#ecology lab is not for the weak

[mysticfoxdesigns]

Gotta love when TAs add memes

makes me wanna cry less

[thecreaturecodex]

Walrider

Image © deviantArt user NanFe, accessed at her gallery here

[Sponsored by @coldbloodassassin, and my last sponsored post! The walrider is yet another monster in the subgenre of "from a video game I've never played", and in this case never even heard of before being tasked with this: Outlast. It has a very complicated backstory, involving Nazi mad science and corrupt mental institutions, so I streamlined it a bit while retaining the original flavor.]

Walrider CR 18 CE Construct A faint blur appears, an outline of a human form moving through space. It moves with impossible fluidity, as if its joints were more a mental construct than a physical one. The outline lacks a lower jaw entirely, and the fingers are longer than those of a typical human

The walrider is a bizarre construct, a cloud of tiny nanomachines confined to a humanoid shape but able to take over the bodies of others. The first walrider was created in an attempt to create a nanotechnology lab out of the body of a human test subject. The process drove the victim insane in the process of completely disassembling them, and the walrider created possessed a thoroughly warped and thoroughly evil psyche. The walrider still possess an affinity for the mad, preferring to use them as hosts. Those whose perceptions of reality are distorted are even less likely to understand the nature of the walrider’s attacks, and are less likely to be believed if and when they can report them. The damage the walrider deals when scouring the mortal mind for information typically leaves their victim mentally broken.

The walrider can enter a victim not to possess them but merely to take them apart from the inside, and they enjoy using this power in the open as a show of strength. If they cannot possess a host, or if they are expelled through remove disease or a similar effect, they simply beat their enemies to death. They can control their own solidity as a matter of course, being strong enough to punch through concrete when they want to, and then being so diffuse that weapons pass right through them. The walrider is nearly invisible, and uses hit and run attacks in combination with their great stealth to wear enemies down if they are capable of fighting back.

Due to the highly unusual nature of their origin, the walrider may be a unique creature. If it is not, it is highly unlikely that they would cooperate with each other, instead viewing each other as competition. The walrider is a megalomaniac who views itself as divine, and is actively creating a cult of worshipers who view it as the next stage in human evolution. If this cult grows large enough, the walrider could become truly divine, or attract the attention of a competitor who is.

Walrider CR 18 XP 153,600 CE Medium construct Init +14; Senses darkvision 60 ft., Perception +18

Defense AC 27, touch 27, flat-footed 16 (+10 Dex, +1 dodge, +6 insight) hp 169(23d10+43) Fort +7, Ref +19, Will +15 Immune construct traits, critical hits, sneak attack, weapon damage Defensive Abilities evasion,mad insights,swarm-like, transparency; Weakness susceptible to mind-influencing effects, vulnerable to area of effect damage

Offense Speed 40 ft., fly 40 ft. (perfect) Melee 2 slams +33 (2d8+10) Special Attacks infest, possess

Statistics Str 30, Dex 30, Con -, Int 19, Wis 4, Cha 23 Base Atk +23; CMB +33; CMD 44 Feats Ability Focus (infest, possess),Alertness (B),Blind Fight,Combat Expertise,Combat Reflexes, Critical Focus (B), Dodge, Improved Critical (slam), Improved Initiative (B), Iron Will, Lightning Reflexes (B), Mobility, Power Attack (B), Spring Attack, Staggering Critical (B), Toughness, Whirlwind Attack Skills Bluff +23, Fly +35, Intimidate +23, Knowledge (engineering, local) +34, Perception +19, Sense Motive +19, Stealth +47; Racial Modifiers +11 Knowledge (all), +20 Stealth Languages Aklo, Androffan, Common, Undercommon SQ madness,many in one

Ecology Environment any Organization solitary or ride (1 plus 1 possessed host) Treasure standard

Special Abilities Infest (Ex) As a standard action, a walrider can infest a corporeal creature adjacent to it. If the creature fails a DC 25 Fortitude save, the walrider moves inside of its body. A walrider can either remain in the creature it infests harmlessly, as a riding possession spell, or it can start to disassemble its host from the inside, dealing 12d6 points of damage a round. A host reduced to 0 hit points while infested by a walrider is reduced to dust and destroyed (similar to disintegrate). A walrider infesting a host can be expelled by any effect that cures disease, with a disease save equal to this ability’s DC. If not expelled, the walrider can remain inside the host indefinitely. The save DC is Constitution-based and includes a +2 racial bonus. Madness (Ex) Walriders use their Charisma modifier on Will saves instead of their Wisdom modifier, and are immune to insanity and confusion effects. Only a miracle or wish can remove a walrideer's madness. If this occurs, the walrider gains 6 points of Wisdom and loses 6 points of Charisma. Mad Insight (Su) A walrider gains an insight bonus to Armor Class equal to its Charisma modifier. Many In One (Ex) A walrider absorbs the memories of intelligent creatures that it possesses. A walrider that has eaten one or more sapient creatures gains a number of bonus feats equal to its Charisma modifier (6 for the average specimen). It gains a racial bonus to all Knowledge checks equal to ½ its Hit Dice (+11 for the average specimen), and can make Knowledge checks untrained. Whenever it possesses a sapient creature, it may swap out one of its bonus feats and/or one of its languages for one known by the creature it has possessed. Possess (Su) A walrider can possess a living creature it has infested. Unless the creature succeeds a DC 25 Will save, the walrider takes control of its body, as per a greater possession spell with an indefinite duration. A creature that successfully saves is immune to that walrider’s possession for the next 24 hours. At any time while possessing a host, the walrider can attempt to scan its mind, as per a mind probe spell. This possession is taxing to a host; every day the host is possessed, it must succeed a DC 25 Will save or take 2d4 Wisdom drain. A creature that would be reduced to 0 Wisdom is instead reduced to 1 Wisdom and gains the moral insanity madness. The save DC is Constitution based, and includes a +2 racial bonus to the DC. Susceptible to Mind-Influencing Effects (Ex) Unlike most constructs, a walrider can be affected by mind-influencing effects. Swarm-like (Ex) A walrider is comprised of thousands of nanites. Although it is a Medium sized creature, it is immune to spells and effects that affect a single target, damage from physical weapons, critical hits and sneak attacks. A walrider can move through cracks and spaces small enough for a Fine creature. A walrider takes 150% damage from area of effect spells and effects. Transparent (Ex) A walrider is nearly invisible. Attacks made against it by creatures that need to see have a 50% miss chance, and the walrider gains a +20 racial bonus to Stealth checks. This is not dispelled by invisibility purge or see invisibility. Spells like faerie fire and glitterdust reduce the miss chance to 20%, but do not remove it completely.

[r0-boat]

I'm not sure if you write these two, but...

Imagine Hucow Archie and Maxie. Just imagine what they'd be like, what shenanigans* they'd get up to around the farm.

*includes them fighting

Holy shit could you fucking imagine?! I already have so many things in my head.

BullFarm au! Maxie & Archie shenanigans & headcannons

Fighting? These two are always fighting so much so that slowly but surely, your boss just stopped caring about stopping them. It was futile. Even when he would separate them somehow, they would always find a way to round it. These two bowls are constantly fighting with their fists, their horns hell, even biting(archie) every time there's just muffled commotion; your boss just size Takes a cigarette out and starts smoking and begs for you to deal with it while trying to nurse a migraine he could already feel coming.

Archie starts most of the fights, but Maxie is the one that provokes Archie making him angrier. However around you they seem calm and willing to be in the same 5 ft apart from each other. They know that you hate when they fight so every time you walk around the corner they just sit there quietly glaring at each other while you're doing your work perhaps take this time to bother you instead of focusing on each other.

Before they had become residents on your farm Archie was a hybrid fighter, when people would put hybrids up against each other to fight though he was rescued he didn't seem too bad about it in fact he would eagerly tell you about his fights and accomplishments despite the horrors you have heard from the conditions hybrids would be put in.

Maxie, before he found his way to the farm was a test subject in a lab however not in the same way Colress and Volo where. Colress was genetically created and modified ; Volo was revived from one; Maxie practically grew up there where you would do all sorts of intelligence measuring and training tests perhaps as he got older the scientists retired him to a nice farm to live on. He seems to have learned a thing or two from being there.

Archie has been in so many sparring matches he has scratches and scars on his horns and all over his body which he's very eager to tell you, stories about each and every one. Well he doesn't do full on fights anymore you can happily see him sparring with the stronger Bulls and lifting heavy things trying to keep his form.

Archie is a mighty Bull but would never pick fights with anyone weaker than himself physically, even Maxie, though that quickly changes when Maxie throws insults at him. Maxie, even though he doesn't like fighting, wants to make Archie very angry. He is swift to dodge his attacks, always trying to counter them. Archie thinks he would have been an ok hybrid fighter. Maxie doesn't even want to entertain the idea.

Maxie is not much of a talker unless it's to tell random trivia about plants, ecology, and animals. Maxie is a bit of a bookworm. Most Bulls are not usually interested in human writings, but Maxie is not one of them. In fact, every time you come back to the farm from the town, he would eagerly ask you if you bought anything to read.

Maxie is obsessed with the land and the beautiful natural wonders of this world. Perhaps he had seen something in his youth that made him truly appreciate the land's Beauty. Maxie, after you gave him a new book to read, would always sit either under the shade or out in the sun, looking out into the vast field and Forest of the farm with a book in hand, taking in the fresh air.

Archie is fascinated with the ocean deaths. Something new and unexplored is filled with weird creatures, some strong, some weak. He thinks he is the most muscular Bull on the land, which makes sense since he is fascinated with sharks being the ocean's apex predators. Archie is just a bull that loves the water he seems to always know when the sprinklers come on in the fields and sneaks out there just to get a nice refreshing spray. yeah he's the reason your boss has you stand out there sometimes to watch the sprinklers go

You would think Maxie would also like the ocean because of his natural curiosity and since the sea is mostly unexplored, right? Nope he is terrified of it and he hates it so many weird bizarre and unknown creatures and places he likes the land nice and familiar he thinks most biomes in the ocean are just rocks in the sand.

Archie thinks the land is boring since humans had already explored every nook and cranny; meanwhile, the ocean has not been fully explored.

Archie loves to show off his strength by lifting farm equipment, sparing other bulls while your watching, picking you up to help you reach any thing high. He would happily lift anything for you.

Maxie reads books to you. On your breaks, you lay next to him on the soft grass as he reads you a new book you got him.

[theomenroom]

exocolonist stuff about the green forever ending and the shimmer

Lum's bioweapon works because there's a fundamental weakness in vertumnan ecology because it isn't actually a wild ecosystem. it's a Garden in facsimile of the ecosystem before the Convergent Domain rose, and the Gardeners run their overlay on everything, and the Gardeners have spent 20,000 years alone on a planet without anyone even capable of conceptualizing a deliberate attack. Sym all but tells us as much, that Vertumna's ecosystem is all one thing that reconnects every Pollen and Glow in a way that real-world ecosystems aren't.

And it is Lum's bioweapon. Instance may have developed it and used Tangent to help, who in turn used Sol, and Instance was almost certainly doing bioweapons research before the Heliopause landed (certainly, Tangent says some unhinged things about their research that foreshadow the bioweapon from an early age), but Instance had more reason than ego to be against deploying this particular bioweapon.

Instance is such a complicated character, really. If you try to convince her to support Marz's bid by saying that Lum's war on nature is stupid, she says she supports it, even if she thinks Lum is an idiot and "war" isn't the right way of understanding what she wants to do. She almost certainly is in favor of deploying bioweapons targeted against species they want to remove (again, I'm nearly certain she's been researching bioweapons at least as far back as when they were researching the Shimmer); she opposes this particular bioweapon because it's too indiscriminate for her tastes, perhaps, and a bit because Lum is calling the shots and she has reasons to hate him personally.

I think it's likely she was dragging her heels, too. There's an event if you assist the governor where you can (with very high Organizing) eavesdrop on her trying to control the access levels granted to nameless Helio scientists assigned to her department (there's a whole essay in how the Helios are treated by the narrative as a mostly-nameless mass right up until the narrative needs them), where Sol speculates that she's trying to keep them from uncovering the engineered plague, if they know about it, and that doesn't make sense on its face (or several other levels). Researchers who spent 20 years conducting research in a military environment would know how to act when someone in the lab next to you is working on a classified project. She's not scared they'd find out that she's working on a bioweapon for Lum, she's scared they'd find out she's not doing her best work.

(and if the Heliopause did have a bunch of "earth's top researchers" on it, why is it that under no circumstances can Lum put one of them in the second engineer job over an eighteen-year-old? she's a prodigy but earth has a huge population to draw top researchers from)

It's unlikely that the pre-Gardener vertumnan ecology had the same symbiotes as the current one does. It doesn't sound evolutionarily advantageous. It reminds me of how a cultivar of bananas have gone extinct, wiped out by disease, because that entire cultivar were clones, so they had exactly identical immune systems, so one parasite just swept through them. I am not a biologist, but parasite resistance is heavily-speculated as a driver for sexual reproduction according to wikipedia. There are pretty strong evolutionary pressures against being uniformly susceptible to the exact same parasites across a population.

So I kinda have to conclude that the Shimmer isn't a natural phenomenon. It's a fungal technology, part of the Gardeners. It's the way it is because they are the way they are.

[awlimagines]

Day Five - Daryl

Daryl’s morning for the first of Winter was the same as it was throughout the year. He woke from another late night just before noon to enjoy coffee. Last night’s research focus was pulling his notes from last year’s failed attempts to capture Mukumuku. He placed his mug down to gather all the documents for another review to prepare for tonight's attempt. Another paper written in someone else’s hand caught his eye. The title was smudged from where his hastily washed and dried mug smeared the ink.

 Mukumuku - A Failsafe Plan

Mukumuku enjoys fodder - collect this to give him first!

Gather fresh eggs, milk, and fish for food.

Grab a flower on the way to gift as well. 

Success!! 

Daryl’s eyes widened as he read over the simple list. This must be a guaranteed method to capture the beast! He scrambled to review footage of the lab to see you leaving the note on his desk. Daryl grabbed the paper from the surface, rushing to your farm. His spilled coffee left forgotten to stain research notes in his haste. 

“Is this accurate?!” his demand made you jump. Daryl stood with his foot tapping, waiting for your response. You groaned, looking at the grass cut too short to be effectively used as fodder before walking over to your fence to see what Daryl was talking about. 

“Oh, yeah! I didn’t think you would want-” 

“Can we start now?” 

Daryl’s sigh of relief when you agreed halted in his chest. He had to enter the field? His dark eyes flicked warily over towards Bessie. The black-and-white cow stood across the area watching him. They had gotten on the wrong foot back in the Spring and had never cared for each other since. When he visited the farm, Daryl typically had no trouble avoiding the methane-filled monster’s territory, but now he was supposed to enter. Your expectant look had him grumbling under his breath the entire time he walked around to the barn to enter. He could not show weakness to that creature by scrambling over the fence and possibly falling on his face. 

He had barely begun work before telling you of ways he could think to ease cutting fodder. He particularly thought some sort of collapsible fence would be beneficial. Such a thing would let you section the area you worked away from the sheep who bleated their greetings as they trundled into your way. Your breathless laugh and agreement as you pushed another sheep from the work area were quickly stored in the back of his mind for later. Once done with the fodder, Daryl eagerly offered to gather eggs while you milked the cows. It would get him out of the blasted field and away from Bessie. All too soon, the sun was setting. Daryl watched as you reeled in another fish. Part of him hoped the furry white Mukumuku wouldn’t show up tonight, so he had an excuse to do this again tomorrow. 

A flash of excitement laced with disappointment swept through him at the sight of the hulking form of Mukumuku at the Goddess Spring. His jealousy quickly overshadowed the feelings as you cheerfully greeted the giant. Your hand brushed against his own as you pulled Daryl over to introduce. 

“When do we capture him?” Daryl whispered, leaning in closer to you.

“What?” 

The scientist frowned at your question before feigning an annoyed sigh to elaborate, “Your note mentioned this as a failsafe plan to capture?” 

“Oh, um, I think there’s been a misunderstanding,” you mumbled, hurrying to wrack your brain. “This method is only good for ecological studies. Y’know, since Mukumuku is one of a kind, we should gather data on his natural habitat and habits first.”

You relaxed as the scientist’s head bobbed in understanding. Daryl took notes as you held some sort of conversation with the beast. He should be legitimately studying Mukumuku, but he couldn’t focus. Hastily scrawled pages of plans to win your attention took over his research notes. Daryl regretted his lack of focus when you begged to see them later.

“I just have notes on size, quality of fur, a sample of hair, and his preferences. I’d need your assistance and time for more detailed observations.”

[redhatmeg]

Have you noticed?

Kaido's crew is called Animal Kingdom Pirates and his goal is to create an army of Zoan-type Devil Fruit users. This all brings to mind nature.

But at the same time many things about Kaido's action seem to work against nature. First of all, Kaido's crew uses Smile Fruits that are artificial, made in the lab Devil Fruits. Which have more side effects than traditional Devil Fruits that come up in nature.

(Also, can we talk about how Genius Caesar Clown(TM) didn't think about a way to remove the seawater weakness from Smile Fruits?)

Secondly, there is the fact that Kaido (alongside with Orochi) pollutes rivers and earth in Land of Wano with rapid industrialization. And interestingly enough, we are shown not as much as how Kaido's factory ruins the enviornment, but how it affects ordinary people too. People who have no other way to survive but eat poisoned fish and drink poisoned water. Orochi also discards failed Smile Fruits, knowing that it will cause irreversable damage to the population.

Of course, there is a metaphor in there about ecology and whatnot, but I feel like there is also Kaido's fascination with animals - with the strength of predators and how nature equips them with weapons like claws, venoms and fangs. He also wants to dominate the surroundings and many times he wants for his strong opponents (like Luffy or Asura Doji) to become his subordinates after proper spirit crushing.

[probably-a-real-lichen]

Oh hey, this is my field!

I'm gonna go on a long rant about all the minutia of studying mycorrhizal fungi, feel free to ignore

This definitely covers a ton of the problems with current mycorrhizal research, but it also gets even weirder when you consider that in addition to mycorrhizal fungi, there are also billions of rhizobacteria that ALSO span the gamut from mutualist to parasite AND interact with the mycorrhizal fungi in specific and unpredictable ways.

So there's broadly two approaches to studying these relationships- experimental and observational. Nothing new for ecology, but how do you observe what's going on in the soil? Currently the only methods for identifying mycorrhizal fungi are through root clearing and staining (which can only get you information on colonization rates and proportions of the big categories of root endophytes - arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi (AMFs), dark septate endophytes (DSEs), and fine root endophytes (FREs)) and through genome sequencing (which can identify down to species, but there's a LOT of stuff living in the soil, and the noise is incredibly high. Also, just because it shows up in your genome assay doesn't mean it's also actually interacting with the plant at all- it might just live there), and both of these methods require destructive sampling of the plant's roots. So how do you test how the relationship between the plant-fungal partners changes over the life of a plant?

For observational studies it's extremely hard to isolate the effects of root symbionts from the cacophony of other growth impacts- sunlight, water, air quality, competition, herbivores, nutrient differences (that can vary widely within a single meter!), so observational field studies essentially can only look at large trends and test weak effect sizes.

So how do we test this experimentally instead?

First, experiments require some degree of substrate sterilization because there's an absolutely incredible amount of bacteria and fungi in the dirt, water, air, our hands, etc. So not only do we need to sterilize soil, but ideally we also need to keep these plants sterile (except the inoculum) for the entire test period- anywhere from a couple weeks to a couple months (full life experiments would be ideal, but who's paying for that greenhouse space for years-decades?). Soil sterilization itself is a poorly supported method for a number of reasons.

1. What soil do you use? Wild collected soil has a higher bioload and is impossible to fully sterilize for your control, potting mix or custom sand mixtures have an extremely different nutrient/compositional profile to wild soils

2. How do you sterilize soil without changing the nature of the soil? Current methods involve autoclave sterilization, which involves moderately high temperature (~130°C) and ~2atm pressure. This is enough to kill exposed living cells, but not well protected bacteria, or any organism that's capable of going into a dormant spore state. Heating the soil hot enough to kill these changes the chemistry of the soil itself. Don't even consider chemical or radioactive sterilization, because those will irreversibly alter the soil in even worse ways.

3. How do you keep soil sterile from contamination in the long term? Like I already mentioned, water, air, and every surface are covered in contaminants that can only really be prevented in the top level sterile protocol labs. That's expensive as hell, and the time scale has to be reduced even more to minimize risk of contamination

So, essentially one cannot both sterilize the soil AND maintain it's chemical and physical characteristics. So we've gotta deal with extra noise there too. We've got to accept that the soil will never be sterile, so we just have to make sure that our inoculant has the strongest effect, so that we can detect it with our math later!

So uh. How.

Several studies on mycorrhizal inoculation methods suggest that colonization rates in experimental studies are different than in the wild, and that colonization rates differ somewhat proportionally to the amount of inoculum used, so we need to add enough inoculum that there's colonization occurring, but also each replicate needs to have the same amount of inoculum- and the control needs the same inoculum, but sterile (otherwise you're adding tons of free nutrients that are going to ruin any chance of driving microbial effects).

So what even is our inoculum? There are generally two approaches: single strain inoculation and full soil inoculation. Both have significant strengths and extreme weaknesses.

Single strain inoculation will give you the least noise - outside of the inevitable noise from contamination, you're only measuring the effects of the one species of microbe. But that means you have to isolate the microbe you want to study. There's a couple methods for this, but generally you grow plants with known inoculants for a couple generations, inoculating the next generation with the roots of its parents, and then once a viable candidate has been produced, you can do fun agar plate streaking to get it down to a handful (almost impossible to just one) of strains. Great. Now you just make a nutrient broth and pour it into each replicate's pot- several times to improve chances of inoculation.

Great! Let's say we do all this and run the experiment successfully and get our results, maybe there's a growth response, maybe not. What do we do with this now? If there's a positive growth impact do we tell farmers to flush their fields with inoculants? Do we encourage national parks to seminate the ground with fungi cultures? The applications of this is a tiny tiny piece of a much bigger puzzle- it's incredibly good information to have, but on its own it's virtually useless.

So what if we try to more actually represent what we see in nature? Let's just take some soil from the wild and put it on our sterilized test pots and see what growth impacts result!

Great, except like we know, a teaspoon of soil has billions of microbes in it, and not just bacteria and fungi- algae that can compete with the plants and change the nutrients in the soil, animals and protists that may eat the fungi or roots, seeds of other plants, viruses and other pathogens, and chemical contaminants from your source soil. Ok, that sounds rough but that was the point right? These are all things that wild plants have to deal with anyway, this is a better representation of nature right? Well each of the organisms in the soil also has its own panel of limiting factors that might keep it in check in the wild but not the lab- UV, competitors, macroherbivores, etc.

By the time we've accounted for all of the differences from the field, we're back in the damn field- the only place where the pressures of nature are met 1:1.

So often full soil inoculations end up introducing pathogens, producing negative growth responses, and it's pretty much impossible to say what growth response was caused by nutrients in the soil vs the microbes you're interested in vs the pathogens and opportunists in the soil.

Frick.

So what does this mean for the research on mycorrhizal fungi and soil biota in general?

Essentially we have a jigsaw puzzle with 1,000,000 pieces and we can only see like 5 of them, and the picture on the box changes at an unknown rate. This is why so many soil microbe researchers are pissed at science journalists that have overblown and misinterpreted the results of studies. There are far too many variables and far too many unknowns to be able to draw sweeping conclusions about the kumbaya nature of the woods, and we don't even know what's going on. Even the studies that found transfer of marked carbon molecules didn't take into account fucking transpiration and root exudates as a potential mechanism of transfer.

Anyway. Yeah.

We need more research, we need funding, and we need to be very careful about how we apply interpretations of the results of research.

An attempt at summarizing the controversies that embroil mycorrhizal network research:

a bunch of scientists are miffed at how the media has taken "plants communicate and distribute nutrients through the mycorrhizal network" and run with it, finding the "mother tree" thing too anthropomorphizing and too presumptive about something very poorly understood

unfortunately all of the major models for understanding the mycorrhizal network are anthropomorphizing, even the more competition-centered ones...to the point that papers discuss whether the network is a "capitalist" or a "socialist" system

other researchers, screaming STOP USING LOADED TERMS THAT PROMOTE AN ANTHROPOCENTRIC INTERPRETATION

But, setting aside the question of whether trees can "intentionally" do something or be altruistic...how do we know the plant is the one in control? Are the trees "sending" nutrients or is the fungus taking the nutrients and sending them to other trees? Wait, how do we assign agency in a system like this at all? Isn't it unscientific to assume that any part of the system, fungus or plant, is consciously acting? Wait...are they actually separate organisms with their own interests, or is it more accurate to view all the members of a mycorrhizal network as one big super-organism? (Wait, is it anthropomorphizing to consider organisms as having interests? If yes, how do we describe what's happening using language?)

Basically, yes we have demonstrated and established that nutrients move from one plant to another plant in the mycorrhizal network, including from fully grown trees to saplings, plants in sunlight to shaded plants, and other things that are definitely fun to interpret as one plant "helping" the weaker plant. However, we don't actually know the intentions of plants, so for all we know, the fungus could be doing everything. Or it could be completely stupid to describe any of it as "one individual organism in the network Intentionally Does A Thing."

Big Problem: Although a shit ton of research is being done, most research in the mycorrhizal network is done on very simple networks of 1 or 2 plant species with a handful of selected fungal inoculants in otherwise sterile laboratory settings. These conditions do not reflect the natural world at all.

in fact, experimental conditions used to study mycorrhizal networks are mostly completely unlike anything that would ever exist...you know, Outside,

most of the research pertains to agriculture and there are many demonstrated benefits, and many farmers are ALREADY using methods to promote mycorrhizal networks, but my guess is that it's not as simple as matching crops up to fungal inoculants that help them for instant 20% yield increase, at least in Real Outdoor Soil with an existing microbiome and seed bank.

Roughly speaking, 50% of mycorrhizal associations benefit seedling establishment, and the remaining 50% are themselves split halfway between "no effect" and "negative effect." Doesn't this mean that the mycorrhizal network is not always chill and altruistic?

Well, those findings might mean absolutely nothing either way, since in a field-setting plant community, there are dozens if not hundreds of fungi species (the diversity and number of specialists increases in later-successional communities) that are part of the mycorrhizal network, and through them any given seedling might be linked to a thousand different plants.

Some researchers find it puzzling how so many mycorrhizal partnerships seem to have no effect. Maybe the effect only comes online in certain conditions?

Parasitism, mutualism and commensalism aren't fixed types of relationship, and two partners in the mycorrhizal network can and do switch between the three constantly. This is another problem: the experiments don't usually follow both partners in a plant-fungal pairing to the end of their natural lives, and it's been shown that a fungus can be mutualistic early in a plant's life and later on become more parasitic (for example). Or that a fungus can be beneficial in poor soil conditions and become parasitic in rich soil conditions.

But...is this really best understood as a situational switch between types of symbiosis, or can we judge it by the net effect on both partners throughout their life spans, or...my brain is breaking

Like, a fungus that mostly decreases the fitness of the host plant, BUT becomes very helpful in the presence of extreme drought...is it a parasite or mutualistic partner?

Some researchers lean toward a source-sink model where nutrients tend to flow toward plants that are most lacking and away from plants with most abundance. This is a rough approximation of something ridiculously complicated

Plants can and do select fungal partners to pair with and reject fungi that contribute fewer benefits.

Fungi also appear capable of selectively distributing resources based on the fitness of the host, or at least they did this one experiment where the fungus was connected to two different trees and researchers ripped all the leaves off one of the trees. This caused the fungus to divert its nutrient flow to the undamaged tree (throwing in its lot with the tree most likely to survive). However, we're not sure if this would happen in a forest or other natural plant community, since in the lab, the fungus was totally dependent on the two trees for survival and there were no other participants in the network. So basically, it's kinda like those behavior studies on captive wolves?

[iso-updates]

Comparative Analysis: ISO 17020 vs. Other Quality Management Standards for Inspection Bodies 

In the domain of quality management principles for inspection bodies, organizations frequently face the test of choosing the most appropriate structure to guarantee their services meet thorough quality benchmarks. Among the different choices accessible, ISO 17020 Certification in UAE stands apart as a broadly perceived standard explicitly customized for inspection bodies. Notwithstanding, it is fundamental to lead a similar comparison to comprehend how ISO 17020 stacks face other quality management standards in this space.

ISO 17020, named “Conformity assessment: Requirements for the activity of different kinds of bodies performing inspection,” gives a thorough arrangement of standards for the capability, unprejudiced nature, and reliable activity of inspection bodies. It frames necessities for regulatory construction, assets, ability of staff, comparison processes, and detailing, among others. The standard covers an extensive variety of investigation practices, including product testing, certification of compliance with guidelines, and certificate of management systems.

I. Key Standards in Comparison:

ISO 17020: General Requirements for the Competence of Inspection Bodies:

Strengths: Internationally perceived, complete structure covering all parts of assessment body tasks, accentuation on unprejudiced nature and secrecy, centered around specialized ability and nonstop improvement.

Weaknesses: May be viewed as excessively thorough for transparent audits, requires general license reviews, not intended for specific enterprises.

Ideal For: Inspection bodies across different areas, including development, sanitation, ecological checking, and non-disastrous testing.

ISO 9001: Quality Management Systems:

Strengths: Nonexclusive standard appropriate to all associations, centered around consumer loyalty, process improvement, and chance administration.

Weaknesses: Needs unambiguous necessities for investigation practices, and may require extra industry-explicit principles for thorough compliance.

Ideal For: Inspection bodies looking for an establishment for generally quality administration, frequently utilized related to ISO 17020.

One of the essential options in contrast to ISO 17020 in Dubai UAE is ISO 9001, which is a nonexclusive quality administration standard pertinent to different enterprises and associations. ISO 9001 spotlights ensuring that organizations reliably meet customer necessities and improve consumer satisfaction through the viable use of a quality management system. While ISO 9001 gives a structure to general quality management practices, it doesn't address the particular necessities and details related to audit practices in a similar profundity as ISO 17020.

ISO 17020 Versus ISO 17025

Another important standard is ISO/IEC 17025, which is custom-made for testing and alignment research facilities. Even though ISO/IEC 17025 offers a few likenesses with ISO 17020 as far as capability necessities and quality management standards, it essentially centers around specialized skill and the capacity to deliver legal and responsible outcomes. Not at all like ISO 17020, which envelops a more extensive extent of audit practices past testing and alignment, ISO/IEC 17025 is all the more barely centered around lab tasks.

ISO 22000: Food Safety Management Systems:

Strengths: Industry-explicit standard zeroing in on food handling all through the production network, lines up with global sanitation guidelines.

Weaknesses: Not well-defined for assessment practices, requires extra guidelines for investigation capability (e.g., ISO 17020).

Ideal For: Food investigation bodies, certificate bodies for sanitation management systems.

National and Regional Standards: 

Strengths: Address explicit local guidelines and necessities, frequently utilized related to global standards.

Weaknesses: May fluctuate essentially between nations, and can make intricacy for global activity.

Ideal For: Inspection bodies working in unambiguous areas or consenting to local guidelines.

A comparative analysis of ISO 17020 with other quality management standards norms uncovers a few vital contrasts and considerations.

ISO 17020 puts a huge accentuation on the autonomy and unprejudiced nature of comparison, first and foremost, bodies, ensuring that their decisions and choices are liberated from predisposition or unjustifiable impact. This angle is critical in keeping up with the trustworthiness and validity of comparison processes, particularly in directed enterprises where compliance with guidelines and guidelines is vital.

Besides, ISO 17020 consolidates explicit requirements connected with assessment techniques, testing strategies, and specialized capability, customized to the different scope of review practices. This degree of detail guarantees that inspection bodies have the essential skills and assets to actually complete their assignments and deliver responsible outcomes. Interestingly, traditional quality management principles like ISO 9001 may come up short on particularity expected to address the exceptional disruptions faced by inspection bodies.

Moreover, ISO 17020 Accreditation puts areas of strength for nonstop improvement and the proactive recognizable proof and moderation of threats related to audit practices. By laying out hearty cycles for checking implementation, tending to non-conformities, and carrying out remedial activities, ISO 17020 aids investigation bodies upgrade their functional productivity and viability over the long run.

While ISO 17020 Accreditation in UAE offers an extensive structure custom-made explicitly for inspection bodies, organizations should cautiously assess their particular necessities, regulatory prerequisites, and functional settings prior to picking the most suitable standard. At times, a mix of guidelines or correlative frameworks might be important to really address all parts of quality management.

Choosing the Right Standard: 

The ideal norm for an inspection body relies upon a few elements, including:

Industry: Explicit necessities and guidelines inside the area.

Complexity of Inspections: Level of specialized skill and judgment required.

Accreditation Requirements:: Whether regulation is compulsory or wanted.

International Operations: Need for compliance across various districts.

Conclusion

All in all, a comparative analysis of ISO 17020 Certification in UAE with other quality administration norms features its special assets and significance concerning inspection bodies.

By sticking to ISO 17020 requirements, inspection bodies can show their ability, fair-mindedness, and obligation to deliver top-notch assessment services, eventually adding to improved trust, believability, and consumer satisfaction. Nonetheless, associations should evaluate their singular conditions and necessities to decide the most appropriate standard or blend of guidelines for their activities.

[shenvs3000f23]

Unit 10 Blog

Describe your personal ethic as you develop as a nature interpreter. What beliefs do you bring? What responsibilities do you have? What approaches are most suitable for you as an individual?

This prompt is one that forces me to look at myself from an outside perspective. For me to truly analyze my skills, weaknesses, and experience as it pertains to being a nature interpreter. Since beginning this course, I feel as though I have developed as an interpreter. I have learned important skills such as how to "effectively serve and relate to audiences" (Beck et al., 2018) as mentioned in chapter 7 of the textbook. Or how to truly engage an audience and choose my words wisely as mentioned in chapter 5 and Mill's "formula". These are just a few examples of the new insights and skills I have developed and been made aware of.

With the role of a nature interpreter and having the audience to be able to share my knowledge with, there are certain ethics that need to be followed. There are many different ethics that are relevant when it comes to nature interpretation. Of these, there are personal ethics that I as an individual must come up with and comply to.

The first aspect of myself that can influence my personal ethics are my beliefs. The largest belief I have is the need for people to stay connected to nature. In today's fast paced world, it is so easy to get caught up in our little worlds and forget about the one around us. With school, work, and social life, I find myself often forgetting to stop and take a look around. I forget the sound of walking through a trial in a forest. The branches breaking beneath my feet and the sounds of the crunching leaves. Or the sounds of the birds chirping and rustling of critters around me. This forgetfulness of nature is something that I am sure I am not alone in. There are many beneficial aspects of staying connected to nature. The greatest benefit I witness is the improvement of my mental health. The world is so fast, but taking a few hours to appreciate nature shows you how slow life can be. There is a great sense of calm that comes over you in nature. Due to this, I believe everyone should prioritize staying connected to nature in whatever way they can. This can be done in many ways. From taking a different route walking to pass through a natural area, to looking out the window a little longer than usual. Or even taking a trip to spend some time in nature. However you are able to do it, incorporating more nature into your life is bound to improve your life in many ways.

With having the role of a nature interpreter, there are certain responsibilities that come with it. I believe one of these to be a responsibility to do whatever I can to improve people's relationship with nature. Having the platform of a nature interpreter allows me to reach more people than normal. Using this, I can help to show people that nature is everywhere. I can help them to understand it and identify certain aspects. I know for myself, this has been true. I am currently in a plant ecology and lab ecology classes. The professors are extremely knowledgeable and have taught me so much. The main skill I find myself utilizing that has changed my perspective of nature is identifying plants. I have had multiple labs where the goal is to identify plant species. From this, and the help of my professors, I am able to identify many more species than previous. I know what they are, what they do, how they interact. Now, whenever I am in nature, I find myself much more aware of my surroundings. When before all I saw was a wooded mess, now O see dog woods, ash, maples, walnuts, and so much more. I understand why these things are where they are and their purpose in the surrounding ecosystem. Due to the help of interpreters around me, I now view nature in a different way and am much more immersed by it. This is the some impact I would like to have as an interpreter. I have experienced first-hand how it can change someone's perspective and allow them to be more involved with nature.

It has taken a lot of trial and error in order for me to find what works best for me as an individual when it comes to learning. The best way I have found so far is a hands-on approach. This type of approach really allows me to be fully immersed in whatever I am trying to learn. It also makes questions arise that I would not have if I were simply book learning. Going through the whole process forces me to know every step, and from this, questions inevitably arise that I would not have if I were not learning hands on. For example, I can identify a certain tree online, but doing it hands on in person makes it more difficult. Sometimes I cannot see the leaves of the tree, or it may be a different season and the plant looks different than the book or website I learned from. When in person, all of these variables are accounted for and I can use my resources, such as books, websites, and professors to get a more real world knowledge of certain things. It makes the skills learned more applicable and diverse since I know not only book knowledge, but how to apply it in the different circumstances that are inevitably came across in the real-world.

Personal ethics are very important when you are in an influential role. My personal beliefs play a role in developing the responsibilities I believe I have as an interpreter. I also hope that one day I can play a positive role in someone else's life and help them to realize their true passions and knowledge, as others have done for me in my life.

[evoldir]

Fwd: Course: Online.RADseq_withStacks.Oct2-6

Begin forwarded message: > From: evoldir@evol.biology.mcmaster.ca > Subject: Course: Online.RADseq_withStacks.Oct2-6 > Date: 28 September 2023 at 08:28:44 BST > To: rdmpage@gmail.com > > > > > We still have 6 places left on our RADseq courses next week! > > The Practice of RADseq: Population Genomics Analysis with Stacks (RADS02) > > https://ift.tt/vz4UPdg > > 2nd - 6th October 2023,09:00-16:00CDT (Central Daylight Time),however > all sessions will be recorded and made available daily allowing attendees > from different time zones to follow.  Cost -£450.00 > > Delivered byDr Julian Catchen > > Please feel free to share! > > About This Course > > This course is aimed at introducing researchers to the theory and practice > of using reduced representation libraries – such as RAD sequencing > – to preform population genomic analysis in non-model organisms. The > course will center on running the software pipeline Stacks, focusing on > how the characteristics of the underlying molecular libraries result > in weak or robust analytical results. Sessions will be live online, > consisting of a blend of lectures, interactive demonstrations, and lab > practicals, where participants will have the opportunity to ask questions > throughout. Computation will be done on the Amazon AWS Cloud. > > By the end of the course, participants should be able to: > > Navigate the UNIX file system, execute commands, and interact with > bioinformatic data files; > - Understand how to perform ade novoanalysis – without a reference >  genome – including parameter optimization; > - Understand how PCR duplicates and other molecular library >  characteristics affect analysis; > - Complete a reference genome-based analysis; > - Take the outputs from Stacks to complete a Structure analysis (de >  novo), a genome scan based on > - FST(reference-based), and a private allele analysis. > > Please emailoliverhooker@prstatistics.com > > Upcoming courses > > ONLINE COURSE – Introduction to generalised linear models using R and > Rstudio (IGLM06) > > https://ift.tt/L5dNGxt > > ONLINE COURSE –Quantitative analysis of infrared spectroscopy data > for soil and plant sciences (SPEC02) > > https://ift.tt/qlMkRcX > > ONLINE COURSE – Introduction To Mixed Models Using R And Rstudio > (IMMR07) > > https://ift.tt/YXN5w8g > > ONLINE COURSE – Model selection and model simplification (MSMS04) > > https://ift.tt/ZotJHdI > > ONLINE COURSE – Data wrangling using R and Rstudio (DWRS03) > > https://ift.tt/2iAXdoa > > ONLINE COURSE – Machine Learning with R (Intermediate – Advanced) > (MLIA01) > > https://ift.tt/ThPRwn9 > > ONLINE COURSE – Data visualization with ggplot2 using R and Rstudio > (DVGG04) > > https://ift.tt/5x6hgEP > > ONLINE COURSE – Introduction to Time Series Analysis using R and Rstudio > (ITSA02) > > https://ift.tt/ZU6KLSz > > ONLINE COURSE – Introduction to Machine Learning using R and Rstudio > (IMLR02) > > https://ift.tt/gR02T3f > > CURSO ONLINE – Introdução a Modelos Lineares Generalizados usando > R e R Studio (IGLM07) > > https://ift.tt/JgomdBZ > > ONLINE COURSE – Movement Ecology (MOVE06) > > https://ift.tt/aqJoT9g > > > > Oliver Hooker PhD. > PR statistics > > Oliver Hooker

[sciencespies]

Zapped survivors: Some tropical trees won't be defeated by lightning

https://sciencespies.com/nature/zapped-survivors-some-tropical-trees-wont-be-defeated-by-lightning/

Zapped survivors: Some tropical trees won't be defeated by lightning

Sheltering under a tall tree during a thunderstorm is not a great idea, given that lightning often strikes the tallest thing around. However, we may not think much about the fate of the trees themselves, at least not as much as a team of scientists whose research on the effects of lightning on tropical forests was recently published in Nature Plants.

Combining the expertise of lightning scientists and tropical field biologists — including Steve Yanoviak, a research associate at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute from the University of Louisville, Jeannine Richards, a former postdoctoral fellow in his lab, and Evan Gora, a Smithsonian Tupper Fellow and former student in the Yanoviak lab — the study looked into the effects of lightning strikes on the Panama Canal forests of the Barro Colorado Nature Monument for several years.

Yanoviak and his colleagues estimate that lightning strikes tropical forests millions of times a year and because lightning frequency may increase in the future due to climate change, they aimed to understand how susceptibility to lightning may vary across tree species.

In a way, the remarkable biodiversity of tropical forests also makes them more resilient in the face of hazards. Just as successful team work relies on recognizing the strengths and weaknesses of team members, biodiverse tropical forests rely on the contributions of every organism in the ecosystem to thrive. The scientists found that some species did quite well after a lightning strike — especially those most likely to be struck — while others fared poorly. Palms, in particular, were the most likely to die.

“The tree species that were most frequently damaged by lightning tended to be the same species that were most capable of surviving lightning strikes,” said Gora. “This suggests that lightning is an important selective force with implications for the ecology and evolution of tropical forests.”

Not surprisingly, the most lightning-resistant tree species had a few things in common. Their wood was denser, they had larger vessels for transporting water, and their leaves were richer in nitrogen.

“Trees with denser wood tend to live longer and store more carbon, so finding this trait correlated with lightning tolerance implies an interesting compensatory mechanism where greater lightning frequency could actually favor species that are better at storing carbon,” said Richards.

In other words, tree species with a greater capacity for removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere also seem to be better equipped at surviving lightning, which is a valuable trait to have in the face of increasing greenhouse gas emissions and climate change.

“The results of this study are especially interesting because they suggest that changes in lightning strike frequency can influence the composition of tropical forests over the long term,” said Yanoviak.

Story Source:

Materials provided by Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute. Original written by Leila Nilipour. Note: Content may be edited for style and length.

#Nature

[frogofalltime]

is there a guidance counsellor / careers advisor / mentor you can talk to at school ? they can help you list your interests and skills and come up with ideas. for example my mentor helped me write a chart of my strengths and weaknesses and the things i'm passionate about, and we talked about what sort of things i would be good at or enjoy doing, and i realised i wanted to be an ecologist. it took me until i was 21 to figure that out !

and then since being at university studying ecology i have gravitated more into fieldwork than lab research, and i decided i want to specifically focus on animals. i also finally accepted that i'm trans, thanks to the freedom of living away from my family and having a lot of queer friends, and i made steps towards transitioning such as getting on the waiting list for gender services. i didn't get that figured out until i was 22. i'm discovering new things all the time and changing my goals for the future and that's okay !!

my point is, you can take your time and there are so many good opportunities waiting for you. you can even dm me and i will try to help you think through things if that might help <3

I don't know what to do with my life. It's a problem that has made everything harder

I have no clue what I want to do with my life

So I'm just running blind and hoping I'll find out what to do. I don't think I will.

I need the purpose and direction that every one else seems to have. But I don't have it so I cost through life barely even getting by.

[thecreaturecodex]

Yin Shu

Image © @a-book-of-creatures​, accessed at A Book of Creatures here

[The consonite choir, and my fondness for semi-mundane details of fantastic landscapes inspired this entry. The worlds of fantasy RPGs are filled with subterranean predators ready to eat player characters... but what else do they eat? Where are the herbivores? Forgotten Realms has the rothe, sort of subterranean yaks, and Pathfinder’s Darklands at least has some herbivorous dinosaurs down in the Vaults of Orv, but herbivores are still definitely few and far between. Hence the “hidden mouse”, a Chinese entity that explains where mammoth bones and tusks come from in a worldview without prehistoric elephants roaming around in the recent past.]

Yin Shu CR 4 N Magical Beast This enormous creature resembles a vole the size of an elephant. It has short clawed legs and large tusks, and its eyes are almost hidden by its shaggy hair.

The yin shu are giant rodent-like burrowers that live underground. They are important players in Darklands ecosystems—they consume plant roots, lichens and fungi, and are themselves consumed by predatory beasts and monsters. Bulettes and purple worms especially feed heavily on yin shu, and are more likely to prey on surface dwellers when yin shu populations are low. Yin shu live in fission-fusion societies, traveling alone when food is scarce and coming together when there are ample resources. They only dare go to the surface on moonless nights or during heavy storms—sunlight burns their skin and flesh, causing them to rapidly melt away into skeletons.

Some subterranean humanoids interact with yin shu, for a variety of purposes. Those with permanent settlements view yin shu as a potential nuisance, eating crops and undermining foundations. They are eaten, and their flesh is quite tasty, but killing a yin shu can be a dangerous prospect for an unprepared hunter. The flesh also evaporates in sunlight, so can only be eaten aboveground at night or inside buildings. Attempts to domesticate yin shu for use as labor animals has been mostly unsuccessful—yin shu are dimwitted and do not take direction well, but can be controlled with magic relatively easily. Derro are especially interested in yin shu because of their shared vulnerability to sunlight, and some derro labs contain yin shu as experimental animals. The tusks of a yin shu are almost indistinguishable from elephant ivory, and are used for the same purposes.

Yin Shu CR 4 XP 1,200 N Huge magical beast Init +0; Senses darkvision 60 ft., Perception +9, tremorsense 30 ft. Defense AC 16, touch 8, flat-footed 16 (-2 size, +8 natural) hp 47 (5d10+20) Fort +7, Ref +4, Will +2 Weakness light blindness, sunlight vulnerability Offense Speed 30 ft., burrow 20 ft. Melee gore +8 (2d8+5) Space 15 ft.; Reach 10 ft. Statistics Str 30, Dex 10, Con 17, Int 2, Wis 9, Cha 9 Base Atk +5; CMB +17; CMD 27 (31 vs. trip) Feats Endurance, Iron Will, Toughness Skills Climb +14, Perception +9, Swim +14; Racial Modifiers +4 Perception SQ docile, earth mover Ecology Environment underground Organization solitary, pair or herd (3-6) Treasure incidental Special Abilities Docile (Ex) A yin shu treats all of its natural weapons as secondary natural weapons. Earth Mover (Ex) A yin shu can burrow through solid rock. It treats solid rock as difficult terrain, and leaves a permanent tunnel behind as it moves through rock. Sunlight Vulnerability (Ex) A yin shu takes 1 point of Con damage each round it remains in direct sunlight (no save).

[prof-cycad]

I would love to hear your thoughts about how poison Pokémon are necessary for the maintenance of many environments ecology and your thoughts on the disruption produced by fossil Pokémon’s existence in modern environments.

Both are exceptionally important topics, thank so immensely much!!

More on both subjects will be included under the cut! This is quite a long post, but both topics are incredibly important.

In short, many Poison Types serve similar roles to other Pokemon but may be unable to fill in an environment! They also add much needed biodiversity, as all Pokemon, plants and fungi do.

Sadly, some Fossil Pokemon simply cannot survive in the modern world as well as they did in the past. If it is able to, a Fossil species may proliferate and harm modern Pokemon populations!

Elaborating more on the importance of Poison Type Pokemon, many ecosystems would collapse without them. However, too much toxins hurts everyone: Pokemon, people, plants and fungi. While a healthy amount of Poison Types help clean up the habitat, too many may hurt it.

For example, Salandit and Salazzle use their toxic saliva to make their prey weak while they wait for it to die of infection. On the other side of the spectrum, Koffing and Weezing may consume carrion in environments when Mandibuzz or Pawniard are unavailable!

Beedrill help pollinate both flowers and many Grass Types like Venusaur or Meganium while also consuming harmful species like Cutiefly or Ribombee. Alolan Muk and Grimer can metabolize harmful plastics into recyclable "Plasticrystalline waste"!

Fossil Pokemon often struggle to survive in the modern world, but some seem to do quite well. Most 'wild' Fossil Pokemon are assimilated species, like Kabutops, Aerodactyl, Cradily and many more. However, species like Tyrantrum or the Galar Fossils suffer from botched revival processes.

While Devon Corp's Fossil Revival project was in it's earlier stages, literal tons of fossil material were brought into Laboratories to be brought back to life. Many types had been 'discontinued' before being available to the public, and now are relegated back to the halls of natural history museums.

Responsible Fossil Trainers procure their Pokemon from trusted breeders or directly from certified Fossil Revival Labs, and never release them into the wild. There are two possible outcomes: the Fossil Pokemon outcompetes the native ones, or it quickly perishes in a world it is not made for.

[lovelyirony]

Stars with thorbruce

Bruce remembers his mother’s hand smoothing over his curls, telling him stories of how the constellations came to be. He remembers hearing soft words of using the Big Dipper for milk and cookies. He smiles as he remembers asking his mother who lived among the stars. 

They were beautiful, surely someone had to live there. 

His mother smiled. 

“You will find it out, my smart boy. None of us know yet, although some of us have a feeling that we’re not alone in this galaxy.” 

Bruce would look out his window every night and ask the stars who among them lived in what world. He asked how their world was. 

Thor knew others lived other places. His mother read Loki and he stories of other people, how they lived. 

His father said how Asgard ruled it all with a golden-hued hand. 

He asks of Terran people, Midgardians. 

“You don’t need to concern yourself with them,” Odin says. “Now go and train. A weak king serves no purpose on a strong throne.” 

- 

Bruce does not smile when he realizes that there are others out there, not when he’s been dragged in as a monster to help fight other monsters. Accepted, just this once. 

He looks up at beings who look like stars for one brief second. And then they descend with a roar, and he knows. 

He turns, letting Hulk take the lead. 

His mother knew they were not alone. 

But she could not have known this was the result.  

- 

Thor is…different. He returns from taking his brother back to…Asgard? And he is quiet. 

Bruce just quietly moves around him to get his tea or food. 

“Dr. Banner?” Thor asks, his voice impossibly soft. It does not fit a man who is as large and imposing as he is. “Can you…what can you tell me about Earth?” 

“It sucks,” Bruce answers automatically. 

Thor blinks. 

Bruce does not want to explain why earth sucks. So he takes his naan and goes back to his room. 

- 

The god cannot leave well enough alone. He is knocking on Bruce’s door at eight o’clock in the morning. 

Bruce answers in an old t-shirt that’s seen better days, old pants, and bags under his eyes. 

“Why does earth suck so much?” 

Bruce sighs. 

“Go to the kitchen. I’ll explain there.” 

Bruce goes into a long-winded tangent about how much human invented concepts suck and how policy makes everything slow and he can’t even fly in a plane because he’s deemed a flight risk and people keep trying to kill him and the unending guilt over his own mistakes will be his demise. 

“Do you guys have therapy on earth?” Thor asks. 

Bruce laughs. 

“Yeah, we do. I need to find a new therapist soonish. Just hard with my…issue. Earth doesn’t suck. It’s cool.” 

“Show me?” 

“Uh…yes?” Bruce asks, blinking. “What do you want to see?” 

“What’s your favorite thing about earth?” 

Bruce has to think. 

“Come with me tonight. On the roof.” 

- 

The stars are never as bright as they were in Ohio, which is about the only good thing Bruce can say about Ohio. It’s the only good thing anyone could say, really. 

“Are you serious?” 

“Yes, never go there,” Bruce says. “Ever.” 

“…noted. Not even for one of your natural…reserve park things?” 

“Nope. Not even for those. You’re gonna get murdered there.” 

“I’m a god, Bruce.” 

“Ohio people only believe in one god, and that god is less jacked than you.” 

They laugh together. 

Bruce tells him all about his mother’s stories of the stars, what he learned from others. 

“Do you want to hear our stories?” Thor asks softly. 

They make a habit of going on the roof once a week, weather permitting. If it does not permit, they sit in the sunroom and have coffee, chatting that way. 

Bruce learns that Thor was alive when Nikola Tesla was, but never went to earth. 

“I was in training to become king, and Odin didn’t really want me venturing out too far,” Thor says. “But I heard that earth had some catching up to do. You definitely have us beat with food though. Damn.” 

They stare over at the stars. 

Bruce struggles to ignore his red cheeks or the fact that Tony keeps calling him “lover boy.” 

“Nope. I’m not that.” 

“Sure you aren’t, the rest of us spend time gazing into Thor’s eyes,” Tony says, batting his eyelashes. “Just ask him out already.” 

“Get therapy,” Bruce shoots back. 

“Are we talking about how we all need collective help?” Natasha asks. “I thought that was what Steve’s meeting was about tonight.” 

“Shit, I’m not going to that then,” Clint says. “Do you think he’ll buy it if I tell him that my dog has a son?” 

“I don’t buy anything, I grew up in the Great Depression,” Steve responds, coming down the stairs. “Also Clint, you have a dog? Since when?” 

“Since never,” Clint responds back. “I don’t have a dog.” 

“Good, Tony said no dogs.” 

“For Steve,” Tony mumbles. “But we’‘re missing the obvious part of this discussion, which is Bruce’s love-life.” 

“I don’t have one of those in stock.” 

“Check in the back,” Tony snarks. 

Bruce rolls his eyes. 

“I don’t have a love-life guys,” Bruce says. “The only thing I love is dismantling huge corporations that are evading ecological law.” 

“And also hanging out a ton with Thor,” Natasha responds. “Wait, are you–” 

“If we have to talk about emotions then I demand we discuss Natasha’s thirsty tweet about Sharon.” 

“My cousin, Romanoff?!” Tony yells. 

Bruce takes this time to escape down to his lab, where Natasha is not allowed in. 

“I cannot say with full certainty that she will not break in,” Jarvis answers. “But I will try my best, Dr. Banner. Hell hath no woman like a woman.” 

“You’re just as bad as Tony with phrases,” Bruce says. “But thanks.” 

Thor is down there. 

“Why is Natasha locked out of the lab?” 

“She told me that she preferred wine from California, she was obviously banned,” Bruce says quickly. 

“I thought last week’s argument was you and her against Clint,” Thor says. “And I think you won? Clint thought his expired Kool-Aid was wine. That was a very sad night.” 

Bruce freezes. 

“Ha. Yeah. That was right. She’s still banned.” 

“What was the debate upstairs about? I heard snippets about it. Tony said something about checking in the back? Is he mad about the fruit again? He can’t expect to buy strawberries and them to still be there.” 

Bruce laughs. 

“Nah, Steve’s having a group talk about therapy options for us. I think Tony’s gonna try and con his way out of it by pushing Bucky in front of him. It won’t work.” 

- 

As it turns out, Natasha has swift revenge. 

She can’t break into the lab. 

But she can make sure the two of them can’t break out. 

“Until you confess the door is gonna be closed,” Natasha says over the intercom. 

“Confess what?” Thor asks, looking nervous. 

“Oh…you know. Stuff. Now you have to by six, otherwise Steve will break you out and then you have to say it as a duo. Do you want to tell all of us or just the two of you…alone?” Nat asks. 

“Fuck you,” Bruce says, flipping off the sensor. 

- 

Thor’s nervous. He…this is new. He hasn’t liked someone is what is probably about two thousand years. 

Bruce is…he’s different. 

He likes the small things and rants about how stupid the smallest things are (like his least favorite spoon) and also looks phenomenal when the sun is shining and he’s laughing about a new story and…

Thor wants a forever. He’s known forever. 

But he hasn’t known forever with Bruce. 

And now they’re locked in his lab. 

Bruce bangs his head against the table. 

“Think Steve will break us out?” 

Thor is about to answer when the intercom comes to life again. 

“No, he won’t be,” Tony says. “I’ve managed to convince him to share his PowerPoint on what kind of fork he wants to reorder for the kitchen. He got passionate about what design he wants on the handle.” 

There’s a muffled yell that sounds suspiciously like “no curvature on the handle!” and then silence. 

“God,” Bruce mutters. 

They sit in silence for a moment. Thor’s not exactly sure what to say. It’s not like they make Hallmark cards for “you’re the first person I’ve loved in about two millennia and I want you to be mine until the earth implodes.” 

Similarly they don’t make a Hallmark card for “I thought I was incapable of love but now I’ve fallen in love with you and you’re a god and I’m a near-indestructible chaos-bringer.” 

It’s a work in progress for the card-making interns, honestly. 

“What did Nat mean by talking to me?” Thor asks. “I know this is probably gonna be awkward. Wouldn’t be locked into a lab if it wasn’t.” 

If Bruce had had maybe ten minutes to himself, he would’ve come up with a good lie. One that he could say without shifting eyes or a stuttering mouth. But he can’t. Lying takes time. 

“So I’m pretty sure I like you. As in want to take you out on a date like you. And I didn’t tell you because you’re a god.” 

Thor blinks. 

“Bruce no offense but you calling me a god and also seeing me at my lowest in salmon board shorts? Hilarious.” 

Bruce gives him a face. 

“You know what I mean.” 

“And I was going to say that I like you, but you are a brilliant scientist who changed your world through discovery, not by force,” Thor responds. “You love helping others and you also turn into a giant green guy who likes food trucks and hates not smashing things.” 

Bruce blinks. 

“Did we–?” 

“Yeah, we did. I also think this means we have an excuse to miss both Steve’s presentation on fork styles as well as his call for therapy, which in reality was only for Clint.” 

The lab doors open. Bruce automatically flips Natasha off, but is met with Natasha flipping him off. 

“Tony wants to talk to me about my ‘intentions’ with his cousin because of you, Banner. This means war.” 

“Well now I have a guy who has a giant, unliftable hammer on my side,” Bruce says defensively. He grabs onto Thor’s hand, grinning. “Just try me.” 

Thor smiles too. 

“I believe I owe Bruce a few more dates, so we will regrettably be missing Clint’s intervention,” Thor says. “See you later!” 

Clint makes a groupchat with them in it only to send: 

:((((( guys :( 

They don’t check it until the morning, after Bruce rolls over and complains that Thor has way better pillows. 

[lostinthelightss]

literal chaos fire (ch.1)

amazing banner by @downn-in-flames​ / down-in-flames@FFT

find it elsewhere: fft | ao3 | ff.net | hpff learn more: chaos universe link to other chapters: 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15 link to missing moments: 5.5, 7.5, 8.5, 15.5

pairing: Lily Luna Potter / OC genre: AU, Humor, Romance rating: mature audiences

summary: 

Victoire Weasley is a masters student in infectious diseases handling a devastating break up with her girlfriend of two years. Lily Potter is a first year law student navigating a figurative minefield that is the star quarterback’s unrequited affection. Molly Weasley is pursuing her bachelors in engineering while pining over her best friend - who doesn’t seem to realize it.

Three women, three vastly different lives, all coming together with group chats, family dinners, and a whole lot of chaos.

chapter summary: 

Mollz: Attachment: 1 Image Mollz: plz see that on april 18th at 7:29pm i did indeed say that law school was going to be hard

lawyerlilz: Attachment: 1 Image lawyerlilz: you're forgetting that 2mins later you said "work hard, play harder"

SEPTEMBER 15TH, 2021

'the dopest house' (foxyroxy, freddieboy, jamesatron, moollywoobbles, rose) 5:27pm

moollywoobbles: @jamesatron, how did you get into my room? moollywoobbles: i s2g, i have a lab tomorrow moollywoobbles: i'm not doing this moollywoobbles: FINE I'LL DO IT moollywoobbles: but i will get my REVENGE!

freddieboy: why don't you ever ice me? freddieboy: i'm starting to feel left out

jamesatron: PAYBACK FOR LAST PARTY jamesatron: YOU LEFT ME IN THE BATHROOM ALONE jamesatron: I WOKE UP IN THE DARK AND THOUGHT I DIED

moollywoobbles: that was @rose, and im offended you mixed us up

rose: he was fully naked and covered in vomit, i thought he'd be better off lying on the linoleum than causing irreparable damage to our carpets

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'literal chaos fire' (lawyerlilz, Mollz, VickyBaby) 8:49pm

lawyerlilz: two weeks in and i'm already drowning in work lawyerlilz: why did you guys let me go to law school?

Mollz: i told you it was gonna be hard Mollz: but did you listen? Mollz: no

VickyBaby: you actively supported her in this

Mollz: Attachment: 1 Image Mollz: plz see that on april 18th at 7:29pm i did indeed say that law school was going to be hard

lawyerlilz: Attachment: 1 Image lawyerlilz: you're forgetting that 2mins later you said "work hard, play harder"

Mollz: and i stand by both statements

VickyBaby: why do i feel like you're currently drinking

Mollz: james managed to hide another ice in my room when i was in class today Mollz: and after that i decided that having one drink was weak Mollz: i'm a few in

lawyerlilz: it's 9pm lawyerlilz: on a wednesday

VickyBaby: weren't you just complaining about your lab tomorrow? VickyBaby: and don't you have like a bajillion classes always?

Mollz: work hard, play harder baby

VickyBaby: never call me baby again

lawyerlilz: IT'S LITERALLY YOUR NICKNAME

Mollz: DON'T WANT ME TO CALL YOU THAT, DON'T NAME YOURSELF THAT

VickyBaby: alright, alright! damn, calm down... VickyBaby: seriously though, don't you have an early morning lab

Mollz: yeah but it's just circuits Mollz: and malfoy said the basics of it all is done Mollz: i just have to do the write up

lawyerlilz: i wish we had partners for contracts lawyerlilz: thinking is hard

VickyBaby: like disease ecology is easy? VickyBaby: we're looking at ebola right now VickyBaby: did you know the r0 is too low in humans for it to spread effectively? VickyBaby: but gorilla populations are absolutely decimated by it

lawyerlilz: how does Teddy stand you?

Mollz: she puts out

VickyBaby: actually... VickyBaby: i think Teddy and i are on a break...

Mollz: WHAT?! Mollz: what does 'i think' mean? Mollz: you've been together for like 2 years Mollz: and why didn't you tell us immediately?!

lawyerlilz: molly, shut up lawyerlilz: a 2y relationship just ended, she's entitled to her alone time

VickyBaby: actually...

Mollz: WHAT NOW?! Mollz: STOP STRESSING ME OUT I HAVE CIRCUITS LAB IN THE MORNING

lawyerlilz: i thought you just had to do the write up lawyerlilz: don't make me text scorpius and tell him that you're drinking the night before class lawyerlilz: again lawyerlilz: his roommate's gonna ask to talk to me lawyerlilz: again lawyerlilz: and i'm going to have to turn him down

lawyerlilz: AGAIN Mollz: AGAIN VickyBaby: AGAIN

VickyBaby: yeah, we know VickyBaby: i don't understand how you don't find that man attractive VickyBaby: starting quarterback AND captain?

lawyerlilz: i think that mollz drinking in the middle of the week is a bigger issue than my love life lawyerlilz: especially considering it's only her first week

Mollz: i'm taking ordinary differential equations Mollz: why wouldn't i start drinking Mollz: and the big issue here is Vic's love life, not how much fun i have

VickyBaby: ... Teddy and I are taking a break VickyBaby: because she's going to America on exchange VickyBaby: she's leaving in a week

Mollz: i'll key her car Mollz: i'll get xander to hack into the school's system and fail her Mollz: i'll ruin HER ENTIRE LIFE

VickyBaby: plz don't do that

lawyerlilz: who's keeping snuggles?

VickyBaby: the cats staying with me VickyBaby: if she'd fought me on that i would've let molly's wrath free

Mollz: i'll still do it

lawyerlilz: as your cousin, i'd help lawyerlilz: as your soon-to-be-lawyer, plz don't

Mollz: james says he's in Mollz: also james is already on his way to her place Mollz: and i might be with him

VickyBaby: MOLLY, DON'T YOU DARE

lawyerlilz: i'll tell Scorp lawyerlilz: don't think i won't

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(Lily Potter, Scorpius Malfoy) 9:26pm

Lily: molly's drunk Lily: and probably doing illegal things Lily: just thought you should know

Scorpius: lilz! it's me! Scorpius: james and i were a little too tipsy so malfoy's driving the car Scorpius: :)))

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'literal chaos fire' (lawyerlilz, Mollz, VickyBaby) 9:32pm

lawyerlilz: VickyBaby she's recruited Scorp lawyerlilz: this isn't gonna end well

VickyBaby: don't worry, Teddy moved home like 2 weeks ago

lawyerlilz: so they're going to be doing illegal things lawyerlilz: AT A STRANGER'S HOUSE?!

VickyBaby: oh shit

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'old fogies' (Fred [the smart dumb one], James [the older twin], Lily [ur 15mins older], Molly [the dumb smart one], Rose [the granger], Vic [the science beb]) 9:35pm

Vic [the science beb]: @Rose [the granger] @Fred [the smart dumb one] Vic [the science beb]: WHY DIDN'T YOU STOP THEM?

Rose [the granger]: they promised to do all the house chores until Christmas

Lily [ur 15mins older]: SO YOU GAVE THEM THE KEYS?! Lily [ur 15mins older]: THEY'RE DRUNK!

Rose [the granger]: Scorpius was 100% sober and i specifically asked them not to tell me what they needed the car for

Lily [ur 15mins older]: THEY'RE GOING TO TEDDY'S HOUSE

Rose [the granger]: i don't see the issue here

Vic [the science beb]: Teddy broke up with me to go on exchange Vic [the science beb]: also she doesn't live there anymore Vic [the science beb]: and they don't know that

Rose [the granger]: OH NO

Lily [ur 15mins older]: OH NO IS RIGHT Lily [ur 15mins older]: also, where's @Fred [the smart dumb one]

Rose [the granger]: HE'S WITH THEM

Rose [the granger]: FUCK Lily [ur 15mins older]: FUCK Vic [the blonde beb]: FUCK

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'the dopest house' (foxyroxy, freddieboy, jamesatron, moollywoobbles, rose) 9:54pm

rose: GUYS STOP rose: THAT'S THE WRONG HOUSE rose: TEDDY DOESN'T LIVE THERE ANYMORE

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(RosieBear, ScorpiStud) 9:55pm

RosieBear: i will kill you RosieBear: you cannot be serious RosieBear: babe, i will actually murder you

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(Lily Potter, Scorpius Weasley) 9:55pm

Lily: SCORP STOP Lily: IT'S NOT TEDDY'S HOUSE

10:02pm

Lily: SCORPIUS MALFOY I WILL END YOU

10:08pm

Lily: I'M NOT AN ACTUAL LAWYER YET I CAN'T DEFEND YOU

10:17pm

Lily: SCORPIUS!

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'the dopest house' (foxyroxy, freddieboy, jamesatron, moollywoobbles, rose) 10:23pm

freddieboy: hey @rose freddieboy: so bad news is freddieboy: we may have gotten caught freddieboy: the good news is freddieboy: campus cops' golf carts are terribly slow

rose: WHAT?!

freddieboy: we'll be home in 5 freddieboy: plz open the garage freddieboy: we don't know if they saw the license plate

rose: i am not going to be an accomplice

moollywoobbles: scorp wants to remind you that it looks bad on politicians if they're married to a criminal

freddieboy: and he said that he'll finally start watching Grey's with you

rose: it's open rose: and i hate you all

freddieboy: love you toooooooo

jamesatron: <3

foxyroxy: hey guys, remember when you promised you would pick me up after my night class? foxyroxy: think you could still swing by? foxyroxy: you won't even have to stop, just open the door and i'll jump in

jamesatron: FAST AND FURIOUS BABEYYY