Mealworms do eat Styrofoam

And so do “superworms” (Zophobas morio), commonly available in pet stores.  I placed this cup (video below) in a plastic container with some Z. morio larvae and some compost soil from our backyard compost pile. After a month, the worms had done this. The mealworms (Tenebrio molitor) ate some of their cup, but then succumbed to a mold that invaded their container. A control cup placed in compost soil only showed no degradation. 

Bad ecotourism

There are myriad opportunities across the globe for those so inclined to indulge in ecotourism, generally with the notion that part of what they spend in the process goes toward supporting ecologically sensitive and sustainable practices, and “raises awareness” of themselves and others to environmentally important issues. But, too often in my experience, ecotourism becomes tainted, and occasionally fully possessed by, short-sighted greed, exploitation by people whose care for the natural world extends only so far as to see what can be gained from it for their own desires, and decidedly insensitive practices regarding ecosystems so used.

In today’s Washington Post there is an article briefly (and, in my view, inadequately) describing such grievous exploitation in a setting of night-time diving and snorkeling and lord-only-knows-what-else off the Kona coast of Hawaii where members of the lucky hordes can mingle with mantas.

Some people claim that these kinds of experiences are “life-changing” for many, but the evidence for that is paltry and anecdotal. We are prone to hyperbole in describing the effects of things we find dramatic. Finding long-term changes in behavior as a result of a “magical moment” is much more difficult. I don’t mean to suggest that such cannot happen–I believe that it can, and does, but not with the frequency or depth of change often suggested. Humans can get used to just about anything, and once we are accustomed to a given arrangement of our lives, we seldom effect significant change without being forced to by events or circumstances. And so while many will wax poetic about the wonders of their experience, be it underwater with manta rays, or in the jungle with mountain gorillas, and how it changed their understanding of the world, when they return home their lives are materially unaltered.

I challenge those reading this to find one thing in their lives that can be changed, deleted, added, or augmented such that the natural world benefits. Just one. It doesn’t have to be big, but it should be significant for the person choosing to do it. And stick with it. Periodically reevaluate its relevance and success. Then do it again. If we all do this, we can, and will, become much better caretakers of the only world we have.

I was too quick to declare the hummers departed

Yesterday afternoon, during the warmest part of a cool early fall day, a young hummingbird sat at one of the feeders, slurping away at the sucrose water. I examined it from a distance of fifty feet or so, not wishing to disturb its meal, since I imagined each stored calorie as a precious bit of fuel that could prove to be the last gulp of gas necessary for the engine to propel the hummer across the Gulf of Mexico on its way to its southern winter haven. It actually looked fatter to my eyes, but I cannot say whether I imagined that. Hope and fondness can alter our perceptions. Nature, however, is eternally unembarrassed by emotion, being wholly unfamiliar with the burden. Her calculus is cold. So I let the little bird feed, and wished it well. I then raised myself from my own torpor and went back to work.

Hummingbirds are gone

I haven’t seen any hummingbirds in a couple days now. The feeders don’t seem to have had their fluid levels change. Temperatures at night have gotten down to the single digits (Celsius) and lower forties (Fahrenheit) the last few nights. Daytime temps in the twenties/seventies (C/F). It looks like the hummers may have departed to the south for the winter. But I wouldn’t be shocked if I spy one or two still around; I’ve been surprised in the past by how long into the fall some have remained, even into cooler temps than this.

The pond needs cleaning out and prepping for fall–netting carefully placed over it to prevent most of the leaves from finding their way in while still allowing birds access to the stream bed portion. I’ll try to tackle that soon. The pumps and filter apparata need maintenance, too. Trees haven’t really started dumping their leaves yet, though the native cherries are starting to let go. Most, though, are only slowly coming around to their fall routines, it seems.

At the moment, it’s blue skies and cool temps. One can see one’s breath (or at least the water vapor that condenses into droplets). Not windy, but breezy, adding to the chill.

The worm that ate my coffee cup

I try not to use styrofoam coffee cups unless there is no reasonable alternative–the stuff has a bad reputation for being very difficult to get rid of. It doesn’t rot, and it breaks down only very slowly in most natural circumstances. But it turns out that there might be a readily available answer to the problem: mealworms. According to Science, reporting on a piece from NBC News, mealworms will eat–and, with the help of their gut bacteria, presumably–digest styrofoam. This is begging for a simple home trial. Stay tuned.

E. O. Wilson–Of Ants and Men

I didn’t know it was coming up, but I was fortunate in turning on the television this evening in time to catch a 2-hour PBS show chronicling the career and scientific and personal thoughts of E. O. Wilson, famous for development of sociobiology, coiner of the word biodiversity, and advocate for the idea of group selection in addition to individual selection producing the evolutionary tale of the world.

One can watch several brief clips here–or even the entire episode. (Registration may be necessary.) I strongly recommend watching the entire episode if you can take the opportunity. And, next Tuesday evening, consider watching the PBS special programs on the efforts to restore and maintain Gorgonosa National Park in Mozambique.

Trashline spiders

Use of camouflage is common, from the Bengal tiger to the weedy sea dragon. Trashline spiders hang a vertical row of debris across their webs. It’s hard to tell at a glance whether there’s a spider in it or the web is derelict, decorated by a passing bird. They’re common in our yard over the latter part of August through now, at least. (Late summer is spider season, after all.) this one had a web in the false cypress near our pond.

  

Bumblebees are sharp creatures

Thete are many species of bumblebee, and their habits are varied. I spied at least three distinctly different kinds of bumbles on our purple salvia today. (Aside–Bees are all over it over the last week or two. Hummingbirds like it, too.)

Honeybees are given to burrowing into the long, thin flowers of the salvia. At least one kind of bumblebee, however, uses its sharp proboscis to pierce the flower at its base, gaining access to the nectar that way. Check out the video below.

Rivers to nowhere

Two major rivers–the Colorado and the Rio Grande–are effectively sucked out of their beds and sprayed across lawns, fields, and dishes in dishwashers before they reach the sea. (It must be noted that although the Rio Grande is sucked dry in the U.S., the last bit going to a farmer just outside of El Paso, in Mexico tributaries that fed the river downstream from where it disappears still run, and the river, not really the same river given that most of it has been amputated upstream, and much smaller than its historic size, picks up the trek to the ocean. And similar occurs through careful management of the Colorado’s meager remnants in Baja, now.) There has been talk recently of building an aqueduct across Kansas from the Missouri River to the eastern high plains of Colorado, where it transect the parched land to Denver, which has outstripped its available water. It being a 700-mile uphill run, any water making the trip would require pumping to get it to its new destination. The Missouri would begin shrinking. And given the history of water management in the west, when a big river is so tapped, and its very essence is being sucked away, the process grows until there’s nothing left. The river that transported Lewis and Clark across half the continent would be in danger of becoming a memory. The need for water in the west is so vast, and so quickly overwhelming supply, that investors are pouring hundreds of millions of dollars into private plans to obtain water and deliver it to those willing and able to pay.

I am vehemently opposed to such gross mismanagement of our natural world. These rivers are not simply “water resources” for our use, though they are that, too. They are homes, habitats, geologic tools, and sources of life-sustaining water for innumerable other creatures as well. Already much of the Missouri is no more than a poorly managed ditch. To say that humans are effectively a scourge upon the Earth is not to speak foolishly. It is a reasonable conclusion based on the data. In any other system, if we were the observers rather than participants, we would look upon our actions as unsustainable parasitism, predation, and ravaging of the system. When we see pests do things like this to the pines in in the mountain West, we look for ways to eliminate the pest. When will we see that we must better manage ourselves, our wants, our needs, and work toward a role, a niche, that is harmonious with the one world, the one planet, on which we have the privilege to live?