Uncle Milton Passes Away but not Before the Ant-Farm goes into Space

"That's something I'd never do. I'd never step on an ant. Put three of my kids through college."

That quote from Milton Levine, co-creator with his brother-in-law, of the class ant-farm, was taken from an interview with NPR radio. Milton died last week, at the age of 97, in California.

Milton came up with the idea for the ant-farm after watching some pavement ants one day. he brought the classic ant-farm to the market in 1956 and, over the years, has sold over 20 million.

You can still buy the classic Uncle Milton Ant-Farm, as shown above, at a number of on-line retailers. In recent years, however, another design has become more popular. These are an illuminated farm in which the soil/sand has been replaced with a florescent gel. The gel apparently, isn't just a digging medium, but contains some food and water for the ants. I'll have to buy one and try it out.

An ant-farm has even gone into space. A project designed by high school students from Syracuse, New York, sent 17 harvester ants into space on the shuttle Columbia in 2003. The purpose was to study how they tunnel in a micro-gravity environment. While their data was downloaded each day during the project, the ants would never return alive. They were lost when the Columbia disintegrated during re-entry on Feb 1, 2003.

I've always wondered why the choice of ants for these farms was almost always harvester ants (Pogonomyrmex spp.). Apparently their large size reduced the number of escapees, a characteristic some parents probably valued greatly. The problem with this species, however, is their painful sting. It is much worse than the southern fire ant (Solenopsis invicta).

Last night, I happened to catch the replay of an interview on CBC Radio from 1997, with the Canadian distributor for Uncle Milton ant-farms. He didn't seem as particular about the ant species and was offering 0.5 - 0.75 cents per ant to prospective ant-ranglers (I think his ad for ant-ranglers prompted the interview). Seems when people buy these farms they like them to come with ants. I don't know if the job still stands but it could be a fairly lucrative way to spend the summer.

Photo Credit: NPR Radio

http://www.npr.org/2011/01/26/133249612/Uncle-Milton-Ant-Farm-Co-Inventor-Dies-At-97

Croatian Basketball Ants...Oh...and Brad Pitt

Today I received a very interesting ticket to a basketball game held recently in Zagreb, Croatia. It came from a good friend of mine, Glen Chilton (now living in Townsville, Australia), with whom I chased termites in New Orleans a few years back. Glen was in Croatia to chase a particular and peculiar small freshwater fish known as a Dace, previously described as extinct. The purpose of the chase was for a book he is working on. The basketball game was another matter entirely, and Glen thought that it mattered in a particular way to me.

At first glance, as Glen noticed in his letter, the team mascot looks like a bee. Yes, but look at what it is standing upon. In fact, it isn't a bee, but rather an ant. Why would a basketball team choose ants as their team mascot?

I'm thinking they know Greek mythology.

According to Ovid's Metamorphosis, the Island of Aegina was devastated by a plague (caused by Zeus's wife Hera in some accounts) that resulted in the death of all but the family of King Aeacus. The King pleaded to Zeus to help his kingdom. Zeus, in fickle Greek god fashion, answers the call by transforming the ants nesting in an oak tree, just outside the palace window, into an army of young soldiers. We don't learn where the women of the island might have come from but apparently whoever first created this story was unaware that the ants in question would have almost certainly all have been female. In any event, these became know as the Myrmidons, a self-sacrificing, aggressive and ruthless army that would come to be led by Achilles of Illiad fame.

And who played Achilles in the 2004 movie Troy? Brad Pitt! Brad was the leader of the ant army, and descendant of the ants himself.

So why would a basketball team have ants as their mascot? Well, who wouldn`t want to associate a team with the most competitive, aggressive team players on the planet, ants! It was common in England in the 1800s to call gangs of thugs Myrmidons, so it is nice to see ants rehabilitated into a more normative team activity.

Photo credits:

Scanned copy of ticket-Me

Movie Poster from Wikipedia (Troy (film))

Nature vs Nurture

Trust is the central theme in the comedy movie series that started with Meet the Parents. In the sequel, Meet the Fockers, Jack the father-in-law steals a DNA sample from Greg to secretly test for a suspected hidden paternity.

But what if you could test for much more?

Garcia and others (2010) have recently published a study in which they found that the incidence in which one partner in a relationship cheats on the other, more than doubles when the cheating partner has a particular copy of a gene encoding for the dopamine receptor DRD4 (specifically having a form of the gene in which there are more than 7 repeats of a particular sequence in one section of the gene). And were are not talking about guppies here, were are talking about people.

Table 1. Percentage who report an extra-relationship sexual experience by DRD4 genotype (7R+ vs 7R-) (from Garcia and others. 2010).

This dopamine receptor has been turning up in all sorts of interesting behavioral studies. One other form has been associated with political liberalism as an adult, and yet another with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder.

Intriguing is the well established relationship between dopamine and two hormones (oxytocin and vasopressin). Oxytocin has long been called the "cuddle hormone" because seems to be involved in romantic love, while vasopressin has been labelled as the 'divorce gene,' because a particular receptor type has been linked to problems with pair-bonding (i.e., monogamy).

Perhaps the take home message here is that the old 'O GOD' (i.e., one gene, one disorder) idea is dead, as most biologists have known for a long time. Yes, human behavior is strongly influenced by genes, but it is an interaction of many genes that matter. Research is just beginning to untangle this and any interest in predicting behavior based on what is known now would be less reliable than the already completely unreliable lie detector.

Still, I wonder how the report of the DRD4 infidelity paper will be received. Will there be yet another sequel to Meet the Parents in which Jack has Greg tested for his DRD4 receptor sub-type. I did a quick search to see if any genetics companies were offering a test for DRD4. It seems not yet, but I'll bet it won't be long.

Reference

Garcia JR, et al. 2010. Associations between dopamine D4 receptor gene variation and both infidelity and sexual promiscuity. PLoS ONE 5(11): e14162.

What`s in a Word?

This figure shows how frequently the word "Science" turns up in publications between the year 1500 and 2008. It is expressed as a frequency so it isn't an increase in the total number of books published that causes a change in the trendline.

Google has come up with either the best time waster ever, or a fantastic tool to follow trends historically. Google calls it the Ngram, it is an online tool that allows you to search for the use of single or multiple words or phrases, published in everything scanned by Google Books. The site can be found at:

http://ngrams.googlelabs.com/

It is very interesting to see how certain words or phrases compete for dominance over time. Consider the use of the terms Greenhouse Effect (red), Global Warming (blue) and Climate Change (green) between the years 1960 and 2008. Clearly the term Climate Change has won the battle, a reflection of the political effort to neuter the impact of this huge issue.

I think this tool offers an incredible number of opportunities for research regardless of your field of interest. Consider for example the changes in the frequency with which the word "Poverty" turns up in publications (1500-2008). What might be behind these changes?

Borneo 14: Hong Kong

Hong Kong makes Vancouver seem rural. Central Hong Kong, on Hong Kong Island is an incredibly busy place. The video above was taken early in the morning before things really started to get busy.

Still, Hong Kong is a mix of the new and the old.

What surprised me, in a city renowned for selling the latest in electronics, was the widespread use of bamboo, even as scaffolding material. Alfred Wallace noted the myriad of applications for bamboo when travelling through the Malay Archipelago back in the 1850s. He wrote of it frequently. I doubt he would be surprised to find it still in use over 150 years later in a much more technologically advanced world.

The scaffolding running twenty or so stories up, shown above, is entirely bamboo.

Bamboo stacked for additional scaffolding.

Photo Credits: Me

Borneo 13: The islands of KK

Just offshore from Kota Kinabalu (KK), Borneo, are a number of small islands you can reach by about a 10-20 minute boat ride. I headed out to Palau Mamutik after returning to KK from Danum this week.

Depending on the conditions on the South China Sea when you leave KK the ride itself can be an adventure. The only speed is full throttle (twin 100 HP engines), regardless of the wave conditions. When I left KK, the sea was running with a pretty heavy cross-sea. I thought the boat was going to shatter into pieces from the incredible and endless pounding. It was the wildest ride I`ve ever taken.

Once you are on the islands the pace changes. The islands are great for snorkeling for just lounging around. I wouldn`t call the snorkeling fantastic, but it is worth the day. Moorish Idols, Pufferfish, Sargent Majors, Parrotfish are common. The coral, however, isn`t in great shape. On some islands just to the northeast, dynamite fishing has completely destroyed the reefs and ended any hope of drawing tourists to the area.

When taking the boat back to KK we came across a mid-sized ship that I thought was sinking. The stern was completely underwater and the bow was at sea level with every wave washing over the deck. Seaman stood on crates to stay out of the sea, and the only thing out of the water was the pilot house. I was thinking we would be rescuing the crew, but I came to understand, from the limited English of our boat captain that all was okay. This ship was taking fresh water out to the islands. It does this once a week and they fill it completely with fresh water, hence the the complete lack of freeboard. Insane.

Borneo 12: Danum

A few random shots from the Danum Conservation Area.

Afternoon rain. As the heat builds up in the morning, the dense humidity is pumped up into the air and often falls as a torrential downpour in the afternoon. This is the dry season.

A giant cicada. This arrived at our night light trap on the first evening. A perfectly healthy and incredibly loud cicada. It sounds like a honking Canada Goose, and is just as loud.

A King Cobra. Interestingly this particular cobra was found in the women's showers awhile ago. Both King and Black Cobras are found at Danum, although both are uncommon. One local field worker noted that he was chased by a Black Cobra last year while working in the same location that we were collecting. These cobras are spitters. They spit into your eyes and as you stagger from being blinded they bite. It is generally considered fatal, although I see in the local papers today that someone is recovering after a King Cobra bite. He was only in a coma for two months.

A Red Leaf Monkey leaps from branch to branch. Watching these monkeys make huge leaps, often falling a fair distance before catching a branch on the next tree, was endlessly fascinating. These monkeys and gibbons were regulars at the field station.

Photo Credits: Me