The Eco-LOL-ogist

£1billion telescope can see the beginning of time By Hayley Dixon, telegraph.co.uk

A £1bn telescope that can see the beginning of time has been unveiled in Chile today.

Sci­en­tists hope the Ata­ca­ma Large Mil­lime­ter Array, or ALMA, will allow astronomers to see back to the first moments after the uni­verse was formed.

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Caffeinated Cravings: Putting The Buzz Back In Your Bumble...

It seems it's not just us humans who seek out regular caffeine kicks - the bees are at it as well! New research has shown that honey bees are three times more likely to remember and seek out food associated with the smell of a coffee or citrus plant (both of which naturally contain caffeine) than food presented without these scents. Well, would you blame 'em?!...

Christy Ullrich of NGS reports: 

Bitter-tasting caffeine primarily arose in plants as a toxic defense against herbivores like garden slugs. At high doses, caffeine can be toxic and repellent to pollinators.

However, at low concentrations, caffeine appears to have a secondary advantage, attracting honeybees and enhancing their long-term memory, said lead author Geraldine Wright, a neuroscientist at Newcastle University in England, whose study was published online March 7 in the journal Science.

"We show that caffeine—a compound whose ecological role is mainly to deter and poison herbivores—actually acts like a drug in an ecologically relevant context," Wright said. "The plant is secretly drugging the pollinator. It may help the bee, but the plant cares more about having a pollinator with high fidelity!"

Blowing Smoke: Hydrothermal Howdy-Doo-Dees...

Some UK scientisties have recently discovered yet another mind-blowing set of hydrothermal vents on the ocean floor in the Caribbean. This latest group have been found at deeper depths than any others (only about 5,000 metres!). They are also reportedly the hottest yet discovered (around 400C, compared to surrounding water temperatures of only around 4C!)

This is all very well and very good, you may very well declare, but what the very heck is a hydrothermal vent anyway?!? What indeed. So here you are - you're very own basic introduction to hydrothermal vents, aka deep sea vents, courtesy of those clever whomevers over at Wikipedia (I'd write a bling-lingoed up EcoLOLogist-style version, but quite frankly, I'm too tired. Zzzzzz.......)

A hydrothermal vent is a fissure in a planet's surface from which geothermally heated water issues. Hydrothermal vents are commonly found near volcanically active places, areas where tectonic plates are moving apart, ocean basins, and hotspots. Hydrothermal vents exist because the earth is both geologically active and has very large amounts of water on its surface and within its crust. Common land types include hot springs, fumaroles and geysers. Under the sea, hydrothermal vents may form features called black smokers. Relative to the majority of the deep sea, the areas around submarine hydrothermal vents are biologically more productive, often hosting complex communities fueled by the chemicals dissolved in the vent fluids. Chemosynthetic archaea form the base of the food chain, supporting diverse organisms, including giant tube worms, clams, limpets and shrimp. Active hydrothermal vents are believed to exist on Jupiter's moon Europa, and ancient hydrothermal vents have been speculated to exist on Mars. 

Some hydrothermal vents form roughly cylindrical chimney structures. These form from minerals that are dissolved in the vent fluid. When the superheated water contacts the near-freezing sea water, the minerals precipitate out to form particles which add to the height of the stacks. Some of these chimney structures can reach heights of 60 m. An example of such a towering vent was "Godzilla", a structure in the Pacific Ocean near Oregon that rose to 40 m before it fell over.

A black smoker or sea vent is a type of hydrothermal vent found on the seabed, typically in the abyssal and hadal zones. They appear as black, chimney-like structures that emit a cloud of black material. The black smokers typically emit particles with high levels of sulfur-bearing minerals, or sulfides. Black smokers are formed in fields hundreds of meters wide when superheated water from below Earth's crust comes through the ocean floor. This water is rich in dissolved minerals from the crust, most notably sulfides. When it comes in contact with cold ocean water, many minerals precipitate, forming a black, chimney-like structure around each vent. The deposited metal sulfides can become massive sulfide ore deposits in time.

Black smokers were first discovered in 1977 on the East Pacific Rise by scientists from Scripps Institution of Oceanography. They were observed using a deep submergence vehicle called ALVIN belonging to the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution. Now, black smokers are known to exist in the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans, at an average depth of 2100 metres. The most northerly black smokers are a cluster of five named Loki's Castle, discovered in 2008 by scientists from the University of Bergen at 73°N, on the Mid-Atlantic Ridge between Greenland and Norway. These black smokers are of interest as they are in a more stable area of the Earth's crust, where tectonic forces are less and consequently fields of hydrothermal vents are less common. The world's deepest black smokers are located in the Cayman Trough, 5,000 m (3.1 miles) below the ocean's surface.

White smoker vents emit lighter-hued minerals, such as those containing barium, calcium, and silicon. These vents also tend to have lower temperature plumes. These alkaline hydrothermal vents also continuously generate acetyl thioesters, providing both the starting point for more complex organic molecules and the energy needed to produce them. Microscopic structures in such alkaline vents "show interconnected compartments that provide an ideal hatchery for the origin of life".

Murky Mentalness: Deep Ocean Vents Just Got Deeper, And Hotter...

Strange Squeakcies: This Frog’s Call Ain’t No Croak…

Recorded by wildlife enthusiast and photographer Dean Boshoff among the sand dunes of Port Nolloth in South Africa’s Northern Cope province, this first YouTube video of his went viral within a matter of days - and it’s easy to see why. Or, rather, hear why. You’d be forgiven for suspecting that this is nothing more than the result of some doggy-chew-toy-dub-over of a hoax. However this is the real deal folks. Yup, that sound is actually coming out of that animal!

This little sandy ball of hilarious squeaky cuteness is a desert rain frog* (Breviceps macrops). Although it has elsewhere been reported to be a mating call, the sound it’s so ardently emitting is actually a warning call, triggered by the presence of a threat such as a predator (or in this case, most likely the perceived threat of big bad Dean and his camera). Other species of frog are also known to make this type of warning call and a quick search of YouTube will bring up more examples of it, however I’ve yet been able to find one that’s quite as cute as this lil’ guy!

The desert rain frog is a fossorial species, spending most of its life buried under the sand hiding from predators (hence the state of our new celebrity) and only surfaces at night to feed. Its eggs are laid in underground chambers and are covered in a thick, viscous, jelly-like substance. Once the eggs hit tadpole stage, the jelly softens into a fluid in which they live until they fully metamorphose into frogs (absorbing nutrients from the egg yolk as they grow). This lack of dependence on water for the tadpole stage is what makes this dumpy dude particularly and uniquely suited to life in an arid environment. 

So there you have it; the desert rain frog; sandy, silly, squeaky and all together supersauce, No go press play again. You know you want to, tee hee…

Rainbow-eyed Surprise: Refraction Of Light Captures Third Prize Delight...

This spectral spectacular (top photo), captured by American photographer Randall Benton, was awarded third prize recently in the Nature (singles) category of the 2013 World Press Photo contest. Although it looks like some weird demon-possessed other-worldly creature of the night, this prize pic shows nothing more sinister than a very-much-of-our-worldly trumpetfish of the Caribbean. The rainbow-eyed effect is the result of light bending as it passes through the eye of the fish which causes it to split into different wavelengths (ie, colours) - a phenomenon known as dispersion. 

Trumpetfish (Aulostomus maculatus) are long thin fish who derive their name from their snouts, which look a bit like - you guessed it - a trumpet. Masters of disguise, trumpetfish can often be found hanging out around pipe sponges, sea fans and sea whips in a vertical, head down position which helps them to blend in with their surroundings as they wait for unsuspecting prey to pass by or indeed, try to avoid becoming prey themselves. They are also known to swim alongside the vertical lines of other fish while hunting. The trumpetfish's mouth is able to stretch to a size equal to the diameter of its body and creates a vacuum which sucks up its prey (this is known as "pipette feeding"). Typically a mottled reddish-brown in colour, these fish can also change their colour to suit their surroundings, much like squid and octopus do.

Changes in colouration are also observed during trumpetfish courtship rituals (known as "dances". For a video complete with groovy guitar music, see here). As with their close relatives the seahorses, it is the male trumpetfish who carries most of the reproductive burden. Having received eggs from the female following a successful courtship (score!), he then fertilizes them and carries them in a special pouch until they are born. Haha, suckers...

For more cool info on trumpetfish, check out here and here.

Mind Feed: The Origin Of Feces Is Sure To Be Da Sh*t...

"Reading about poo while having my morning brew and I'm liking it!" - this was the response that twittered out of me this morning when I happened upon an @NatGeo twink (that's tweeted-link, dyoncha knows) to an interview with one Mr. David Waltner-Toews about his new book "On the Origin of Feces". Now, asides from having the most awesomely cool and aptly named title you could think of, this piece of brain fodder also promises a remarkably refreshing (yes, even from poo) take on the subject of the dreaded doo-doo. While many other "crap" books lean more toward waste management and public health issues, David has chosen to dust some glitter over the crud and try to show us all (particularly us westerners) how fecaes can, and indeed, should be considered more of a friend than a foe. 

Exploring how excrement has helped to shape the evolution and ecology of our planet and purveying plenty of great examples of how poop is already trickling it's way into the streams of sustainability, this one promises to be one hot and steamy awesomesauce summer read. 

So if you fancy swotting up on your sh*t, this is the book to doo-doo it with! It's out in May 2013 and you can pre-order it here. POO POWER!!!

Read National Geographic News' Christine Dell'Amore interview with David here.

Show Offs: NASA Gives Mercury A Make-Over…

Now what have those clever folks at NASA done today? Shown off a brand spanking new colour image of Mercury, that’s what! And it’s oh so perrrrrdy! The image itself isn’t quite “true to life” as it were, as it was devised principally to highlight the variations in the planet’s rock composition. The thousands of pictures used to make the image were taken through special filters on the lense of NASA’s Messenger probe. In terms of what the colours represent, the orangy parts you see are the volcanic plains, the lighter blue streaks are the result of impact rocks being strewn across the surface, and some of the deepest blue areas are, well, they don’t really know yet other than it’s some form of mysterious opaque mineral (It’s magic! *GASP!*)

Out Of Acid?: Try Northern Lights Time Lapse Instead...

What's kewler that the Northern Lights? Northern Lights on time lapse camera, that's what. Trippy...

The footage is from Artography by Tracy who says of it:

I took this last night (Feb 13)...it is hours of still footage rolled into a movie. I had one with music but FB is funny about copyright infringement for some reason...lol!

The Northern Lights, or Aurora Borealis, is a naturally occuring light display in the sky - particularly in the higher latitude regions - which is caused by the collision of energetic charged particles with atoms in the high altitude atmosphere. 

Its southern counterpart, the Aurora Australis (a.k.a. the Southern Lights), displays almost identical features to the aurora borealis and changes simultaneously with changes in the northern auroral zone.