Thoughts.

[mindcontrol]

My brain is saturated.  It is time to vent.  I need to reach a solution concentration where more solute particles can dissolve.

Here are the precipitates.  They are just some ideas floating around my head.

[1] Over the course of the evolution of land vertebrates, aquatic forms emerged.  More importantly, obligate marine animals emerged from taxons

Comments

[phlogiston_5]

RE: aquatic/marine vertebrates

[mindcontrol]

[1] It had crossed my mind that once marine vertebrates colonized a food chain that had collapsed. Perhaps there were marine mass extinctions that we can never know.

[2] Maybe it's just me and you, but the posibilities for sequencing a eusocial ant and termites just seem endless. Ants and termites are the most important heterotrophic organisms in terrestrial ecosystems (yeah, they are, shush all other biologists). Also they are relatively easy to grow in lab (unless I'm mistaken... ant farm anyone?)

My PI and the grad student I'm working with recently purchased a toy ant farm, and ordered some harvester ants online to populate it. We are going to start doing comparative studies with drosiphila, honey bee and then to ants.

[mindcontrol]

Oh yeah, have you heard of the "haunted" bees nest problem that is happening around the country? Apparently for no reason farmers come back and all the bees are gone, also, no parasites or anything are found... and no insects that would eat the wax or honey even dare enter AFTER the bees leave. I called it "haunted hive", but there is no explanation for it.

[phlogiston_5]

The name that I have heard for it is "Colony Collapse Disorder". Several researchers in my department are working on diseases of honeybees right now so I hear about it a lot. They are speculating that colonies are being hit by a number of diseases at once, in addition to immune suppression from trace pesticides that make their way into the hive. Its all just theories at this point though, and nobody can really explain the mass exodus phenomenon.