Morphometrics

I have recently been getting more interested in morphometric analysis, in particular shape and colour analysis. Turns out that they teach a course on this stuff at Imperial College and the Natural History Museum in London. Not only that, but they put all their teaching material online. It's good stuff. Good stuff that is if you like seeing lots of mathematical formulas and multivariate statistics....

Update: I've just come across this site which is maintained by James Rohlf, one of the big names in morphometrics. Rather useful!

Beetle pictures from Southeast Asia

While researching for an upcoming talk, I found the following webpage:

Southeast Asian Beetles

It's pretty cool. It's got very good pictures of over 2000 specimens from 71 different families of weevils. It's also got a very cool and useful interactive locality map which allows you to quickly find specimens from areas of interest. It's based on the Drupal website system, which I personally find rather clunky, but it is free, open source and reasonably easy to develop in.

This site is also another example of the importance of taxonomy, and how much needs to be done in biodiversity-rich regions like Southeast Asia. Comparatively few of the beetles featured have been identified to species level, no doubt due to a combination of there being no relevant specialists and there being a large amount of work to describing new species and revising previous species hypotheses.

ACIAR publications

The Australian Centre for International Agricultural Research, better known as ACIAR publish a range of books dealing with crop protection, animal husbandry and other aspects of agriculture. They have a strong Southeast Asia and Pacific focus. Even better, many of their books are available for free downloading from their website.

Some of the selection includes:
TaroPest: An illustrated guide to pests and diseases of Taro in the South Pacific
A diagnostic field guide for one of the most iconic and staple foods of the Islands

Gardens of Oceania
A summary of gardening practises in the Pacific (Vanuatu in particular) plus descriptions of the plant species grown and notes on their uses.

and
Guidelines for Survelliance of Plant Pests in Asia and the Pacific
A good overview of the steps to developing monitoring and detection surveys. Unfortunately, the sections on analysing and reporting are rather scant. This is a shame because in my experience, this is where the professionalism of South Pacific science tends to tail off. Collecting data is great, but to go the whole distance, it needs to be analysed and published.

There is also an interesting quirk in the typesetting of the book in that the string "fi" does not show up. A bit annoying when dealing with the "Paci c" region and telling people about "con dence" intervals.

These criticisms aside, it's great that these very informative and helpful publications are available freely online. May the good times continue!

American Museum Novitates

When I was a young kid, growing up in the Solomon Islands and mighty interested in birds, a man who was mentoring me sent me a photocopy of an issue of the American Museum Novitates. It was on the whistlers (Pachycephala spp.) of the Solomons by Ernst Mayr based on the results from the Whitney South Sea Expedition. It was the first proper scientific paper I had read, and I was stoked. I accumulated more which still remain some of my treasured possessions.

It is now very convenient (though slightly less exciting) that the American Museum Novitates are now online. There's a very handy search tool which makes things very easy. It's also an easy navigation to other publications of the American Museum of Natural History.

Marshall Islands Biodiversity report

It would appear that the UN Development Program has looked at the biodiversity of Kiribati and the Marshall Islands. At least, they've got a report to that effect. After a lot of fluffing around when I stumbled across the appendices of the report, I finally managed to find the contents page with actual links:
http://www.undp.org/bpsp/nbsap_links/nbsap_Kiribati.htm

It's worth a look, particularly because it has the brilliant Marshallese phrase "Eruj in jebarbar" - Excited like a reef crab. Use that in your next conversation....

Another project of the UNDP has completed was the "South Pacific Biodiversity Conservation Programme" - its writeup is found here.

Creativity as god?

Something that a number of popular science magazines and websites have been talking about is Stuart Kauffman's latest book "Reinventing the Sacred". I haven't read it, so I won't be commenting about it. However, I did read his Perspectives column in New Scientist.

He uses biological "pre-adaptations" and how we're unable to predict them as being evidence of a "ceaseless creativity, with no supernatural creator."He then goes on to say:

Shall we use the "God" word? We do not have to, yet it is still our most powerful invented symbol. Our sense of God has evolved from Yahweh in the desert some 4500 years ago, a jealous, law-giving warrior God, to the God of love that Jesus taught. How many versions have people worshipped in the past 100,000 years?

Yet what is more awesome: to believe that God created everything in six days, or to believe that the biosphere came into being on its own, with no creator, and partially lawlessly? I find the latter proposition so stunning, so worthy of awe and respect, that I am happy to accept this natural creativity in the universe as a reinvention of "God".

I've been thinking about this, and have to say I disagree. To start with the second paragraph, as astounding as God's creativity and beauty in His creation is, the incredible thing is that that same God who holds the universe in His hand loves you and I with a passion we cannot comprehend. A passion that lead to Jesus' death by crucifixion so that we may have true freedom. THAT is stunning and worthy of awe and respect, far more so than a disembodied, faceless and impersonal creativity.

In terms of the first paragraph: God is the same God through the ages. Jesus taught that God was a law-keeper and judge, and Moses talked of God as being merciful and loving. Greater emphasis was given to the qualities that Kauffman states, but both aspects have been there throughout the revelation God has given us. Indeed, God's love and Jesus' sacrifice is shown more clearly by an appreciation and an understanding of his Holiness and Justice.

References:

Kauffman, S. (07 May 2008)
Perspectives: Why humanity needs a God of creativity
NewScientist.com news service

Solomon Island Freshwater Insects

A few months ago, Dan Polhemus and a team from the Bishop Museum in Hawaii published a report on the freshwater insects of the Solomon Islands. Funnily enough, it makes for some very interesting reading. The Solomons are a fascinating and beautiful place, though somewhat off the track and as such the fauna and flora are relatively little known. It's isolation and temperamental politics combine to make it somewhat unattractive to visiting scientists. There is information out there though, if you put the effort in to find it.

Coming back to the report in question: having skimmed through it I am determined to read it in much greater detail in the future. It has a summary of the geological history of the islands which is of use to anyone wanting to understand the biota of the islands. They also summarise the work done on freshwater fauna and augment it with the results of a expedition there in 2004-2005 in which they visited the six main islands and several surrounding ones. They record the variety of fish and aquatic insects from each site before finishing with comments on the conservation status of these environments and the patterns of endemicity.

The other great thing about this report is that it has some really cool pictures! The photo above is one that I stole from it. It's a beautiful Nososticta salomonis from Choiseul...

All in all a very interesting and timely publication, and one that I may have to revisit sometime.

Reference:
Polhemus DA, Englund RA, Allen GR, Boseto D, and Polhemus, JT (2008.)
Freshwater biotas of the Solomon Islands. Analysis of richness, endemism, and threats.
Final report prepared for Conservation International, Washington, D.C. 127 pp. [PBS 2008-013]