#but i am an ecologist

[princessfirebug]

I like the idea of like a cover over nominally human type ears, as like a kind of shell or sheath. Or completely retractable like stitch's antenna from lilo and stitch.

Do I have any marine biologists following me HAHA

Weird thing to be hung up on considering. Everything else. But I'm also vaguely curious

[hylianengineer]

I continue to be in awe by the power granted to me by having learned to read scientific papers.

[opens-up-4-nobody]

...

[harpsicalbiobug]

So. I'm taking a gardening cert class through an extension university. Really well written, great flow and presentation of content knowledge, concepts, as well as resources for where to read or how to find other knowledge sources. Great. Lovely.

Anyway it's supposed to run from Dec to March but I procrastinated badly and. I am doing it all in two weeks.

From an educator's perspective, the way I am completing this is Bad and Not Pedagogically Sound. I also just took the entomology quiz without reading any of the materials and got a 100% so :/

[glitchlight]

everyone who has been memeing about the USDA soil textural triangle for approximately the past decade doesn't even know the best part: there's another entire classification system that is far more widely used and more important

[thedawningofthehour]

Could it be possible that Donnie was part of a clutch that was laid REALLY late in the mating season and so when he hatched it was really past normal hatching times for spiny soft shells? My guess is that Donnie, even as a baby soft-shell would be extremely stubborn and may have had stronger survival instinct than his clutch mates, so when he felt the cold spell he immediately looked for the warmest spot and hunkered down while being cranky about the whole thing.

So I'm getting conflicting information on when spiny softshells hatch. All the sources I see say they mate in the spring and that the female lays eggs later in the summer, then rinse and repeat as much as they want. (they're deadbeat parents and never bother taking care of any of them) But some sources say that the eggs hatch August-October, and others say they don't hatch until the following spring. I'm inclined to believe the former because like...doesn't that seem like a long incubation period for turtle eggs?! That's like six months at minimum. Do the eggs themselves go into a sort of hibernation mode? Are they like the eggs in Subnautica where they're basically in stasis until they're actively killed or meet the right conditions to hatch?

Regardless, I've been assuming Donnie (and therefore Leo) hatched somewhere in the fall of 2004. Which is also within the time period red-eared sliders, hatch, though Leo's parents were pet turtles and probably fucked and laid eggs whenever they felt like it. There's one line early in doth where Draxum says they were four months old at the time of their mutation-this doesn't totally make sense, since the rain in Splinter's hobo flashback indicates that it was no longer winter when he escaped with the turtles. I guess they could have hatched in October and the mutation happened in February, and maybe it was just a warm February? I wasn't thinking about it too hard when I wrote that line.

I love imagining that pre-mutation Donnie was both more intelligent than the average turtle, and was also a fucking bitch even back then. I know spiny softshells are naturally very aggressive and murdery, (seriously, I can't praise the decision to make them all different species enough) but I also like to think that it was just His Personality even from the start.

[adhdo5]

I HAVE MADE COBTACT WITH THE HARP AS E'IKKA'TOS

[pyrrhocorax]

i really wanna be super indulgent and make a nordics/baltics/whoever i feel like au that is like. a natural resources professional au (like, au where people are like foresters, field biologists, GIS folks, geologists, etc)?? and/or wildlife rehab center AU?? because the shit natural resource people say (and do) is just. Something and it would be fun dialogue to write. i have overheard on my lunch break today alone snippets of the following conversations:

"i think he needs to have his head amputated off" "say that again. you just said we should behead him" "oh sorry. i think he needs to have his tail amputated. but if that doesn't work, well, y'know."

*in singsong* "ohh white man!!! here comes the white man!!!!" (this was not about an actual white man, but a squirrel)

"yeah, i tried to repair it but i stabbed myself :(" *applause*

"i leave for 5 minutes and y'all have started a cult around this turtle" "if you're going to say that with such disdain you aren't invited to join our turtle cult >:("

"where did his blood go" "don't worry about it"

"the computer wasn't working so i punched it" "did it work?" "yeah, but now i'm having a different problem" "punch it again"

"can i eat this" "can you? yeah. should you? *vague uneasy noises*" "that's what i like to hear!!! *eats it*"

[swallowtailed]

finished hxh ;-;

[wizardnaturalist]

I think the government paying me to live in a cabin and look at plants for six months would fix me

[lancelotapologist]

I told my dad about how medieval bestiarists thought pelicans were a Jesus metaphor and he was like "one of the things that upsets me most is when people anthropomorphize animals" tfw your special interests don't align

[catsnuggler]

The First Chinese United Front defeated the Qing Empire

The Second Chinese United Front pushed the Japanese imperialists out of China

The Third Chinese United Front will...

(Reads notes; squints; reads aloud, but slowly, in a confused tone)

...push the Japanese giant hornets out of the United States? Um. Okay, I guess?

[opens-up-4-nobody]

...

[kristakittyfish]

Friendly neighborhood ecologist here with some more information! First of all, lawns are the worst and replacing them with native plants or gardens is so so good!

On the topic of succession, though, it is important to consider your ecoregion and the successional stages you should expect and how to maintain them. For example, you may live in areas that are historically prairie. This means that the establishment of trees was not a natural progression; instead, the successional stages frequently were knocked back by something. In the US, this was often fire. If you live in an area that was historically prairie, you should aim for establishing prairie species and avoiding the establishment of woody vegetation.

For example, I work in longleaf pine forests. In an ideal world, I would want to establish some longleaf pines in my yard, with open understory and wiregrass ground cover. Ideally, I would want to get fire on the ground every couple years or so. It's important to consider what would be feasible for the space you have, your soil type, and your ecoregion.

All of this to say, trees/forest are not necessarily the be-all-end-all for native landscapes! Contact local extension offices for help and advice! Abolish lawns!

I...tried to make a meme and got carried away and made A Thing that is like partially unfinished because i spent like 3 hours on it and then got tired.

I think this is mostly scientifically accurate but truth be told, there seems to be relatively little research on succession in regards to lawns specifically (as opposed to like, pastures). I am not exaggerating how bad they are for biodiversity though—recent research has referred to them as "ecological deserts."

Feel free to repost, no need for credit

[bitstitchbitch]

my family is lucky enough to own a 26 acre mountain property, log cabin and all. Most people would go up there and think that it is fairly pristine nature. There’s the cabin, and a few dirt roads for 4-wheelers, but the surrounding woods look untouched.

But we actually carefully maintain that nature. We cut down the deadfall. We pull invasive plants. We trim the elderberry bushes. We get more animals than almost anywhere else on the mountain because we put up salt licks and water troughs.

some of these same things are true of national parks. A lot of places that you think of as “untouched wilderness” are influenced heavily by human care and maintenance. And this isn’t a bad thing. We are animals too. In many ways, our ecosystems depend on us to keep them healthy. Many “wild” plants that are useful for food or building materials are actually semi-domesticated because indigenous groups cared for them and encouraged their growth so they do better with human care.

we have a place in nature. We just need to be conscious of our actions.

EDIT: since this post took off, I thought I should add some sources

Also a disclaimer that I am not indigenous or an ecologist. I am putting time and effort into learning, but I am not an expert.