Updated Weedy Plants Field Guide!

(The cover of our Weedy Plants Guide!)

This post is an update to my previous post about the history of weedy plants. In that post, I included a free download link to a field guide that I co-authored, entitled Field Guide to Weedy Plants of New Jersey.  

I am happy to announce that the field guide has been updated to include new flowering plant species!

Follow this link to download a free PDF of the field guide.

Hunting blind, but still a success!

In addition to the video being hilarious, this study by Creveny et al. (2010) brings to light how animals are in tune with aspects of the environment that, as humans, seem negligible.   

Watch the below video to see how a Red Fox hunts for prey that scurrying around, hidden under the snow.  Only when facing magnetic north did the foxes have a successful capture rate of >70%.

For an easy to digest summary of a fox's skills check out this NPR article written by RadioLab's host Robert Krulwich.

New species alert: giant air-breathing Amazonian fish

Prof. Stewart with A. leptosoma.
Photo credit: SUNY-ESF

Professor Donald Stewart, from my Alma-mater the State University New York College of Environmental Science & Forestry (Syracuse, NY), has recently described a new fish species Arapaima leptosoma (Osteoglossomorpha: Osteoglossidae), the first new arapaima species since 1847 (Copeia, 2013).  Research funding for describing this new species was provided in part by National Geographic and SUNY-ESF.

Arapaima is a genus of large-sized (up to 2.5 m and 200 kg) freshwater fish found in South America.  The new species name, derived from Greek, refers to the organism's relatively slender ("lepto") body ("soma").  

Arapaima via ESF.edu

Three traits helped identify this organism as a distinct species: 
1) Shape of the dorsal sensory cavity,
2) Underlying bone structure of the head which makes the head relatively flat,
3) Dorsal fin sheath covering anterior dorsal rays.

Listen to this interview from Northeastern Public Radio (WAMC) of Prof. Stewart describing how the new species was identified. 

Arapaima live in backwater areas of the Amazon rainforest, these waters are often oxygen-poor, which makes their primitive air-breathing lung an advantageous trait.

Indigenous peoples have long depended on arapaima as a food source.  With new knowledge of arapaima species diversity, biologists are becoming concerned about species conservation, particularly because not enough information is known regarding their spatial distribution and abundance.  Charismatic mega-fauna, particularly those hunted for sport, are especially vulnerable to the threats of over fishing.