Stereo microscope stage for insects made out of LEGO®

The IMps. Photo courtesy of Dupont et al via ZooKeys. Licence: CC: BY.

I loved LEGO® as a child. It's been a long, long time since I last played with it, but I think I've just found a project that will encourage me back into it. A group of entomologists at the Natural History Museum have developed some designs to create microscope stages (dubbed IMps) with two axes of movement out of LEGO pieces, and have released them to the world in a paper published in Zookeys. These microscope stages allow fine movement of specimens under the microscope, allowing one to precisely manoeuvre the specimen in order to see or photograph particular structures. The designs published by Dupont et al are an elegant, portable and cheap solution; with the added benefit of playing with LEGO.

References:
Dupont S, Price B, Blagoderov V. 2015. IMp: The customizable LEGO® Pinned Insect Manipulator. ZooKeys 481: 131–138.

Alternate way of plotting means and errors

Last month, I wrote a post discussing dynamite plots, noting that they're not considered to be especially good at presenting information. I got a little bit of flak for it, from people for and against dynamite plots. This post shows a different method of showing a point and an error bar. If you're going to do it, why not make it look like something cool. A TIE fighter maybe?

Values <- c(1,2,5,4)
Errors <- c(0.25, 0.5, 0.33, 0.12)
dummyNames <- paste("Trial", 1:4)

TIEplot(1:4, Values, Errors, names = dummyNames, ylim = c(0,6))

How much cooler is that?

The code for TIEplot() is available on gitHub. Remember to acknowledge me when you use in all your papers/books/theses.

1 2 3 steps to publishing a scientific comment

For a humorous, yet ultimately disturbing tale, check out Rick Trebino's How to publish a scientific comment in 1 2 3 easy steps, then wonder how scientific journals managed to achieve the power over the research process that they currently have.

Rings and starships: A new shark embraces pop culture

I couldn't let this one go past without commenting on it. Today in Zootaxa, a description was published today that has references to two highly regarded elements of pop culture in the past 50 years. Gollum suluensis is a deep water shark from the Philippines whose name calls to mind Gollum from The Lord of the Rings, and Captain Sulu from Star Trek.

Before latin scholars point out that the -ensis suffix to the specific name refers to a place not to a person, I will clarify the specific name actually refers to the Sulu Sea. The generic name though is genuine. Established in 1973 by Leonard Compagno, the original description gives this explanation for the name:

Gollum (treated as a masculine noun), named for the antihero of J. R. R. Tolkien's Lord of the Rings trilogy, to whom this shark bears some resemblane in form and habits.

Appropriately enough, the type species lurks around New Zealand.

References
Compagno LJV. 1973. Ctenacis and Gollum, two new genera of sharks (Selachii: Carcharhinidae). Proceedings of the California Academy of Sciences 4(39): 257–272.

Last PR, Gaudiano JP. 2011. Gollum suluensis sp. nov. (Carcharhiniformes: Pseudotriakidae), a new gollumshark from the southern Philippines. Zootaxa 3002: 17-30.

America's Cup revamped

The America's Cup World Series had it's first winner today, and of course I'm happy because Team New Zealand won it. I've always been keen on the America's Cup, but I dare say that the latest revamp of the competition has me excited. The boats look cool, go fast, and having them essentially identical between competitors makes the competition less an arms race and more a test of sailing. The Russell Coutts/Dean Barker rivalry is still In addition, having a lead up to the main event with regattas in multiple locations will make the competition more accessable and will hopefully diminish the (valid) criticisms that the America's cup was becoming merely a distraction for the rich. Sure, there's still an awful amount of money being spent on the water there, but at least it looks cooler now... It's been in Portugal for the last week or so, and is moving to Plymouth, UK in mid-September.

Watch the replay of the 14 August fleet race here

Origami

Origami is pretty amazing. While my skills have never progressed beyond the traditional crane, I am always amazed at how people can make a square of paper into something amazing. This website shows a particularly spectacular gallery including the origami cicada pictured above. What's really cool is that it also includes a diagram of the folding patterns for each model. All that's needed is the interpretation of said diagrams, and the time to do it!

They don't publish papers like this anymore...

Modern scientific writing is very detached and impersonal, a style which encourages objectivity but makes it somewhat difficult to read. This wasn't always the case. I came across a paper by Thomas Vernon Wollaston published in the periodical Annals and Magazine of Natural History, one of the top scientific journals of the time. The title is enough to make you want to take a second look: "On certain musical Curculionidae...."

His introduction goes:

Whilst residing in the remote and almost inaccessible village of Taganana (towards Point Anaga), in the north of Teneriffe ... my attention was called to a peculiarity in a beautiful species of Acalles ... which I do not remember to have seen recorded concerning any other Coleopterous insect whatsoever.

Without any further ado, he launches into the methods section:

It was on the 22nd of May that my Portuguese servant ... brought me home eleven specimens of a large Acalles which he had captured within the dried and hollow stems of a plant growing on the rocky slopes towards the sea ... he was about, in this instance, to throw away these rotten stems as worthless, when he was arrested by a loud grating, or almost chirping, noise, as of many creatures in concert ... On shaking the hollow stem, so as to arouse its inmates, and putting his ear alongside it, the whole plant appeared musical, as though enchanted ....

The methods continue:

So pleased was I with the accomplishments of these anomalous musicians, when brought to me, that I felt quite a reluctance (even though an entomologist) to put them to death. I therefore made a compromise with my feelings, and killed only eight of them.

The results of this investigation are that:

... in the case of the Acalles, the pygidium, although roughened, is not very sensibly so; whilst the small portion of the inner surface of the elytra against which (at each successive pulsation) it is brought to play is far less strictly file-like than was the triangular mesothoracic space of Deucalion [a genus of longhorn beetles that also make a noise] ... yet this is certainly the contrivance by means of which this little Curculionidous musician is enabled to perform its anal "song".

I don't think that Nature would appreciate a piece written in this style...

Reference:
Wollaston TV. 1860. On certain musical Curculionidae; with descriptions of two new Plinthi. Annals and Magazine of Natural History Series 3, 6:14-19

Quote: Jules Verne

Been reading Jules Verne's Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea lately, and the following quote amused me somewhat:

Truly if this good fellow had had gills instead of lungs, I think he would have made a very good fish.—Chapter 19, "The Gulf Stream"

Music. Lots of music

The way music has changed in the past century is phenomenal. Where before you had to play it yourself or go to concerts, you now can immerse yourself in the stuff without knowing anything or going anywhere. A while ago I had so much music on my computer that if I wanted I could go for at least a week without hearing the same song twice if I didn't want to. And I'm not as obsessed as some people are. It's a rather massive shift if you ask me, and no doubt in years to come it will provide historians and social scientists with ample fodder for study.

If you want to get still more music and learn about yet more bands, a useful site to keep checking is the Hype Machine, an aggregator of music blogs. Updating frequently, it's a treasure trove of all things musical. If you want to sign up, it promises that you're able to customize what you see, presumably allowing you to keep tabs on the genres that you particularly enjoy. Otherwise, check it frequently to see what people are listening to and what they think of it...

Some bedtime reading for the kids.

Of all the ways to describe the Transactions, juvenile nonfiction would probably be my last choice...

Curiosities of Biological Nomenclature

This is a site that I always try to find when I'm wanting a bit of light humour. It is a list of humorous scientific names of all sorts of taxa. In here you discover that Nirvana is a leafhopper, Dracula is an orchid, and the moth Dyaria was named in 'honor' of one Mr Dyar...

It's funny.

http://www.curioustaxonomy.net/index.html

Top 10 New Species of 2007

In May, a committee appointed by the International Institute for Species Exploration released a list of the top 10 new species of 2007. This was quite a fun list, the members of which were granted a place on it due to its unusual name/discovery/appearence.

Check out the ray Electrolux addisoni (Rajiformes:Narkidae), the shocking pink dragon millipede Desmoxytes purpurosea (Diplopoda: Paradoxostomatidae), the handsome-looking Mindoro stripe-faced fruit bat Styloctenium mindorensis (Chiroptera: Pteropodidae) and the bolete mushroom Xerocomus silwoodensis that was discovered in the grounds of London's Silwood Park - one of the renowed tertiary training centres for biologists.

We know very little about the creature that we share this world with....