These Maratus jumping spiders are spectacular.
En face of a male peacock spider, Maratus lobatus
Maybe there’s hope with some plastic surgery and a lot of tattooing.
One drawback: I’d never want to wear pants again.
This diagram from Convergent Adaptation of True Crabs (Decapoda: Brachyura) to a Gradient of Terrestrial Environments is going to reinforce the idea that everything converges on crabs…which is kind of cool anyway.
Summary of phylogeny and divergence time estimates for Brachyura (88 brachyuran families, 263 genera, 333 species, 338 individuals plus 6 outgroups). Posterior ages were estimated in BEAST2 using a fixed topology resulting from the concatenated ML analysis in IQ-TREE, 36 vetted node calibrations, a birth–death tree prior, and relaxed lognormal clock model. Shaded circles at nodes represent ultrafast bootstraps. Pie slices are colored by superfamily, with the outermost ring colored by taxonomic section. Line drawings, one representative per superfamily (numbers corresponding to taxa in Supplementary Table S7), by Javier Luque and Harrison Mancke.
Please note, this diagram illustrates the evolution of a single, large, successful clade, the Brachyura. It does not imply that humans and salamanders and spiders are going to converge on a crablike form, OK? The interesting thing is that all the descendants of this Triassic lineage, despite going through multiple independent transitions from marine to terrestrial and back again, have assumed these very similar (superficially, at least) forms, and that tells us something interesting. The Brachyura have some internal constraints that shape their evolution, and studying them help us understand the balance between inherited patterns and external forces. That’s the conclusion of the paper, that there are constraints on evolution.
Herein, we inferred a large molecular phylogeny of true crabs, estimated divergence times that were older than previously thought, and estimated the number of transitions from marine to non-marine lifestyles. We found up to 17 convergent transitions through direct and indirect pathways, with at least 3 climbing to higher degrees of terrestrial adaptation. The most highly terrestrial clades were some of the oldest non-marine inferences in our data, with their common ancestors having diverged over 66 Ma. At least 9 more recent events throughout the Cenozoic led to crabs living in intertidal and marginal marine environments, a shift that is estimated to be much easier based on lower threshold liability and likely fewer traits required. As instances of convergent evolution provide emerging models in the form of “natural experiments,” the framework we have developed to compare the gradient of adaptations will enable future research that aims to “predict” the constraints leading to repeated trait evolution and better understand the drivers of biodiversity across related groups.
We have some little friends making a home near our front door.
We’re leaving them alone and letting them go on about their business, but haven’t informed them of their terrible mistake. They’re building outside our door, but inside the screen door — they’re going to have virtually no protection from the terrible Minnesota winter. I’m figuring they can have their happy late summer endeavor, but later, when temperatures hit the negative 20s, I’ll chip their frozen home free and toss it into a snowdrift a few blocks away.
Today I just saw itty-bitty tiny things that I struggled to photograph.
This is a baby zebra jumper.
Enoplognatha, maybe?
Aaaah! The aphids have discovered our milkweed!
To be honest, I haven’t been bothered by the cicadas this year — maybe they’ve been cacophonous south and east of here, but I’ve only seen a few and haven’t heard any of that shrill trilling. Maybe they’ll be out in force later, but for now, I’m still happy to see the cicada killers taking care of business.
We have a young monarch enjoying a fine meal in our yard!
Sinks are dangerous places for small creatures — they stumble in and then they can’t climb up and out over the smooth vertical walls. This little guy was fortunate that I found them and scooped them up.
Later I’ll set them free outside.
I disturbed the mass of spiders living in my compost bin, and apparently I disrupted the status quo, because one large female rushed over and attacked a smaller female. I guess she was taking advantage of my intrusion to take out the competition.
Spider battles are tangly and confusing.
The orcas are getting good at sinking ships. It’s gotten so bad that Spanish officials are recommending that small boats avoid the deep water off Gibraltar and hug the coast.
The Alboran Cognac’s crew said they felt sudden blows on the hull and that the boat began taking on water. They were rescued by a nearby oil tanker, but the sailboat, left to drift, later went down.
The sinking brings the number of vessels sunk – mostly sailing yachts – to at least five since 2020. Hundreds of less serious encounters resulting in broken rudders and other damage, Alfredo López Fernandez, a coauthor of a 2022 study in the journal Marine Mammal Science, told NPR late last year.
What I find interesting is that there is so much speculation about what causes the behavior. I’m observing the humans, and what I see is a lot of floundering about trying to blame the sinkings on simplistic single causes, rather than appreciating that these are large brained animals with complex social interactions, and maybe we need to avoid explanations that hinge on one aspect of animal behavior. People are moving in their world and dancing around explanations that respect the sophistication of the animals.
Researchers are unsure about the causes for the behaviour, with leading theories including it being a playful manifestation of the mammals’ curiosity, a social fad or the intentional targeting of what they perceive as competitors for their favourite prey, the local bluefin tuna.
Something else I’ve noticed is that all the explanations are centered on the whales, treating the fact that another large brained animal with complex social interactions is moving into their territory, and we apes are sitting around saying “It’s not our fault!” as if we are blameless victims of dumb animal reflexes.
So I have my own simplistic single cause that may explain what’s going on, and that places any blame appropriately.
The actions of a New Zealand man filmed jumping off a boat in what appears to be an attempt to “body slam” an orca have been described as “shocking” and “idiotic” by the country’s Department of Conservation.
In a video shared to Instagram in February, a man can be seen jumping off the edge of a boat into the sea off the coast of Devonport in Auckland, in what appears to be a deliberate effort to touch or “body slam” the orca, the department said. He leaps into the water very close to a male orca, as a calf swims nearby, while someone on board the boat films it. Others can be heard laughing and swearing in the background.
As he swims back towards the boat he yells “I touched it” and asks “did you get that?” He then attempts to touch the orca again.
Hayden Loper, a principal investigator at the department, said the 50-year-old man showed reckless disregard for his own safety and that of the orca. “The video speaks for itself, it is shocking and absolutely idiotic behaviour,” he said.
I think my hypothesis is backed by an immense body of evidence. Humans are arrogant idiots, and the fact that the orca did not respond by simply eating the stupid individual suggests that the whale are capable of remarkable restraint and are far more civilized than the overgrown monkeys attacking them.
I rest my case.
We have a division of labor in our household. I care about the spiders, Mary cares about the birds. She’s got feeders all over the yard, I raise flies and mealworms for the spiders. She’s signed up for FeederWatch, I tally up observations on iNaturalist. It’s not a competition, but she does score more daily points than I do. These are the birds she observed just yesterday.
House Wren, Common Grackle, American Robin, Pine Siskin, House Finch, Blue Jay, American Goldfinch, Downy Woodpecker, Eurasian Collared Dove, Yellow Warbler, Northern Cardinal, White-breasted Nuthatch, Chimney Swift, House Sparrow, Gray Catbird, Warbling Vireo, Chipping Sparrow, Black-capped Chickadee, White-throated Sparrow, Brown-headed Cowbird, Red-winged Blackbird, Purple Martin, Red-eyed Vireo, Trumpeter Swan, Swainson’s Thrush, Barn Swallow, Tennessee Warbler, Dark-eyed Junco, Hermit Thrush, Mourning Dove, Song Sparrow, Swamp Sparrow, Baltimore Oriole, American Crow, Yellow-rumped Warbler, Western Meadowlark, Common Yellowthroat, Wilson’s Warbler, Magnolia Warbler, Indigo Bunting, Northern Flicker, European Starling, Eastern Bluebird, Hairy Woodpecker, Wood Duck, Common Nighthawk
OK, already. We got birds.
