It's An Honor, Really

P. kamalaharrisae (Balukjian photo)

Researcher Brad Balukjian of the California Academy of Sciences is an admirer of Kamala Harris and has named a bug after her:

Across the tree of life, approximately 18,000 new species are described by taxonomists every year. One of the perks of the work is getting to name them. My colleagues and I can have a lot of fun with it — there’s a genus of spiders named for the band ABBA and a wasp named after Jackie Chan.

Today, one of my naming decisions makes its official debut: a bright green, red, and yellow plant bug will now be known as Pseudoloxops kamalaharrisae.

Yes, I named a bug after our vice-president and yes, it is meant as a massive compliment.

Harris’ six-legged namesake is part of a remarkable radiation of closely related plant bugs endemic to the islands of Tahiti, where I did my Ph.D. research over a decade ago. Plant bugs are a type of true bug; although we colloquially call anything small and scurrying a “bug,” it’s actually a technical term, referring to insects in the suborder Heteroptera, which have mouths like a straw. While some plant bugs are agricultural pests, P. kamalaharrisae and its cousins hang out on brightly colored flowers all day slurping plant slushees and hoping to avoid detection by birds.

Brad Balukjian named the bug after Vice President Harris to honor her support of climate change policies (MAGA - "Making America Green Again").

Now she's even with Donald Trump, who has a blind amphibian bearing his name:

Dermophis donaldtrumpi (Abel Batista / Rainforest Trust)

The Dermophis donaldtrumpi, which was discovered in Panama, was named by the head of a company that had bid $25,000 (£19,800) at auction for the privilege.

The company said it wanted to raise awareness about climate change.

"[Dermophis donaldtrumpi] is particularly susceptible to the impacts of climate change and is therefore in danger of becoming extinct as a direct result of its namesake's climate policies," said EnviroBuild co-founder Aidan Bell in a statement.

The small, blind, creature is a type of caecilian that primarily lives underground, and Mr Bell drew an unflattering comparison between its behaviour and Mr Trump's.

"Burrowing [his] head underground helps Donald Trump when avoiding scientific consensus on anthropomorphic climate change," he wrote.

Politics infests everything, even the naming of newly discovered species.

Fishy Emanations

Over 100 years ahead of its time

Lawyers sometimes use logic that's so convoluted that the results seem absurd to us common folk.

Headline: Yes, bumblebees may be fish, California Supreme Court agrees

a state appeals court ruled in May that [the California endangered species act] was flexible enough to allow the state Fish and Game Commission to consider protecting four imperiled species of bees under the category of “fish.”

Sure, it seems crazy, dear reader, but what you're missing is an intermediate species, the Trinity bristle snail: [bold added]

In the 3-0 ruling, Justice Ronald Robie acknowledged that a fish, “as the term is commonly understood ... lives in aquatic environments.” But he said state lawmakers, when they approved the current law in 1984, knew that the Department of Fish and Wildlife, which enforced the law, had found that it protected invertebrates living on land.

The Legislature “could have expressed disagreement” with the department, but instead expressly extended protection to all creatures covered by the law before 1985, including the Trinity bristle snail, Robie said. By the same logic, he said, the law must now be interpreted to allow protection of bumblebees.

Because of recent U.S. Supreme Court decisions, California has claimed that its jurisprudence is superior.

Well, that didn't last long. Ruminations over a simple mollusc have made the California judiciary a laughing stock.

The Butterflies Return

Santa Cruz Monarch butterfly (Chron photo)

In an unexpected development global warming, the bête noire of environmentalists everywhere, may be responsible for the resurgence of the monarch butterflies in Monterey County:

conservationists estimate the current population that has arrived in its annual wintertime migration to the California coast to be around 10,000 compared with 1,900 last year.

One possible reason for the rebound: this year’s drought, since warm and dry conditions in early spring can help with their migration...

Though the reason for the rebound isn’t known, [biologist Emma] Pelton said scientists such as Arthur Shapiro at UC Davis have found correlations between drought years and a boost in butterfly populations, at least for butterflies at lower elevations like monarchs.

(Photo from Siberia Times)

Opinion is overwhelming that global warming is normatively bad, but impartial analysis makes it clear that there are significant beneficiaries, specifically Russia and Canada, if temperatures keep rising: [bold added]

Let’s state the long-term truth no diplomat would: The world’s two largest countries are also among the two biggest winners from climate change.

They are already among the top energy and food producers in the world, and with warming temperatures they can more easily access even more energy and produce quantum leaps more food. Oil may be getting cheaper, but agrobusiness is a surging asset class. According to New Scientist magazine, a 4 degree Celsius rise in global averages temperatures would decrease agriculture yields in today’s other leading states such as the U.S., Brazil,China, India and Australia. Meanwhile, Canada and Russia’s ramped up industrial farming industries could be the breadbaskets for the planet. They are the hydro and food superpowers of a dry and thirsty planet.

The land area of the contiguous 48 states is approximately three (3) million square miles, while Siberia's is 5.1 million. If only a fraction of the latter becomes arable due to global warming, it will more than offset farmland losses in the rest of the world, and we're not even taking into account the gains from Canada.

And if the above seems too left-brain for you, dear reader, isn't it great that the butterflies are coming back?

Hornets Weren't Part of the Model

Murder hornets in Washington (Chron photo)

Global warming may not be all bad. If it is indeed responsible for California's hot, dry weather, then it keeps away the murder hornets:

The insect, whose actual name is the Asian giant hornet, inflicts painful stings and can spit venom but typically doesn’t attack people and pets unless threatened. It earned its “murder” moniker because it is highly lethal to honeybees and can annihilate entire hives in hours...

“It is exceedingly unlikely that these hornets can establish in California,” [UCD entomologist] Lynn Kimsey said. “If you look at where they're found in their native range in southern Asia, this region has summer rain. I think California is too dry, except perhaps along the far northern coast.”

A recent study by Washington State University researchers also concluded that while murder hornets could spread down the West Coast through Oregon within a few decades, they likely would not settle in California. The study found that “much of the interior of the U.S. is inhospitable to the hornet due to extremes of heat, cold and low rainfall,” including California’s Central Valley, according to a university news release.

By killing our honeybees murder hornets would threaten

California’s agriculture industry, which state data shows is the largest in the U.S., accounting for over 13% of the nation’s total agricultural value. According to the California Department of Food and Agriculture, the Golden State produces two-thirds of the country’s fruits and nuts — crops that rely on pollination by honeybees.

To support State agriculture California should spend its scarce dollars on building more dams and water infrastructure while letting markets dictate the speed of the transition from fossil fuels to clean energy. We should accept high temperatures because it keeps the honeybees safe.

This path, however, would need much less regulation, and where's the fun in that?

Here No More

Local insects.

Many airports greet travelers with pictures of tourist attractions and exhibits on local history.

This year the San Francisco Airport, International Terminal, provides information about insects, with a section devoted to those found in the Bay Area.

Some scientists are saying we are in the midst of an insect apocalypse. It's hard to imagine that we'll miss them, but like the Native American tribes and the orchards of Santa Clara, we might have some regrets after the insects are gone.

Hard to Miss

Ants once crawled all over these
nasturtiums. Now they're gone,
without any steps taken by me.

Two months ago the NY Times brought attention to a phenomenon that scientists have been observing for years: vanishing insect populations.

a whole insect world might be quietly going missing, a loss of abundance that could alter the planet in unknowable ways....

a [2017] paper by an obscure German entomological society had brought the problem of insect decline into sharp focus. The German study found that, measured simply by weight, the overall abundance of flying insects in German nature reserves had decreased by 75 percent over just 27 years. If you looked at midsummer population peaks, the drop was 82 percent...

the study brought forth exactly the kind of longitudinal data they had been seeking, and it wasn’t specific to just one type of insect. The numbers were stark, indicating a vast impoverishment of an entire insect universe, even in protected areas where insects ought to be under less stress. The speed and scale of the drop were shocking even to entomologists who were already anxious about bees or fireflies or the cleanliness of car windshields.

Santa Cruz Monarch butterfly (Chron photo)

Species extinctions get the headlines, but perhaps more worrisome is defaunation ("the loss of individuals, the loss of abundance, the loss of a place’s absolute animalness"). Insect populations are down more than 75% in places that have been studied, a likely factor in the observed declines in fish, birds, and other animals in the food chain. Some worry that the decline in insects will result in the sudden collapse of eco-systems.

According to the article the primary reason for the "insect apocalypse", unsurprisingly, is man. Herbicides, pesticides, habitat destruction, and climate change have all been posited as causes. While some alarmists are predicting imminent disaster, most responsible scientists acknowledge that we are just at the beginning of understanding the extent and ramifications of the problem.

Meanwhile, we can all mourn the loss of monarch butterflies.

Coming and Going

The Department of Agriculture has strict rules against importing animals (e.g., hamsters, lion fish, snakes) to Hawaii. And it's not just exotics: household pets, i.e. dogs and cats, that don't meet with the requirements of a 4-page rabies checklist may be quarantined for up to 120 days.

There are equally burdensome regulations against outbound plants and plant materials. Hawaii has insects and diseases that can cause extensive damage to Mainland crops.

Government agencies have come in for a lot of criticism for various security failures, but the USDA appears to have done a good job screening traffic in both directions for the half a century that your humble blogger has been flying.

Just a Mile Away

One benefit of shopping at retail stores is that one is made aware of neighborhood trends. Whole Foods is selling bare bones for meat-like prices; that clued me in to the bone broth craze.

On the negative side, thanks to the Home Depot display, I found that the wealthy Bay Area is one of the most bed bug-infested spots in the nation. Our house has so far escaped the problem, but it's good to know that I can pick up a solution just a mile away.

A is for Adventurousness, B is for....

Costco's buyers are remarkably attuned to consumer trends. Solar energy devices, organic produce, and luxury items (e.g, jewelry, bordeaux) at heavily discounted prices are but a few examples of goods that were stocked before customer demand became certain.

Sometimes the buyers make puzzling decisions, however. Last year's chicken coops can no longer be found on warehouse floors, and I'll bet this month's beehives suffer a similar fate. (I wont be a buyer, because of my trouble with bees last year.)

Nevertheless give them an A for adventurousness.

The Chirp of Crickets

There's no advantage to being a "fly on the wall" unless the fly can hear. Researchers have mimicked the hearing mechanism of the Ormia ochracea, a fly that is able to isolate the chirp of its prey, male crickets, with remarkable accuracy:

A tiny structure similar to a playground see-saw connects the fly's two sound sensors, and vibration on one side drives the other in the opposite direction. The net motion of the see-saw permits the fly to determine what is known as the "phase" of the sound wave—in other words, the extent to which the peaks and troughs of the sound waves detected by its sound sensors line up with each other. This allows for fantastically precise determination of its direction of origin.

Sensitive hearing aids that are able to ignore unwanted sounds will be the result of studying Ormia. That will be a boon to us aging, hard-of-hearing snoops who not only want to listen to gossip but help originate it.

Photos and diagrams from Washington University in St. Louis

A Mite Less Animus

(National Geographic photo)

My dislike of mosquitoes originated from childhood...the itchy welts that wouldn't go away, the incessant buzzing and sleepless nights, and the hungry swarms that would attack in the aftermath of a tropical rain.

In junior high we all read Microbe Hunters, Paul de Kruif's 1926 history of the battle against disease in the 19th and early 20th centuries. Carrier of yellow fever and malaria, the mosquito was responsible for the death of millions of people. It's doubtful that there is a more feared and despised insect on the face of the planet.

In an unexpected twist scientists now hope to combat malaria by strengthening the health of mosquitoes. Malaria is actually transmitted via the Plasmodium parasite, and the Wolbachia bacterium enables mosquitoes' immune systems to fight off the parasite.

When they injected [Wolbachia] into embryos, the resulting mosquito moms passed the bacteria to their spawn, infecting and thus protecting an entire population.

It seems nigh incredible that the solution may be to help mankind's ancient enemy, not kill it. Even if mosquitoes are parasite- and disease-free I'll still swat them, though perhaps with a mite less animus. © 2014 Stephen Yuen