San Diego Zoo Photos

So instead of camping in the mountains of San Diego- we decided to go to the Zoo. Nighttime lows were into the low 30's- which is just too cold for us- and for the mice in traps, too.

The Giant Panda exhibit was awesome.. There were 2 adults, and cubs (??) coming soon.

This animal was my favorite. The Cobra! It's mouth was wide open and looked pissed off...
Orangutang...
Tiger....

We're in the Desert

Partly motivated by my desire to get out of the city, part interested in seeing what it all looks like after the devastating Southern California wild fires, and partly wanting to see how Peromyscus populations are doing after this years record drought- we decided to spend a few days in the desert! Our plan is to spend 2 nights in Palm Desert, Riverside County, then 2 days in a hotel near Echo Valley (Near Alpine, CA- Southern San Diego County).

We woke up early this AM and took a walk up into the canyon. Things looked pretty dry in general. It was chilly- probably about 50 degrees. The highlight by far was a fantastic show put on by the critically endangered Penninsular Bighorn Sheep. We say 2 big males, an immature male, and 5 ewes. They were really amazing- Ill post some photos of these guys later.

Say it isn't so: Male cheerleaders are likely to be gay??? Shocking!

The quote:

A study of former high-school American Football players has found that more
than a third said they had had sexual relations with other men.

In his study of homosexuality among sportsmen in the US, sociologist Dr
Eric Anderson found that 19 in a sample of 47 had taken part in acts intended to
sexually arouse other men, ranging from kissing to mutual masturbation and oral
sex.

The 47 men, aged 18-23, were all American Football players who previously
played at the high school (secondary school) level but had failed to be picked
for their university’s team and were now cheerleaders instead. They were at
various universities from the American south, Mid-West, west and north
west.

Not to contribute to the stereotype, but there is no big surprise here...

What is irritating is that this is another example of a researcher conducting research that somehow justifies his/her own personal choices of lifestyle. Dr Eric Anderson says:

“The evidence supports my assertion that homophobia is on the rapid decline
among male teamsport athletes in North America at all levels of play,” he writes
in his study, entitled ‘Being masculine is not about whom you sleep
with…Heterosexual athletes contesting masculinity and the one-time rule of
homosexuality’.

Oh, and by the way, Dr Anderson was the first openly gay male high school sports coach in the US. He left coaching after one of his students was assaulted because it was assumed that he was gay.

If he is trying to make the point that homophobia in team sports in on the decline, then one MAJOR criticism is his sampling. Using former football players that are now cheerleaders (which is often seen as a feminine activity) likely severely biased his results.. Of course- he denies this possibility...

Those he interviewed were selected to represent men that considered
themselves traditionally masculine, typical American Football players.

... and he just happened to find all the current cheerleaders?? Gimme a break!

$5309.80

'tis the season you know.. so if anybody is so inclined to donate either the $$$, or the actual goods, please contact me asap. Just imagine the nice mousey photos I could post...


Nikon D300






AF Micro-Nikkor 105mm f/2.8G ED-IF AF-S VR




AF VR Zoom Nikkor 70-200mm f/2.8D G-AFS ED-IF





AF-S Nikkor 300mm f/4D ED-IF







I currently have the antiquated D100 and the very nice Nikon 17-55 AFS

NSF-DDIG Proposal

So Bora blogged a few days ago about open access science, commenting that th day may come when grant proposals may become available to formal reviewers and other interested parties much like accepted manuscripts are today..

This struck me 1st off as wrong- the ideas in grant proposals translate into $$, and novel ideas are often funded just because they are novel, so sharing them with other people means that their novelty might be lost.. What if somebody took the my ideas and used them for themselves?

The flip side is that this type of fear inhibits scientific progress. The sharing of ideas is important, and should be encouraged. This is exactly why we publish papers, present at conferences and seminars, and correspond with colleagues. This is great, but still our ability to share and receive ideas is limited by to the people within our discipline (and go to the same meetings, read the same journals, etc.). The question becomes- how do we get our ideas out there... out to ore than just (in my case) Behavioral Ecologists?

One such way is to do exactly this- maintain a blog. Maybe it's not the best way- maybe not even good way, but I cannot deny that fact that the ideas I present here reach more than just Behavioral Ecologists... The dissemination of ideas- the understanding of nature, and its inner workings is ultimately what most scientists are after..

So in an attempt at sharing- I'll offer to share my recent grant proposal, a NSF-DDIG (Doctoral Dissertation Improvement Grant) to interested readers (SERIOUS INQUIRIES ONLY). Here is a paragraph from the intro.

While multiple studies have established the role of shared environment (pathogens) in generating selection pressure on MHC genes (Dionne et al., 2007; Ekblom et al., 2007), the effects of animal behavior on MHC genes within said environment has been largely overlooked (but see Hambuch and Lacey, 2002; Sommer et al., 2002) This is surprising; as behavior has the ability to either enhance or mitigate pathogen transmission within populations (Eames and Keeling, 2004; Hambuch and Lacey, 2002; Loehle, 1995; Morris and Kretzschmar, 1997). Sexual behavior is one such behavior that can alter the risk of infectious disease. Although increased number and concurrency of sexual partners has been linked to increased pathogen transmission (Kalichman et al., 2007; Morris and Kretzschmar, 1997; Nelson et al., 2007), no one has explicitly linked this with selection and MHC polymorphism. I will determine whether this increased risk for infectious disease is associated with enhanced strength of selection and increased polymorphism of MHC genes. My study is one of the first to use naturally occurring variation in sexual behavior among congeners to explore the effects of these forms of contact on selection for MHC diversity, and will focus on two specific questions:

1. What is the relationship between sexual behavior (mating system) and MHC variability?
2. What is the relationship between shared environments (pathogens) and MHC variability?

See my profile for the email address- or leave a comment.

Velvety Tree Ant

I'd been wondering about these crazy ants I was dealing with in Southern California this past summer. Finally, with the help of a Ant expert- I (she) identified them as Liometopum occidentale, the Velvety Tree Ant.

These guys were really interesting. They were really aggressive, in that they would be crawling up your legs by the 10's only seconds after putting your feet down.. Despite this- they did not bite.

Squishing them was a treat too. Now I a against killing thing- but I had too only to save the food and other supplies. Anyway, they smelled exactly like bug spray, or some other noxious chemical. Weird!

Turns out that these guys often form mutualistic relationship with various caterpillars- eating the ectoparasites off the and defending them against predators...

Here is the info from ANTWEB, and from some other website

Tolerance vs. resistance to disease

I just finished reading this paper from a recent issue of Science.. The Title: Disentangling Genetic Variation for Resistance and Tolerance to Infectious Diseases in Animals, which can be found (by subscribers) here. It's a very nice paper, and brings up an interesting issue, one that I have not previously considered. Here it is...

We traditionally think of host-parasite interactions as a relationship characterized by host resistance (immunity, etc.) and pathogen evasion. They pull from the plant literature to report on host tolerance. The idea is that there are some situations where how a host repsponds to infection is much more important that it's ability to evade infection.

Here is the abstract:

Hosts can in principle employ two different strategies to defend themselves against parasites: resistance and tolerance. Animals typically exhibit considerable genetic variation for resistance (the ability to limit parasite burden). However, little is known about whether animals can evolve tolerance (the ability to limit the damage caused by a given parasite burden). Using rodent malaria in laboratory mice as a model system and the statistical framework developed by plant-pathogen biologists, we demonstrated genetic variation for tolerance, as measured by the extent to which anemia and weight loss increased with increasing parasite burden. Moreover, resistance and tolerance were negatively genetically correlated. These results mean that animals, like plants, can evolve two conceptually different types of defense, a finding that has important implications for the understanding of the epidemiology and evolution of infectious diseases.

They use a mouse model of human malaria. Specifically- Mus and Plasmodium chabaudi. It's pretty cool that they do show that there is heritable variation for tolerance.. That some mouse strains are more tolerant to microparasitic infection than others.. Although they suggest that tolerance is likely subject to selection, and show that there is heritable variation in the trait- they do not show that there are actual fitness differences- although that seems probable.

The remaining question pertains to candidate loci- and this is what would really piqu my interest. If we can say that tolerance is under the influence natural selction- can we determine which genes are responsible.. The answer is surely yes, but not by me.

I hope these guys follow up this work and identify particular genes under selection.

It's really a very safe place

So there has been a lot of publicity as of recent over a study conducted by CQ Press, a unit of Congressional Quarterly Inc.

Basically, they compile a bunch of data on criminal activities, weighting it toward violent crime, then publish a list of the "top-10" most dangerous cities. See the story here

Interestingly, and a little scary is the fact that I live in between 2 very dangerous cities.. To be honest, I've always attributed my city-anxiety to not being a "city person", but maybe my hesitation to go to Oakland is well founded... Here is that map:


Scary...

I am a...