This is a new weekly feature on Southern Fried Science where we’ll highlight 4 or 5 posts from other blogs in our network, and one post from outside our network published in the previous week. Posts of Note will run every Thursday, but the hosts will alternate among myself, David, and Amy. Enjoy this week’s selection.
Chris Grinter from The Skeptical Moth brings us the incredibly loud world of bug sex. Head on over to learn about the animal with the highest ratio of sound production to body size, the minute water boatman Micronecta scholtzi. Were we to be shrunk down to the same size, the sound of M. scholtizi would be equivalent to standing near a jackhammer. And of course, in true Skeptical Moth fashion, he finishes off by taking news outlets to task for running poorly informed headlines, although that same poorly worded article does have some nice recordings of the water boatman’s song.
Rebecca Nesbit at The Birds, the Bees, and Feeding the World has a short meditation on Locusts, the Bible and Dictators. In this short but pithy post, she compares the biblical plagues to the current locust swarms unfolding in the Middle East, while also touching on the hazards of pest control in a geopolitical unstable region, the effects of locust swarms on crop production, and a transition in dispersal patterns due to over-crowding. That’s some serious analysis to pack into ~300 words.
Over at Chronicles of Zostera, John Carroll shares some videos of silly spider crabs. Watch as a spider crab devours a blue fish! See it wrestle with a fearsome jelly! Gasp in horror as one recruits on to a recruitment tile! And learn a little bit about the ecology of these cosmopolitan, yet underrated benthic scavengers.
Chuck of Ya Like Dags? fame provides a nice roundup of Cape Cod dogfish tagging. It’s always nice to get a rundown on what researchers are doing in the field, especially when accompanied by high quality pictures of science in action. Plus, who doesn’t love a good hagfish sliming? You can also listen to him making smart ass comments at his lab’s research website here.
Finally, from the wider world of ocean blogging, the nascent powerhouse team at the SeaMonster have brought together some of the biggest names in ocean conservation for a Forum on the Future of the Oceans. Here, more than 20+ leaders in marine science, policy, and conservation discuss the impact, importance, and validity of the IUCN’s recent report on ocean health. Incidentally, you can also listen to me discuss the same report on Dr. Kiki’s Science Hour.