LOL just gets funnier all the time!!
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From: Paul Furman on 3 Jun 2010 23:21 OK :-| I've heard if you want to name a species, moths are the thing to get into. Sounds interesting. Spread the wealth man...
From: LOL! on 3 Jun 2010 23:49 On Thu, 03 Jun 2010 20:21:55 -0700, Paul Furman <paul-@-edgehill.net> wrote: >OK :-| > >I've heard if you want to name a species, moths are the thing to get >into. Sounds interesting. Spread the wealth man... No, moths are not the thing. Nearly all species are already known. If you really want to name a new species then start to explore the Everglades. They estimate that only 5% of the species of arthropods (and other animals) have been documented. How many are totally unknown is anyone's guess. (Shortly due to be decimated by a fun oil-spill.) Now, due to the influx of escapees, there is an explosion of speciation going on. The isolated hammocks providing even further speciation, like a mini version of the Galapagos Islands, but many more of them. Interestingly, some of the Cichlid fish species have started to interbreed, forming new species that haven't been seen before. The government's Park-Circus agencies can't even keep on top of all the new fish species. Unfortunately, many that I caught couldn't be kept due to "invasive species" regulations, they have to be destroyed and can't be transported. That's why I spent 3 years documenting the life there. Insect macrophotography is only a subset of my photography. [But then again, I now found that the invasive Cichlids in the Everglades are even better eating than bass or walleye. You just feel a little funny scaling and gutting a 2 lb., dinner-plate sized, rainbow-colored, $150 aquarium fish. The most memorable was a 2 lb. iridescent blue Cichlid with a large metallic gold, red, and green eyespot near the tail. The only one I had ever seen of that type. It was amazing looking. If I had an aquarium and laws were not as they are, it would have been put into an aquarium for certain. Lacking an aquarium in my kayaking supplies ... it became a tasty meal instead. I think I remembered to snap its photo beforehand, but I don't recall. My photo archives are in the many hundreds of thousands now and I'm not about to go look for it.]
From: Paul Furman on 4 Jun 2010 00:08 wrote: > Paul Furman wrote: > >> OK :-| >> >> I've heard if you want to name a species, moths are the thing to get >> into. Sounds interesting. Spread the wealth man... > > No, moths are not the thing. Are so!!! > Nearly all species are already known. If you > really want to name a new species then start to explore the Everglades. Too hot & sticky for me :-( > They estimate that only 5% of the species of arthropods (and other animals) > have been documented. How many are totally unknown is anyone's guess. Ya, even very common circumboreal species show huge variations. > (Shortly due to be decimated by a fun oil-spill.) The deep oceans are almost as inaccessible as outer space <g>. > Now, due to the influx of escapees, there is an explosion of speciation > going on. Should be interesting in a million years, if anyone's left. > The isolated hammocks providing even further speciation, like a > mini version of the Galapagos Islands, but many more of them. > Interestingly, some of the Cichlid fish species have started to interbreed, > forming new species that haven't been seen before. The government's > Park-Circus agencies can't even keep on top of all the new fish species. > Unfortunately, many that I caught couldn't be kept due to "invasive > species" regulations, they have to be destroyed and can't be transported. > > That's why I spent 3 years documenting the life there. > > Insect macrophotography is only a subset of my photography. Dig this stuff in common pond scum: http://www.photomacrography.net/forum/viewtopic.php?p=61229#61229 > [But then again, I now found that the invasive Cichlids in the Everglades > are even better eating than bass or walleye. You just feel a little funny > scaling and gutting a 2 lb., dinner-plate sized, rainbow-colored, $150 > aquarium fish. The most memorable was a 2 lb. iridescent blue Cichlid with > a large metallic gold, red, and green eyespot near the tail. The only one I > had ever seen of that type. It was amazing looking. If I had an aquarium > and laws were not as they are, it would have been put into an aquarium for > certain. Lacking an aquarium in my kayaking supplies ... it became a tasty > meal instead. I think I remembered to snap its photo beforehand, but I > don't recall. My photo archives are in the many hundreds of thousands now > and I'm not about to go look for it.] Spread the wealth man...
From: LOL! on 4 Jun 2010 00:54 On Thu, 03 Jun 2010 21:08:37 -0700, Paul Furman <paul-@-edgehill.net> wrote: > >Dig this stuff in common pond scum: >http://www.photomacrography.net/forum/viewtopic.php?p=61229#61229 There are some okay photos there but I'm difficult to impress. I grew up on microscopes. Built my very first one when a child. A couple decades ago Leica awarded to me one of their plan-apo phase-contrast microscopes for a paper that I wrote for them. I have spent some winters exploring drops of pond water (with eye and camera). I sometimes tell people that if they can't travel and want to see and explore new worlds just learn to use a microscope and keep a jar of pond-water nearby. (I also designed a 6-axis dark-field+incident lighting system so I can highlight the different axes of crystals and snowflakes, each in their own unique color of my choosing.) I think my most favorite protist of all is a species of Euglena that is a heart-shaped leaf shape (I forget it's name at the moment) with parallel veining and all, a deep emerald green with an intense crimson eyespot. It's more impressive in real life than still photographs, the way it moves. Slowly bending and twisting like a supple and paper-thin emerald leaf that's falling in slow motion.
From: LOL! on 4 Jun 2010 03:50
On Thu, 03 Jun 2010 21:08:37 -0700, Paul Furman <paul-@-edgehill.net> wrote: > >> Now, due to the influx of escapees, there is an explosion of speciation >> going on. > >Should be interesting in a million years, if anyone's left. > You don't need a million years for specie differentiation. It depends on reproduction periods, environment, and random-acts of the universe (a stray cosmic ray or natural disaster. (There is no such thing as a "disaster", there is only "change".) For example: The "Endangered Florida Panther" is not a unique species at all. Though politicians and the wealthy (who put those politicians in office) trying to gain the panther's area for their own purposes will claim otherwise. There are vast oil-fields right in the panther's habitat, you can still see the capped wells on older topographic maps. They still exist in earlier versions of Garmin and Delorme topographic map data, but were removed from the data in later versions. They are using the deception of the "Endangered Florida Panther" to get people thrown off their own land. Land-owners are not allowed to defend themselves against panther attacks in the panther's protected areas (no lie). The "Endanged Florida Panther"'s genetics are absolutely no different than the Puma, Mountain Lion, Cougar, or any other common name that you want to give to /Puma concolor/. Their genetics are identical on two whole continents. The ONLY thing that has changed is their crook-tail (fitting, considering how they became listed as "endangered", a "crook's-tale") and romanesque nose due to inbreeding from being cut-off from their normal routes into the rest of the continent during the last century, due to human habitation. This is hardly enough time, nor is the habitat unique enough to cause specie differentiation in this type of animal with their gestation and reproduction rates, even in 200 years. This is easily proved when the FL Park Circus imported many Texas cougars to bolster the population count in FL. Revealing that they are not a unique species and the very act of doing so, allowing Texas cougars to interbreed with them, now prevents them from being a unique species forevermore even if they were at one point. The wealthy and greedy media manipulators cut off their own hypocritical noses, in full sight of everyone. On the other hand, I did a simple home experiment (unknowingly) one time. I had an infestation of a particular kind of common "pest" moth whose larvae burrowed beneath the soils of my house plants, feeding off the roots. For a couple years I had been killing the occasional moth in flight, by clapping them between two hands. In only two years (of breeding year-round) they developed the trait to fold up their wings and fall to the dark-brown mottled carpeting every time they detected a light being turned on or felt the air-pressure wave of a hand-clap. As well as gaining a darker color to match their environment. Only those that survived my simple manual eradication attempts bred the next year. (They also eventually developed a complete resistance to pyrethrins.) Only those survived that would either dive out of the way when they experienced a sudden clapping sound, dove to the carpeting, became motionless at the first hint of light, or blended in with the dark wood-colors in my home at the time. In only a few years I have no doubt they would have differentiated into a new species unable to breed with or find their lighter-colored or less-evasive/less-reactive counterparts. I didn't wait that long to find out. I took more drastic measures to eradicate them one year. (But not before I unleashed some of these more pestilent variety into the outside environment so the rest of humanity can get to enjoy what I endured. They earned the right to survive, in my book. (If only I could say the same for humanity.)) Speciation is dependent on many things. Time being only one of them. |