Forecasting Extinction

Posted on by Lori Jia

I’ve got a story in the current issue of Science about the challenge of predicting how many species (and which) may become extinct due to global warming. You can read the article here on my web site. I blogged about some of the early material in the article back in 2004 here. For a good summary of the qualms many scientists have about the power of current models, check out this recent review in the journal Bioscience: pdf.

[Update: If for some reason you have trouble reading my article on my web site, the link to the story at Science is here.]

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Voyage to Organism Island

Posted on by Lori Jia

My wife and I were following our children across Appledore Island, reaching a crest where we could see the mainland coast–Massachusetts, New Hampshire, and Maine all stretched out in a single sweep–when a woman in bloody surgical gear stepped out into our path. She warned us that behind the old radar tower next to us some pathologists were cutting open a seal. It would be a good idea if we steered the children away.

Naturally, I let my wife head on with the kids and snuck around the tower to check out the necropsy for myself…

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Predicting Oblivion: Are Existing Models Up to the Task?

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Science, August 17, 2007

Link

The most authoritative guide to today’s extinction crisis is a database known as the Red List. Later this month, a group of scientists will gather in England to consider whether the Red List should be opened up to species that, for the moment, show no signs of trouble. Many scientists suspect that the next few decades of global warming could push some species toward oblivion. “The concern,” says the meeting’s organizer, H. Resit Akçakaya, an ecologist at ecological software company Applied Biomathematics in Setauket, New York, “is that maybe some species that are threatened by climate are not reflected on the Red List.”

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Lessons From an Insect’s Life Cycle: Extreme Sibling Rivalry

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The New York Times, August 14, 2007

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To understand the rules that govern life, biologists often seek out the weird extremes. And when it comes to family life, it is hard to find a weirder example than that of a common wasp known as Copidosoma floridanum.

“You couldn’t dream up a more surreal life cycle than these guys have,” said Mike Strand, a professor at the University of Georgia.

Copidosoma floridanum, native throughout the United States, is a parasite. The female wasps lay one or two eggs inside the egg of the cabbage looper moth. As the host egg develops into a caterpillar, the wasp egg grows into a microscopic cluster of grapes.

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Imagining My Homicidal Liver

Posted on by Lori Jia

Parasitoid wasps (or rather, one group of them called the Ichneumonidae) are the subject of one of Charles Darwin’s most famous quotations: “I cannot persuade myself that a beneficent and omnipotent God would have designedly created the Ichneumonidae with the express intention of their feeding within the living bodies of caterpillars.”

Scientists have learned a lot more about parasitoid wasps since Darwin wrote about them in 1860, and their elegant viciousness is now even more staggering to behold. Not only do they devour their hosts alive from the inside out, but they also manipulate the behavior of their hosts to serve their own needs (see my post on zombie cockroaches for one particularly startling example).

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