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Keystone species and the rocky shore. A bit of Community Ecology

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The Rocky Shoreline of Mount Desert Island Maine. Summer is here, and that means AIO students are exploring Maine’s rocky intertidal zone of Mount Desert Island. The intertidal region, between low and high tide, has been studied in depth, particularly in the field of community ecology. Community ecology is the study of how species living together in the same place interact with one another and with their shared environment, and how those interactions shape the composition, structure, and dynamics of ecological assemblages.  Or more simply and directly: Species living in the same place affect each other in ways that determine who thrives, who gets crowded out, and what the community ultimately looks like. Non-native species and the influence they have on a system is right up the alley of community ecology. Beyond non-native species, influential ideas have sprung from studying communities of the rocky intertidal. One of the big ideas is the concept of keystone predators. ...
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It's shocking what animals can teach us about electricity

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  Black Ghost Knifefish Apteronotus albifrons , stolen from Wikimedia A semi-serious look at bioelectricity, solar panels, and the fish that could maybe power your house, well, probably not. Electricity has a reputation problem, and I promise you it’s not because I have been spreading around how much I dislike working on household electrical problems. On one hand, it powers your coffee maker, your phone, and whatever binge-worthy show you are pretending not to watch at 2 a.m (Taskmaster, of course). On the other hand, it can stop your heart.  Is it good or bad? As with most things in biology, the answer is yes. The animal kingdom has been quietly running electrical experiments for hundreds of millions of years, and the results are, frankly, embarrassing for us. While humans needed Benjamin Franklin, a kite, and a near-death experience to figure out the basics, fish had already sorted out passive detection, active field generation, and interspecies electro-eavesdropping before ...
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Light from the Living

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  Firefly season! No, not the show, that would be great too, but the bugs! The light show that is occurring starting…now, or maybe, …now, or, well, soon anyway. Side note: Okay, not true bugs either, true bugs, order Hemiptera include stink bugs and the like. Fireflies are insects in the order Coleoptera, along with the rest of the beetles. The insect order with the most species. The impetus for this blog post is a book on darkness. I’m reading this book as part of my science geek book club. And the author, though they marveled at the light show, did not dive into the science of light creation by fireflies; I’m aghast.  When organisms produce light, it’s called bioluminescence. The reaction requires two key chemicals: Luciferin, the substrate that actually produces light, and either luciferase (an enzyme) or a photoprotein. The color of the glow depends on the arrangement of luciferin molecules.  There is no single luciferin molecule. Marine organisms like dinoflagellates...
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