Stalactite

Did you know? Fireflies aren’t flies at all: they're beetles! Of all of the insects in the world, fireflies are among the few to have evolved an extraordinary language of light. Many fireflies use a system of flashes in some of the same ways we use words: to attract, to say, “Here I am,” even to deceive. They emit light from a tiny organ, called a lantern, on the underside of their abdomen, where a biochemical reaction takes place within specialized cells called photocytes. The reaction releases energy in the form of light.

“More than fifty research and development facilities across thirty-one states. Gone. Consolidated into a single location in Fort Collins, Colorado. And ‘consolidated’ is doing a lot of heavy lifting in that sentence, because what it actually means is that decades of place-based, long-term ecological research—the kind that literally cannot exist anywhere else because it depends on specific forests, specific watersheds, specific ecosystems studied over generations—will be snuffed out.

If your senator is a Republican, the question is simple: you voted for a law that requires USDA to get committee approval before reorganizing or relocating any office. USDA didn’t get that approval. Their own lawyers declared your law unconstitutional. What are you going to do about it?

If your senator is a Democrat, the question is just as simple: the legal basis for stopping this already exists. Where are the subpoenas? Where are the hearings? Why is USDA’s general counsel allowed to declare a duly enacted law unconstitutional by internal memo and face no consequences?

Make them answer. Make their staff write it down. Call back next week and ask what happened.

(source)

Still can’t get over just how small this species is.  Asplenium trichomanes subsp. quadrivalens.

This species prefers acidic rocks typically; but this smaller subspecies is really only associated with dolostone outcroppings that retain moisture or stay fairly wet. The divisions of the maidenhair spleenwort is really not by size necessarily, but is associated directly with substrate and separation by long distances between prefered habitats. Although this speciation event isn’t traditional allopatric speciation(speciation by large scale geographic divergence and separation) this species is definitely one exception that had been funnelled under that cause, micro-allopatric speciation for quite some time due to the presence of this species in many countries that span the northern hemisphere of the globe. The truth later was found that Asplenium trichomanes subsp. quadrivalens was far more rare overall than its acidic sandstone loving lineage, and it was more associated with North Eastern North America. Thus it was due to edge niche shift in a place that shared both habitats(like RRG for example). This then referred this speciation event to  Parapatric Speciation; the specific way it has been phrased is really “Gradual speciation by habitat splitting” 

The more common acidic/sandstone loving lineage is referred to now as A. trichomanes subsp. trichomanes.