#diapause

[mindblowingscience]

Living in a semi-arid region, the African turquoise killifish has developed a handy biological hack to survive months-long droughts that parch its muddy ponds each year. The developing embryos of these thumb-long fish just stop growing – not long after their brain and heart begin to form. For months, they hang out in a state of suspended animation, called 'diapause', to wait out lengthy dry spells. Now scientists have figured out how the African turquoise killifish (Nothobranchius furzeri) manages this drought-defying trick: by co-opting ancient genes buried in its genome that originated more than 473 million years ago.

Continue Reading.

[futurebird]

Dubious superpowers. Pick one.

A. Sleep like a cuckoo bee. Simply bite on to a branch or parapet of a building & get a solid seven hours in all weather & conditions.

B. Live on nectar. Feel fully energized & get excellent nutrition on a diet of nothing but sugared drinks.

C. Diapause your life. Slow down aging, & metabolism at will during the winter months. You could sleep for days & eat very little with no ill effects.

D. Powerful sting. Sting people you don't like. Boy will it hurt 'em!

[addicted2wasps]

Merry Christmas, everyone!

A queen Vespula germanica in a deep slumber during the holiday season.

Tiniest tree and presents. Haha.

[kt--extinction]

I have awakened the creatures

[annespooky]

NME | 17 août 2021

Manic Street Preachers : “On s’est guidés dans l’oubli” Nicky Wire et James Dean Bradfield disent à Andrew Trendell comment leur rejet des dissensions a façonné leur glacial et personnel 14ème album, The Ultra Vivid Lament. Continue reading Untitled

[melancholyflower]

NME | 17 août 2021

Manic Street Preachers : “On s’est guidés dans l’oubli” Nicky Wire et James Dean Bradfield disent à Andrew Trendell comment leur rejet des dissensions a façonné leur glacial et personnel 14ème album, The Ultra Vivid Lament. Continue reading Untitled

[rodspurethoughts]

Light Pollution Disrupts Mosquitoes' Diapause, Extending Biting Season and West Nile Virus Risk, Study Shows

Photo by Pixabay on Pexels.com A recent study by researchers at Ohio State University has suggested that light pollution in urban areas can have a significant effect on the behavior of mosquitoes that transmit West Nile virus. The study found that exposure to artificial light at night may disrupt the winter dormancy period, known as diapause, for female Northern house mosquitoes, causing them to…

[futurebird]

[Image Description: The first three photos show a P. Imparis colony living in a test tube. The colony is very healthy probably 100+ workers and lots of brood. These are little brown ants, who live deep underground. Sometimes the workers store food in their gasters which can expand to a large tear drop shape.

You can see the queen who is about twice the size of the workers but still very small. She has a large brown gaster and a dainty head.

The last photo are black carpenter ants living in a cave like formicarium. They have many piles of white eggs which they are cleaning and arranging on the humidity pot. ]

(Did you know you can add alt text to your images by clicking the "..." symbol in the lower-left corner of an image? Image descriptions make your posts enjoyable for many more people. Having the description attached to the image is the best way and only the OP can do this, but I also often add descriptions when I reblog cool art and ant stuff. So, if you can't add a description yourself, there are people who will help.)

So I stuck the P. Imparis colony under my snakes LED light and that did the trick, they moved so fast. Good lighting for photos too ;)

Attempting the same with the C. Subarbatus but they're more stubborn and not in a test tube...

Checked in on my C. Pennsylvanicus colonies too, probably going to fridge the lot of them next week!

Colony 4 has alot of dead inside their nest, they still look fine and queen is well but I don't know why they are dumping their dead in the nest, it's not that over sized for them... Not much I can do though.

Colony 1:

All I can say; "the floor is larva"

These guys are going to need a new nest soon as I take them out of hibernation and all those lil fuckers turn into pupa. They're going to have an EXPLOSION in population!

[fallenaither]

Bugtober 2024- Day 27: Past

A look into one of the first moments after Apollyon was found by Pan. Being a chef and not a medic, Pan rushed them over to Isau as quickly as he could. Apollyon was in a...pretty bad state, but thankfully Isau was able to help it out and Pan was determined to make sure the moth they found ended up okay.

[wild-bee-je]

When I tell you my animal-loving, nerdy, zookeeper brain went BONKERS when Aabria said the phrase “embryonic diapause”, that is not an exaggeration. I exploded in excitement. Not enough people know about this INCREDIBLE trait that so many animals have. What a cool way to try and ensure the survival of a species.

[lycankeyy]

If picos school fixation makes me get over my arachnophobia being triggered by pictures of spiders bc I keep having to see them when researching for my penilian designs I will kill someone /silly

[futurebird]

What if, instead of dealing with winter, everyone just went inside and took some nice long naps in a nice big pile until the cold goes away?

Has anyone ever considered the merit of that plan?

[herpsandbirds]

Experimental evidence of dispersal of invasive cyprinid eggs inside migratory waterfowl

Ádám Lovas-Kiss, Orsolya Vincze, Viktor Löki, and Balázs András Lukács

Fish have somehow colonized isolated water bodies all over the world without human assistance. It has long been speculated that these colonization events are assisted by waterbirds, transporting fish eggs attached to their feet and feathers, yet empirical support for this is lacking. Recently, it was suggested that endozoochory (i.e., internal transport within the gut) might play a more important role, but only highly resistant diapause eggs of killifish have been found to survive passage through waterbird guts. Here, we performed a controlled feeding experiment, where developing eggs of two cosmopolitan, invasive cyprinids (common carp, Prussian carp) were fed to captive mallards. Live embryos of both species were retrieved from fresh feces and survived beyond hatching. Our study identifies an overlooked dispersal mechanism in fish, providing evidence for bird-mediated dispersal ability of soft-membraned eggs undergoing active development. Only 0.2% of ingested eggs survived gut passage, yet, given the abundance, diet, and movements of ducks in nature, our results have major implications for biodiversity conservation and invasion dynamics in freshwater ecosystems.

Read the paper here:

Experimental evidence of dispersal of invasive cyprinid eggs inside migratory waterfowl | PNAS

[autisticandroids]

au fics part one: true aus

alright i'm a little late to the current round of @spnficrecfest. on account of I Hauve Covid. that's also why i missed the long fic / short fic round, and i will go back and do that at some point, but not yet. anyway. two fic rec lists for this round. one for true aus, and one for canon-a-little-to-the-left aus.

i'm actually not a huge fan of true aus, especially not for spn, but there are a few really fabulous ones out there. these are some of those.

in order of wordcount.

sparks fly by anandroidinatutu, 1k

cas and meg as teenagers in court ordered group therapy >:3.

it's a wonderful life by ghostyouknow, 3k, chose not to warn

weird and amazing megstiel fic. a pwp with worldbuilding, somehow. the omegaverse zombie apocalypse. this is a serious favorite for me, i've read it many times. just top tier megstiel fic.

25¢ pocket guardian angels by hopelessheathen, 13k

oh my god, this fic. this fic. this is a VERY weird one in the best ways. like it's just a traditional destiel romance but also it's like. wondrous. fantastical. a joyous read. i would also personally recommend the podfic by gravelly, it's lovely.

with sure certainty by andimeantittosting, 16k

extremely cute destiel regency au. that's it.

embryonic diapause anthology by wayward_demonbard, 30k

a series of four distinct destiel aus centered around the concept of embryonic diapause. all of them are weird, creative, and angsty. some of the more unique fics i've come across.

issues by everandanon, 63k

the thing about me is i love mess and i love drama. and that means i love issues. it's just a plain old mundane au, but it's all miscommunication and character drama in the most fun ways. and i love cas.

a beginner's guide to communing with the dead by suspiciousflashlight, 77k, chose not to warn

i know i've been trying not to rec fics that are too popular, but there comes a point where you've reread a fic twice to remind yourself that you like fanfiction where you have to be honest and rec it. dean is a magic cop and cas is a creature he summons, illegally. they fight crime.

the dean winchester beat sheet by saltyfeathers, 144k

hey man, it's beat sheet. you didn't think i was gonna not recommend beat sheet, did you? if you haven't read beat sheet, you should read beat sheet. come on now.

[uncharismatic-fauna]

Abroad with the Broad Shelled Turtle

Chelodina expansa, more commonly known as the broad shelled turtle, is one of the largest freshwater turtles in Australia. The length of their shells can reach up to 50 cm (19.6 in), and their neck accounts for an additional 60-80% of their total length. Because of this length, C. expansa tucks its head in sideways as opposed to pulling it directly into its shell. At maximum, females reach a mass of 6 kg (13.2 lbs), while males only typically weigh about 4 kg (8.8 lbs). The top of the shell, or carapace, is dark brown or green, while the underside is a light cream; the same is true for the broad shelled turtle's head, neck, and legs. The feet are webbed, and have large claws which help adults to dig or fend off predators.

While they spend the winter buried in the mud, the broad shelled turtle is most active during the summer months, from November to March. During this time they are almost entirely aquatic, rarely emerging from the water even to bask. This species lives throughout the river basins of eastern Australia, and can be found in rivers, dams, lakes, and wetlands with plenty of vegetation cover. C. expansa is entirely carnivorous, feeding on crustaceans, aquatic insects, fish, and frogs via ambush, and carrion whenever it can find it. To locate prey, they have a keen sense of smell. Adults are not usually predated upon due to their thick shells and sharp claws, but eggs and juveniles are often prey for foxes, dingos, birds, rakalai, and large fish.

C. expansa nests in the winter, beginning in late February or March. Outside the mating season, individuals are generally solitary, but aggressive territoriality has not been observed. When mating time roles around, males seek out females to mate with; following the encounter, the female climbs out onto the bank and digs a nest for a clutch of anywhere from 5 to 28 eggs. To seal the nest, she then slams her body into the re-piled sand and mud, compacting it into a plug that will remain intact until the following year.

Incubation takes about 360 days, though some nests have been recorded as hatching at 500 days; this process is exceptionally slow due to the two periods of diapause, or developmental delays, that embryos pass through in order to survive the winter. Juveniles hatch in the spring, and emerge from the nest at the first heavy rain. It's unknown how long these turtles can live in the wild, but given their slow growth rate and adult invulnerability it's likely that they can live in excess of 20 years.

Conservation status: The IUCN consideres the broad shelled turtle to be Near Threatened, due primarily to habitat loss and high rates of nest predation by introduced foxes.

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Photos

Claire Treilibs

Catherine Heuzenroeder

Shanna Bignell via iNaturalist

[fleshbeetle]

ok in 1952 this guy took all these silkworm pupae's brains out and then stitched them together in a chain and implanted a brain in one of the ones on the end. and the growth hormones from that one brain managed to spread throughout the entire chain of pupae and trigger their development to adulthood in order of their proximity to the implanted brain. I get that it was an important experiment but it's so over the top. why couldn't they just do it by transplanting one brain into one pupa? or maybe just a chain of two. why did it need to be eight

just learned about the most batshit insane entomology experiment. give me a second