Not really - as best I can tell, the proper name is the “western barrel bubble snail”. Still, an interesting little mollusk who is abundant and overlooked!
moon snails and more mussels
Kevin put up two more blog posts - one on moon snails and one on mytilus. AND he loves alliteration!
Yes, he does call it a “mood snail”, which is a wonderful idea for a product.
catching up - meeting with Mytilus
trying to get caught up here, so lots of links and notes to add - this one is a cannot-miss - an entertainingly written tale by Brian Juhl about Mytilus californianus!
Bubble snails - a life examined
ok, admittedly, that is a lot of headline for a story about bubble snails, but they really ARE pretty cool creatures, and Kevin wrote a nice piece about them - click here to read it!
and as long as we are looking at southern CA fishes
check out Morgan’s blog entry on the adorable barred pipefish!
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The amazing topsmelt
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A new blog entry about Atherinops affinis - she says they are “amazing”!
my favorite non-profit meets my favorite president
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I could not be prouder of Shara, the organization (its staff and students), or my (small) role as Science Director.
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women in science - it's (mostly) about recruitment
Very interesting article in Science.
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One exception to the high retention of women faculty is Math departments - I wonder why?
all wetlands are not created equal
Not surprising, but interesting finding out of UC Berkeley demonstrating that some restored wetlands, even 100+ years old, do not end up being equal to natural wetlands in terms of animal communities or carbon storage. The study looked at factors such as wetland size, latitude, and inundation, and saw strong relationships between these and restoration success.
So - we still have work to do on learning how to better manage and restore these systems!
TideCal - an OS X program for intertidal scientists & teachers
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I just discovered this great program that runs on OS X.
Essentially, you tell it the tidal heights (or range) in which you are interested, the timeframe of interest, and it spits out an ics file (like iCal or BusyCal use) containing the dates, times, and tide info that fit those parameters.
So, say you want to perform a study that requires minus tides (<0.0m MLLW), and you want to do your sampling in April or May, and it needs to be done during the afternoon. You can simply give the program those parameters, hit "compute tides", and it will magically spit out a .ics file (or text file) that you can then use to plan your sampling dates. I can think of a ton of ways this could be great - trying to find specific tidal heights for sampling or tidepooling; planning trips to locations that require low tides for access; or making sure certain stretches of water will be navigable.
geeks with crabs
http://www.makerbot.com/blog/tag/project-shellter/
Peer Review Revolution?
There has been a lot of talk recently (and even not-so-recently) about the problems with peer review in science. This article in Wired is particularly good, in that it provides links to many of the primary resources to allow you to evaluate the problem (and the proposed solutions). Interesting reading.