Got artwork? Tatoos? I wanna see ‘em!

I’ve always thought insects are not only biologically interesting creatures, but I’ve always thought they have a sort of creepy beauty about them.

So if you have insect artwork, tatoos or anything like that E-mail me at cheshire.entomoblog (at) gmail.com. I’ll post entries on the blog with accredation and a hyperlink.

So…what happened to Cheshire?

So…if you’ve been following this blog, you’ve probably noticed a distinct lack of posts. I wrote about this two posts ago, but I figured I’d share some details.

For the past year, I’ve been trying to get into a graduate school. My grades are excellent-I’m one of the top in my class…it’s been a solid three years since I wasn’t on the Dean’s list. However, my references are a bit shaky because of some of my personality quirks and my GRE scores aren’t exactly spectacular. There’s also been some RL stuff going on which ties everything together.

Oh, where to start, where to start?

First contact with alien races: is it worth considering?

The latest meme going around is first contact, spurred by this speech by Stephen Hawking. It’s made some interesting buzz in the blogosphere, although I’m not sure how many of these biologist bloggers are actually applying biological principles to their thoughts.

There are certianly many different directions societies could go. Just look at the various subcultures here in the US and then imagine how many there could be in the world. Ask a group of biology students if they would be willing to eat a GMO, and you’ll get some enthusiastically raising their hands, some expressing reservations and some flat out saying no. There’s a lot of variation within us, and that variation will probably be a part of any society no matter what stage of cultural evolution it’s at.

I think it’s dissappointing that Hawking thinks first contact would be disastrous, but I won’t disagree. I don’t think we’d have much to fear in terms of disease transmission because organisms which cause disease tend to have adaptations to thwart various parts of the immune system so they’d need to be pretty well adapted to whatever they were infecting. We’d be very different and would probably be different down to the biomolecules and genetic code which comprises us. There are many other amino acids than those which comprise us, and there are probably different molecules which could be used in terms of Guanine, Cytosine, Adenine, Uracil and Thymine which comprise our genetic code.

I also doubt they’d attack us with germs as PZ Myers implies. We’ve been categorizing different microorganisms from nematodes to fungi to bacteria and viruses…some of which cause disease and some of which don’t. Since their biology would probably be vastly different than ours, they’d have one hell of a catch-up game to go through in order to create those bioweapons. Their technology would be undoubtedly more complex than ours, but with a potential of millions of species with a completely different molecular setup than they’d be used to there’s still a massive learning curve no matter how awesome your shit is. I do, however, think that engineering microorganisms to terraform the planet and kill us in the process would be a rational system for them to use.

Of course, this all assumes that we have something they want. Because we don’t know anything about the biology of these aliens, I really don’t know why we’d assume they desire anything on this blue ball. If they evolved in some sort of tundra planet that never left the ice age, this planet would be far too warm for them. If they evolved on a hotter planet, too cold. There’s also the matter of gas composition…remember that oxygen is highly toxic to many forms of life and that the first mass extinction event in earth’s history was the direct result of the atmosphere flooding with oxygen.

For all we know, this planet could be too hot, cold or toxic to support any form of life except that which initially evolved here. Although I think first contact would be absolutely amazing, I don’t really think speculating about what it would be like is a useful exercise because there are simply too many possibilities within human culture and within the biota we know on earth as it is…never mind that which we don’t know.

Quite frankly, this XKCD comic springs to mind:

With all that said, if a xenobiologically curious gunman put a gun to my head and asked me what I thought aliens would be like, I’d tell them that they’d probably have exoskeletons. After all, if we’re going by statistics…

Okay…back to finals.

It’s that time again…

Finals week!

You know, that week where I get no sleep and this blog goes down for a bit?

Yeah…it’s that time unfortunately. The blog’s going to be shackled up for awhile.

I’m also going through some RL stuff, as well. I’m fine…nothing’s wrong with me physically or emotionally but I’m preparing to move halfway across the country and probably won’t be around the internet as much as I would need to be to run a weblog.

I’ll be back on around August, if not before that.

Thanks for reading, and add me to your RSS feed to know when I’ve restarted this shindig.

ICP’s still around? WTF?

Insane Clown Posse was a group that was wildly popular when I was in 8th grade or so (well over a decade ago, now). They were mostly popular because it was something our parents hated. Their songs were full of drug refrences, cursing and all manner of evil like that. They were kind of my town’s version of Ozzy Osbourne…or at least something close. Everyone listened to them, everyone’s parents hated them.

I stopped listening to them when I got to high school. I (as well as everyone else I knew) began to develop an intellect and started to develop something which resembled musical tastes. They fell off my radar, and I always assumed that they stopped making music.

I…uh, I was wrong.

Bed Bugs in Their Natural Habitat

So…last night, I had an opportunity to look for bed bugs in their natural habitat. I was called to a friend’s house to collect some specimens for the ISU entomology department. I rooted around on a couch for an hour, and helped them clean the place up before leaving.

It’s kind of an interesting thing, actually. Bugs have a stigma about them, and usually undeservedly so. When they’ve adapted to living in our dewellings like cockroaches or bed bugs, they have a stigma that’s kind of deserved. Bed bugs are probably among the worst of these. They hitch-hike on personal possessions, and feed directly on our blood. They’re also incredibly hard to get rid of because they’re increasingly becoming resistant to pesticides.

I was surprised to see how much damage bed bugs actually caused to those who they bit. One of the people living in this house had some sizeable lesions on their arm from feeding…some of which were more than a centimeter in diameter and all of which were bigger than the insects I collected.

As far as infestations go, these are definitely the worst type of insect to have in your house. One of my prospective graduate schools is looking at new management techniques for bed bug management, and these guys are consistently rated as the most difficult pest to deal with…more difficult than cockroaches, even.

One of the things which interested me about this whole venture is that this was in a relatively low-income house where they were going to try to treat for the insects themselves. I’d imagine a lot of cases are like this, and a lot of homeowners try to skip out on the cost of hiring professional exterminators by dealing with the problem themselves.

Although it’s cheaper, this probably isn’t a good idea unless you’re someone like me because the exterminator’s probably going to have a better handle on what they’re resistant to than you’d be able to find out on your own.

Youtube Gems: Eddie Izzard

Really, Moffat? This is the best you could do?

I’m a huge fan of Doctor Who and I’ve been waiting nearly two years for Moffat to take over from Russell T. Davies because Moffat has made some of the best Doctor Who episodes I’ve seen yet. I mean, I’m more familiar with the new stuff than the old (trying to change that) but either way Moffat combines Sci-Fi and horror in a way that few other people do.

However, I was dissapointed by the series five premeir. It seemed like Moffat haphazardly combined Girl in the Fireplace and Smith and Jones into an episode which wasn’t as good as either.

I’ll give him the baddie, though…he definitely surpassed Smith and Jones with the villain in this episode. Either way, not his best effort yet.

Dear Undergraduate

Dear Undergraduate,

I know how things are for you right now. You’ve been a part of the education process for the past half-decade and it’s become all you’ve known. Now, you’re at the end of your undergraduate journey and you’re staring the real world in the face. Maybe you’ve worked the same shitty part time job for the past 5 years…maybe you’ve worked a series of crappy jobs in that time. Either way for the first time you’re threatened by actual responsibility. You started on this journey because you wanted to make something of your life, and along the way things have gotten comfortable. Now, change is an option. You hate the status quo, but change is always scary.

And you should be scared. No matter what field you’ve stumbled into, chances are life is hard and this is reflected in your various pursuits. Maybe you’re in danger of failing a required class at midterm. Maybe you’ve gotten rejection letters from a few graduate schools. Maybe you’ve just noticed a major mistake on the resume you’ve sent to half a dozen PIs. Maybe you’ve sent out a few job applications and can’t seem to get a response. Maybe you’re getting burnt out by the four years of constant classes, tests and labs.

These are all scary things. These are all things which everyone goes through, as well. Just because you’ve suffered a few setbacks doesn’t mean that you won’t succeed. Most folks don’t get the first few jobs they interview for. Most folks don’t get accepted to the first few grad schools they apply for. And everybody fucks up a resume every once and awhile.

Look…the universe tends to unfold as it should. Chances are, you’re relatively young and life gives you dozens of chances to start over again if you’ve really screwed things up. If you’re struggling through a difficult class, see if it’s curved or just spend every waking second studying. If you’re worried about your grades, stock up on easy classes next semester or take another semester’s worth of classes if you’re graduating. If your grades are decent, finding a job or internship shouldn’t be terribly difficult. If your first few graduate schools rejected you, keep applying until one clicks. This stuff is far more simple than you’re making it out to be.

Chances are, you’re tending quite a few fires right now and feel like you’re having trouble keeping track of them all. That’s a good thing. The more things you have going on at once, the greater chance something’s going to click and you’ll move onto the next level. Granted, it’s a bit scary but nothing worth doing is without risk.

Remember…you wanted to do this. You wanted to become something more than the manager of a fast-food joint. Maybe you wanted to be a doctor, scientist or lawyer and now that you have to make a life change you’re questioning whether you have the ability to make it.

Guess what?

You can do this. You’ve done it for four or five years already, and you’ve completed phase one of your goals. Granted, it’s just a start but every journey has a first leg. You’re driven…you’ve lasted nearly a half decade already through innumerable crisis and life changes. You’re intelligent…otherwise, your quest would have ended in failure long ago.

But most of all, you’ve got nothing to lose from here on out. You either step up, or keep doing the same thing you’ve been doing all along. Worst case scenario, you keep working the same crappy job you have been for the past few years.

Don’t that fear of change stop you. You’re better than that.

Sincerely,
Cheshire

Building Robots to Infiltrate Societies

A bunch of scientists build robots which blend in with a society by learning their languages and customs. The intention of these robots is to subvert the societies by changing the how the locals think and act.

Sounds like something from a bad sci-fi movie, right? A Tea Party speech, perhaps?

Aphids have mutualistic viruses!

Aphids can be a pain in the ass to gardeners and farmers. Although they look pretty harmless, they’re to plants what mosquitoes are to people and more. They transmit some pretty serious diseases which cause millions of dollars in damage per year. They’re also famous for their fecundity-they’re parthenogenic and their daughters are actually born pregnant. I’m going to sidestep the urge to make a deep south joke here…

Aphids are also really strange creatures. They’re semi-social and communication between individuals is actually somewhat common. Some species also have soldier individuals…not unlike ants or termites. They also have all sorts of symbionts which perform all sorts of tasks. Some make amino acids that the aphids can’t get in their diet. Some species have lost their symbionts.

A common theme here on Cheshire is that parasitoid wasps are awesome to have around. Many species kill caterpillars, and aphids have their own parasitoids as well. They’re major insect population regulators and the economy would probably collapse without them.

One symbiont, Hamiltonella defensa defends the wasp against parasitic attack. Or so it would seem. The symbiont becomes less effective in captivity, and eventually loses it’s protective ability. This was a mystery for the longest time.

It was eventually discovered that the aphids actually needed a bacteriophage A. pisum secondary endosymbiont (APSE) in order to be completely effective. In essence, the aphid has a bacterial symbiont which carries a bacteriophage which encodes a toxin which makes it good for the aphid to have around because the toxin kills the parasitoid wasp larvae.

Now, of course the bacteria contains it’s own toxins so there’s definitely a reason the aphid keeps this guy around. However, in this particular instance the virus keeps itself in play through selection. The reason the laboratory colonies became less effective at killing the wasps was most likely because the selection for the individuals carrying the bacteriophage infected symbionts stopped once the wasps stopped parasitizing the aphids. In other words, this is a mutualism. The virus gets to hang out, nomming on the endosymbiont while the aphid doesn’t get nommed by the parasitoids. Everyone wins!

Well, except H. defensa. They pretty much get screwed over by the host.

Well played, aphids…well played.

One of the things which has annoyed me through my undergraduate studies is that a lot of the microbiology instructors treated viruses as pure pathogens and parasites. This view is starting to change with the discovery of some really complicated viral ecology, but oddly enough it was my entomology instructors who first started to show students that there was more to virology than medicine.

Oliver, K., Degnan, P., Hunter, M., & Moran, N. (2009). Bacteriophages Encode Factors Required for Protection in a Symbiotic Mutualism Science, 325 (5943), 992-994 DOI: 10.1126/science.1174463