you can post an IMAGE of the yellow and GREEN squares that got you THERE. If you get it on the first shot, it just MEANS you are LUCKY or cheated, which is not really that interesting. 

In science and really in most things, luck always COMES into success, but people are not always so AWARE of how much they owe to good fortune. You MIGHT be fortunate to find a lab you are interested in happens to have room for you. Or not. When I went to Japan, I applied to many places and eventually something worked out. It was luck, but also playing the odds.

Communication

It is one THING to talk ABOUT Wordle and another to play it. Sort of like the Zen STORY ABOUT the difference between talking ABOUT WATER versus drinking it. AFTER finishing the puzzle, I have a friend who MAKES a WITTY comment ABOUT that day’s puzzle using the answer. Another friend MAKES a HAIKU USING the word of the day. She posts it late in the day to AVOID ruining it for others.

I am a lapsed scientist but I do ENJOY learning and talking ABOUT science, without having to do it. I FOUND I didn’t like getting up in the middle of the NIGHT to measure barnacles at low tide. Or APPLY to post-doctoral positions. I am more interested in finding out the results and MAYBE hearing an interesting STORY of process. I don’t feel the need to find the data myself.

Do you play Wordle? Do you do science? How does Wordle compare to your SENSE of science?

Bloom's Day

Bloom’s Day by Raymond Nakamura 

The last time Uncle Fester showed up (2018), we were out of town. This time, we had no excuse. 

Uncle Fester is a Titan arum, A.K.A. The Corpse Flower, a rare plant that produces the largest flower in the world, which can grow up to four or five metres and produces a fragrance resembling rotting meat. Who wouldn’t want to witness such a wonder of nature? 

But Corpse Flowers are fickle. You can’t tell when they’re going to bloom and when they do, they might only last a few days. And amidst the pandemic, the Bloedel Conservatory could only allow so many people at a time and you could only stay for twenty minutes. If we waited until it actually bloomed, we might not be able to get a spot. But how to decide when to go?

The corpse flower emerges from an underground core called the corm. The corm can remain dormant for periods of time. During the dormant stage, the Bloedel conservatory keeps Uncle Fester in a separate greenhouse. At some point, a single rolled up leaf may sprout. This can either turn into a single leaf with multiple leaflets or a flower. It does not seem to follow a set pattern. It can take up to ten years for a bloom to appear. When the Corpse Plant at the Bloedel bloomed in 2018, it was estimated to be about six years old. They were even more surprised when this second bloom appeared only two years after the first. 

The natural habitat for a corpse flower is in the hot and humid tropical rain forest of Sumatra, Indonesia. Logging and the conversion of native forest to oil palm plantations has reduced the numbers of corpse flowers to less than a thousand in the wild. The International Union for the Conservation of Nature added it to the Red List for endangered species in 2018. Breeding programs through botanical gardens are part of efforts to raise awareness about this remarkable plant. The Conservatory acquired their corpse plant from a nursery in North Carolina in 2016. 

To help us guess when it might bloom, we studied the time-lapse video on the Bloedel web site from the last time Uncle Fester bloomed in 2018. That’s when people in Vancouver came up with the name Uncle Fester. Memories of watching the Addams Family after school when I was a kid.

Using the previous video to figure out the timing was tricky because we didn’t know if it started at a comparable point and they can bloom at different sizes anyway. Even so, we thought it might reach bloom in about a week. We noticed two slots had been taken around that time. We thought maybe they were on to something, but this was probably just wishful thinking. 

So we booked tickets at the Bloedel Conservatory. Our teen wanted nothing to do with her nerdy parents. It was rare for this unusual plant to bloom and rare for us to leave the house for a non-essential purpose. 

(Drawing by Raymond Nakamura)

 

Unforutnately, when we went, it had not yet bloomed. Still, it was impressive, about six feet (1.8 m) tall. The tallest part is a tapered pointy column in the centre, called a spadix. This is probably where the scientific name comes from: Amorphophallus titanum meaning “giant misshapen penis.” The cabbage-like skirt is called the spathe. I looked up these terms after I made the original drawings. I took my iPad and Apple pencil with me and here is my sketch.
 

(Comic by Raymond Nakamura)

 

About a week after we visited, the news reported that Uncle Fester had finally bloomed. As soon as we heard, we checked back on the web site. They had expanded the visiting times and still had some openings. So we got spots for the next morning. The tickets weren’t that expensive and we were looking for an excuse to get out of the house. I had found carrying the iPad around a little awkward for drawing in public, so this time I just took a pen and pocket sketchbook. We waited in line, spaced out, until it was our turn.

We wore our masks, but it was no longer required at that time and some had not. Obviously, I could have just snapped a picture, but I wanted to savour the moment a little longer. I find that when I stop to draw something, it sticks in my memory more. 

 

(Drawing by Raymond Nakamura)

The spathe had now unfurled and was rotten flesh maroon on the inside. Apparently, this is all part of the “dead meat” theme. The smell which is generated near the base smelled a bit like rotten fish, like I remember near Lake Ontario as a kid. The smell wasn’t really that bad, compared to say, changing diapers or picking up dog poop. I suppose different people have different reactions as well. I had to take off my mask to smell it at all and the smell seemed to vary with location. We weren’t allowed to be too close, but later I read that the spadix in the middle heats up to about flesh temperature and this also helps with the emission of the smell.

 

(Photo: Lenora Ho)

I’ll bet the shape of both the cone shaped spathe and the projectile spadix affect the fluid dynamics of dissipating the scent.

Something that annoyed me a little was that they had a giant ruler that was only marked in Imperial units. This is supposed to be Canada. 

 

 (Photo: Lenora Ho)

Measurements for the height of the flower were posted on the web site and I graphed them in Excel. You can see how it grows the most quickly and then tapers off.

While we were there, a person with a video camera was interviewing people for their reactions. Later, a friend spotted us on the CBC Evening News. We weren’t interviewed ourselves, but my spouse and I were in the background of some others.

Although we are inundated with information and video about the world, experiencing things first hand is a much deeper experience, to better appreciate the scale, the colour, and of course, the smell. As they say, you had to be there.

For more information

Vancouver Parks Board notes on the Corpse Flower.

 

A Clownfish Comic

 by Raymond Nakamura

Finding Nemo maybe an entertaining animated movie about clownfish, but it is not exactly a nature documentary. A recent bit of science news  about clownfish stripes inspired me to make a little comic about them.

Unlike the movie, juvenile clownfish do not start out with all their stripes (or bars). They don’t even live with a parent. But they do live among sea anemones, which normally sting and eat other types of fish. Some species of clownfish can live with more than one species of sea anemone.

 

 

Stripes may be important for distinguishing individuals and species from each other.

 

A team of scientists under Professor Vincent Laudet have been studying clownfish in New Guinea.

 

 

They noticed that juvenile clownfish developed white bars more quickly when associated with the Giant Carpet Anemone than when they lived with the Magnificent Anemone.

 

 

Thyroid hormone is known to be important to triggering metamorphosis in frogs. 

The team sent juvenile clownfish from the two different anemones to Dr. Pauline Salis for analysis. 

Clownfish living on the Giant Carpet Anemone tended to have more thyroid hormone than those on the Magnificent Anemone. Furthermore, adding thyroid hormone to juvenile clownfish caused them to develop white bars more quickly. White bars depend on the development of pigment cells called iridophores. The development of iridophores in turn depends on a gene called Duox (which codes for the protein Dual Oxidase). And Duox was found to be more active in clownfish residents of the Giant Carpet Anemone. 

 

The scientists are not yet sure why clownfish develop at different rates in the two kinds of sea anemone.

 

 

What do you think?

 

-o-

 

This week's post is by our own Raymond Nakamura, Ph.D ! Check out his website at http://www.raymondsbrain.com

Raymond K. Nakamura writes, draws cartoons, and develops fun learning opportunities about science and Japanese Canadian history and culture, when he is not washing the dishes, walking the dog, or helping his daughter with homework.

He blogs and cartoons not only for Sci/Why but for Science World British Columbia and Science Borealis as well. He is the author of Peach Girl, a picture book that reimagines a Japanese folk tale, published by Pajama Press.

 

 

Science Every Day by Raymond Nakamura

 by Raymond Nakamura

I am a lapsed scientist. I have not been part of an official system for cranking out new scientific knowledge. But I still like to think about science-y things when I can.

A little while ago, I was watching The Sisters Brothers movie a little while ago (not for children) and wondered about various details in the story, which might have a real life answer, such as the tooth powder, or might be made up for the fun of a fictional story, like the gold-panning chemical. I don’t have the time or inclination to hunt down the answer to every question that pops into my head, although I do know some people who seem to feel that is what having a smart phone with a data plan is for. 

I also like to make anecdotal observations, which might build on my understanding of the world, or could lead to other questions about how things work.

One of the trickiest things about being a real scientist (besides finding money to do your research) is finding questions that are solvable. As a working scientist, if you plan on continuing to work, your job depends on finding questions to which you can find some kind of satisfying answer and that no one else has already found. Every day questions, however, may not have answers at all or can be too complicated to solve easily. 

Many every day problems involve other people. And whenever people are involved, things get messy.

Even worse, possible answers to questions might be presented by people hoping to make money off the answers. They might use a veneer of science to offer what might seem like reasonable answers to your questions, but are not really. Someone I know was quite convinced of the powers of a certain drink, which seemed too good to be true. Their supposed evidence, left me feeling doubtful.

Science can be a powerful tool for uncovering how the world works and finding ways to solve problems. Even so, some of these answers might not always be as ideal as we might hope. 

As we weigh our options, we must remain wary of our biases and do our best to make wise decisions in a complex, ever changing world. Choose well, my friends.

Merry Christmas! The Twelfth Dredge of Biomass

 

The Twelfth Dredge of Biomass

by Raymond K. Nakamura

For these taxing times, I tried a taxonomic take on an old favourite. Here is an annotated list of animal phyla, chosen for matching the number of syllables in the gifts mentioned in the song The Twelve Days of Christmas.

On the twelfth dredge of biomass, my true love gave to me —

This is supposing that you and your true love are fans of invertebrate zoology.

12 Annelida

Annelids are segmented worms, which include earthworms, as well as some marine ones called Christmas tree worms.

 

11 Platyhelminthes

Platyhelminthes are flatworms such as planarians, known for their ability to regenerate after being cut in half. 

10 Loricifera

Loricifera are relatively new in their discovery (1983). They would make fancy ornaments if they weren’t so tiny.

 

9 Cnidarians

Cnidarians include jellyfish, sea anemones, and coral, not to be confused with A Christmas Carol (a Charles Dickens story that can be read here on Project Gutenberg, a website sharing stories too old for copyright, or you can read about it on Wikipedia).

8 Nematoda

Nematoda are mostly tiny worms found in so many places that American nematodologist Nathan Cobb said in 1915,

 “If all the matter in the universe except the nematodes were swept away, our world would still be dimly recognizable ... we should find its mountains, hills, vales, rivers, lakes, and oceans represented by a film of nematodes."

 

7 Arthropoda

Arthropoda include all the insects and all the crustaceans. I studied barnacles, which are arthropods, and so did Charles Darwin so they must be cool.

 

6 Priapulids

Priapulids are unsegmented marine worms also sometimes call “penis worms” for their approximate similarity in shape and sometimes size. Perhaps not appropriate for a true love to send.

 

5 Chordata

Chordata are the phylum to which all the gifts in the original 12 Days of Christmas song included, except for the pear tree. 

4 Chaetognaths

Chaetognaths are tiny creatures that would look like nice ornaments or awesome dragons if they were bigger.

 

3 Molluscs

Molluscs are a diverse group that include clams, mussels, oysters, escargot, calamari and other items that go well with garlic butter. The creature I drew is a Nautilus, Greek for sailor, and the name of Captain Nemo’s submarine in Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea (a Jules Verne book you can read at Project Gutenberg).

 

2 Tardigrades

Tardigrades are tiny creatures also known as “water bears.” They are remarkably resilience creatures capable of living in many places. They were even spilled on the moon, although we don’t know if they survived that.

 

1 Echinodermata

Echinodermata include sea stars, sea urchins, sand dollars, sea cucumbers, brittle stars, and feather stars. I got interested in marine biology because of sea urchin gonads and ended up doing a doctorate on of the hydrodynamics sand dollars. Please don’t use them as tree ornaments no matter how perfect they seem for the task.

Whatever your inclination, I hope you have a maritime merry time this winter solstice, trying out these alternatives for all the verses and putting the “sea” back in Season’s Greetings.

POST NUMBER 500!! Pros and Cons of Studying Elsewhere

Here's our latest post, and it's a real milestone. Welcome to the FIVE HUNDREDTH post on our science writing blog! This one's a trip down memory lane.

Pros and Cons of Studying Elsewhere

by Raymond Nakamura

Ecology is a science in which place makes a big difference to what you study. During the pandemic, travel is not advised, so I thought I'd share some memories of when I went to Japan to study, as a kind of thought experiment.

As an undergraduate, I studied zoology as my specialist subject and Japanese language as my minor. I found out from studying French in high school, that if you don't use it, you lose it. One of my Japanese professors told me studying language would be boring, so I should learn it while studying something I was interested in. I figured that since Japan was an archipelago, it would be a good place to study marine biology. Never mind that my lowest grades were in Japanese language and marine biology.

This was back before the Internet, so finding Japanese professors took a bit of effort. I had to go through the library and scour the papercut delivering pages of scientific journals. Eventually, Professor Taiji Kikuchi at the Amakusa Marine Biological Laboratory of Kyushu University accepted me.

So I left my family home in the city of Toronto and packed up to live on my own in a little village in southern Japan. I ended up studying the population ecology of a stalked barnacle, Capitulum mitella. 

This meant marking more than a hundred individuals that I would measure during every low tide cycle. 

During the winter, that meant going out in the middle of the night.

 

Sometimes I went further afield to help with studies on endangered species...

...or surveys of less studied habitats, such as Zamami Island in Okinawa.

Sometimes I came across different creatures while doing research or during the course of my travels.

 

I also had the opportunity to find life in my own home. 

 

I found that studying disagreeable things is a way to cope with their existence. 

 

Others were more occasional visitors, such as land crabs, mice, spiders, and centipedes.

 

I realized I preferred my wildlife outdoors.

That was all many tide cycles ago. I now live in Vancouver, where I am a lapsed biologist, more interested in sharing discoveries by other people than working out my own. I practise Japanese on an app called Duolingo. And when the moon is full, I just think, "Isn't that pretty," instead of, “Gosh, these rocks are cold."