I just saw this and thought that you would appreciate it!Simon
Tuesday, February 15, 2011
SIMON REAMES: Another Taxonomy Fail for you
I just saw this and thought that you would appreciate it!NEW TURTLE BOOK: Life in a Shell: A Physiologist's View of a Turtle
Life in a Shell: A Physiologist's View of a Turtle (Hardcover), Donald C. Jackson, 192 pages, Harvard University Press, $29.95 plus $6.00 S&H
Product Description
Trundling along in essentially the same form for some 220 million years, turtles have seen dinosaurs come and go, mammals emerge, and humankind expand its dominion. Is it any wonder the persistent reptile bested the hare? In this engaging book physiologist Donald Jackson shares a lifetime of observation of this curious creature, allowing us a look under the shell of an animal at once so familiar and so strange.
Here we discover how the turtle's proverbial slowness helps it survive a long, cold winter under ice. How the shell not only serves as a protective home but also influences such essential functions as buoyancy control, breathing, and surviving remarkably long periods without oxygen, and how many other physiological features help define this unique animal. Jackson offers insight into what exactly it's like to live inside a shell-to carry the heavy carapace on land and in water, to breathe without an expandable ribcage, to have sex with all that body armor intervening.
Along the way we also learn something about the process of scientific discovery-how the answer to one question leads to new questions, how a chance observation can change the direction of study, and above all how new research always builds on the previous work of others. A clear and informative exposition of physiological concepts using the turtle as a model organism, the book is as interesting for what it tells us about scientific investigation as it is for its deep and detailed understanding of how the enduring turtle "works."
About the Author
Donald C. Jackson is Professor Emeritus of Medical Science, Brown University.
REMEMBER All Proceeds Go to HerpDigest.org: The Only Free Weekly E-zine Which Reports on the Latest Reptile and Amphibian Science and Conservation News. A non-profit corporation.
TO ORDER:
ATTENTION ----- IF USING A CCARD WE NOW NEED THOSE THREE LITTLE NUMBERS ON THE BACK OF THE CARD TO PROCESS YOUR ORDER. They are Called CVV numbers.
1) Send a check to Herpdigest/Allen Salzberg/67-87 Booth Street -5B/Forest Hills, NY 11375. Make the check out to Herpdigest.
2) By Paypal - our account is asalzberg@herpdigest.org
3) By credit card, Master or Visa, Discover and Amex, only, send us your credit card number, expiration date, billing and shipping address to asalzberg@herpdigest.org. (Though I haven't heard of this happening, a credit card number stolen from an email, I'm told to prevent this send ccard number divided into two emails.)
And don't forget to include those 3 numbers from the back of the credit card.
4) By phone, call us at 1-718-275-2190 Eastern Standard Time (NYC) - Any Day Of The Week, 11 A.M.- 6 P.M. If not in, leave message and we'll call back.
Product Description
Trundling along in essentially the same form for some 220 million years, turtles have seen dinosaurs come and go, mammals emerge, and humankind expand its dominion. Is it any wonder the persistent reptile bested the hare? In this engaging book physiologist Donald Jackson shares a lifetime of observation of this curious creature, allowing us a look under the shell of an animal at once so familiar and so strange.
Here we discover how the turtle's proverbial slowness helps it survive a long, cold winter under ice. How the shell not only serves as a protective home but also influences such essential functions as buoyancy control, breathing, and surviving remarkably long periods without oxygen, and how many other physiological features help define this unique animal. Jackson offers insight into what exactly it's like to live inside a shell-to carry the heavy carapace on land and in water, to breathe without an expandable ribcage, to have sex with all that body armor intervening.
Along the way we also learn something about the process of scientific discovery-how the answer to one question leads to new questions, how a chance observation can change the direction of study, and above all how new research always builds on the previous work of others. A clear and informative exposition of physiological concepts using the turtle as a model organism, the book is as interesting for what it tells us about scientific investigation as it is for its deep and detailed understanding of how the enduring turtle "works."
About the Author
Donald C. Jackson is Professor Emeritus of Medical Science, Brown University.
REMEMBER All Proceeds Go to HerpDigest.org: The Only Free Weekly E-zine Which Reports on the Latest Reptile and Amphibian Science and Conservation News. A non-profit corporation.
TO ORDER:
ATTENTION ----- IF USING A CCARD WE NOW NEED THOSE THREE LITTLE NUMBERS ON THE BACK OF THE CARD TO PROCESS YOUR ORDER. They are Called CVV numbers.
1) Send a check to Herpdigest/Allen Salzberg/67-87 Booth Street -5B/Forest Hills, NY 11375. Make the check out to Herpdigest.
2) By Paypal - our account is asalzberg@herpdigest.org
3) By credit card, Master or Visa, Discover and Amex, only, send us your credit card number, expiration date, billing and shipping address to asalzberg@herpdigest.org. (Though I haven't heard of this happening, a credit card number stolen from an email, I'm told to prevent this send ccard number divided into two emails.)
And don't forget to include those 3 numbers from the back of the credit card.
4) By phone, call us at 1-718-275-2190 Eastern Standard Time (NYC) - Any Day Of The Week, 11 A.M.- 6 P.M. If not in, leave message and we'll call back.
MATT SALUSBURY SENT THIS
Jon,
Read this in Focus (BBC science mag) no 223, December 2010:
We can expect to rediscover one third of mammals we believe to be extinct.
This is according to Dr Diana Fisher, University of Queensland, who adds "looking at rates of rediscovery versus rates of extinction, we found that animals who had been threatened by a loss of habitat or climate change are more likely to turn up again than animals eliminated by the introduction of predators or disease."]
Animals with a large range and small body size are more likely to still be around... it means we can stop looking for mammals like the thylacine."
The Philippine fruit bat was believed extinct by 1970, it had formerly been widespread. It turned up again in a different habitat, a secondary growth forest on a rocky island.
"Recovered amphibians" include the a frog in Queensland thought to have died out from fungus in a rain forest. It turned up in a new habitat - a dry forest.
MATT SALUSBURY
Read this in Focus (BBC science mag) no 223, December 2010:
We can expect to rediscover one third of mammals we believe to be extinct.
This is according to Dr Diana Fisher, University of Queensland, who adds "looking at rates of rediscovery versus rates of extinction, we found that animals who had been threatened by a loss of habitat or climate change are more likely to turn up again than animals eliminated by the introduction of predators or disease."]
Animals with a large range and small body size are more likely to still be around... it means we can stop looking for mammals like the thylacine."
The Philippine fruit bat was believed extinct by 1970, it had formerly been widespread. It turned up again in a different habitat, a secondary growth forest on a rocky island.
"Recovered amphibians" include the a frog in Queensland thought to have died out from fungus in a rain forest. It turned up in a new habitat - a dry forest.
MATT SALUSBURY
MORE NEW ARRIVALS AT THE CFZ
Last summer, Dave B-P, Max and I went to the charity fish auction in Redditch. Whilst we were there, amongst other things, we bought some Ilyodon xantusi, an obscure Mexican goodeid discovered in 1939. Eight months after we bought them they have achieved adulthood, and bred. The adults look like tiny trout, all a speckled, but the babies look like British minnows. Both are absolutely gorgeous....
NEW ARRIVALS AT THE CFZ
Regular readers will have been following the saga of the CFZ knife livebearers Alfaro cultratus: how all but two females were killed in an equipment failure in late november, and how - much to our suprise - babies appeared a couple of weeks after Christmas. Well, now we have approximately ten of them, and for the first time they are big enough to film.
BABY KOALA DEVELOPMENT PART TWO
Jan Edwards sent this:
It is not common for a Koala to bear twins, and regrettably in this instance the Mum was struck and killed by a passing car. Fortunately, the driver stopped and took the mother to the local vet, not knowing she was dead, where it was discovered she had these twins in her pouch.
First photo: Tiny koala being fed with syringe ... Sooo tiny!!
Followed by a pictorial chronology of their growth .....
PART TWO
It is not common for a Koala to bear twins, and regrettably in this instance the Mum was struck and killed by a passing car. Fortunately, the driver stopped and took the mother to the local vet, not knowing she was dead, where it was discovered she had these twins in her pouch.
First photo: Tiny koala being fed with syringe ... Sooo tiny!!
Followed by a pictorial chronology of their growth .....
PART TWO
OLL LEWIS: Yesterday's News Today
http://cryptozoologynews.blogspot.com/
On this day in 1957 the toddler's truce came to an end ( Goodness I wonder what the toddler's truce was, guess I'd better click this link to find out )
And now the news:
Bizarre mammals filmed calling using their quills
The moment Britain became an island
The Mentally Ill Toys of Martin Kittsteiner
Chuckie’s friends
Not particularly easy to think of a related video for today's news so have a Simon's cat vid instead:
http://www.simonscat.com/tvdinner.html
On this day in 1957 the toddler's truce came to an end ( Goodness I wonder what the toddler's truce was, guess I'd better click this link to find out )
And now the news:
Bizarre mammals filmed calling using their quills
The moment Britain became an island
The Mentally Ill Toys of Martin Kittsteiner
Chuckie’s friends
Not particularly easy to think of a related video for today's news so have a Simon's cat vid instead:
http://www.simonscat.com/tvdinner.html