Kinda crazy how speaking English is almost a form of literacy without which your access to the relevant scientific and sociopolitical conversations of our time is seriously limited.... Thank God I started reading yaoi fanfiction on American websites at age 14

He has a lot to say

(via)

This

looks

familiar…?

@livingbythewords 🤔

Wild strawberries are a Dionysian orgy of sweet flavorful delight compared with the insipid, hellish store bought strawberries.

Most of my wild strawberry plants' flowers failed to pollinate for some strange reason (I guess there's not very many strawberry plants in the surrounding area?) but the few strawberries I did get tasted like a strawberry starburst but tangier and better

@headspace-hotel

Here, where I live my Mom used to plant white wild strawberries ‘Fragaria Vesca L’:

This white wild strawberry is a subvariety of the Baron Solemacher wild strawberry. Ripe fruits are creamy white and the flesh is creamy yellow. Ripe white wild strawberries remain firm and do not crumple like red ones. They even tolerate contact with water better.

We added them to regular red wild strawberries when preparing cakes and desserts with jelly to get a national flag themed summer sweets.

Spiders? Hate them but see their use. Mosquitoes? Begrudgingly acknowledge that they like... feed bats. But can anyone explain what the fuck ticks are doing that's helpful??? Because frankly I'm not convinced they're doing anything nice for anyone

ticks are a massive source of protein for the many many creatures that eat them, same as mosquitos. they're integral to the food chain.

also, parasites of all kinds are incredibly important to ecosystems for many reasons: they help keep populations- especially of large herbivores and predators- low and healthy, they help individuals develop immune strength, and they are often integral parts of their food webs.

much of life is parasitic. it's a very successful life-plan and food strategy. dont hold it against them: blood is a really nutritious food and the creatures they target (generally) have a lot of it. it's not their 'fault' they have the capacity to carry even smaller parasites/diseases. that's just how life is

Deer is big creature, has microbe community inside it making it super good at digesting plant, turning plant into easy nutrients.

Small creatures would like nutrients. Deer is too big to eat, hoards all the nutrients. RUDE! Not everybody can be a wolf! Not fair :(

Tick bites deer. Tick takes tiny bit of deer's blood, falls off deer. Tick now contains deer's nutrients

Small creature eats tick. Nutrients in deer go into small creatures.

In this way, deer can become food for spiders, birds, lizards, beetles, ants. It couldn't happen without ticks. They are the portable snack packs of the forest

What about fleas? I hate those little bugs

I think there's nothing wrong with being disgusted by parasites, it's just an instinct that evolved to stop little guys from taking all your nutrients.

And infectious diseases spread really easily by contact with blood, so the snack packs of the forest are also like public transportation systems for blood-borne pathogens.

But outside of your very understandable desire as an organism to keep your blood inside and pathogens outside, parasites are an amazing and thought provoking aspect of life's diversity.

Wild animals can have dozens of different species of worms and arthropods living on or in them. (Most big animal species even have their own parasites that can only live on that animal.) To the parasite, animals are worlds; a deer is like a planet inhabited by its own fauna, just like deer inhabit the landscape.

Isn't it awe-inspiring that you can go into a habitat and see animals inhabiting it, but each animal IS a habitat with its own animals...

And it keeps going! Parasites often have their own parasites, called hyper-parasites! And hyper-parasites can have hyper-parasites! How many layers of animal are there?!?

Parasites are symbiotic creatures that decrease the fitness of their partner, but "parasite=harmful" is not quite right, since parasitism interlocks the fates of organisms in complex ways. Sometimes a parasite has to spend the first part of its life cycle in one animal, and the second part in another totally different animal. How do they get there? Maybe the second animal eats the first one. The parasite needs this predator-prey interaction to happen to continue life! If the predator turns to other prey, the parasite can't live. But if the predator loses its other prey and has nothing to eat except that prey, well that might seem like a good thing except now there are 27 of you in the same predator's digestive tract, and the predator is now weak and struggles to hunt. If your host starves, you are all dead for certain!

Parasites in a situation with two hosts, one predator the other prey, sometimes might change the prey's behavior to make it easier for the predator to catch. This might be considered helping the predator. Is the parasite "harming" the predator or just taking a cut of the profits when it makes a kill? It's complicated!

Another way to do it is to be a parasite that lives inside a parasite that lives on the outside of an animal, and when the animal grooms itself and bites the ectoparasite out of its fur, the parasite living inside the parasite can now grow inside the host animal.

Parasites' impact on their hosts' behaviors impacts the whole environment! For example maybe a herd of deer likes to browse on the tender shoots down in the swamp, but they do not like the swarms of mosquitoes. By driving off the deer, the mosquitoes help the orchids in the swamp survive. If a bison wallows in the dirt to get rid of parasites, it creates a disturbance that gives rise to a little mini habitat for flowers that can't survive in the tall, less disturbed grass. If parasites make it unhealthy for animals to live crammed in a small area, they might be driven to disperse and move to new habitats, or to have a system of migrating from place to place. If a large animal is itchy and scratches itself against a tree and rubs the bark off, that might kill the tree, which is bad for the tree but great for the woodpeckers that need standing deadwood to hunt for food.

Speaking of woodpeckers, we have recently learned that woodpeckers transmit lichens and mosses to new places! And woodpeckers also were found to harbor freshwater diatoms...which should be found in freshwater streams, but perhaps got onto the bird when it was taking a bath...why does a bird take a bath? Perhaps to get rid of parasites...?

...Basically, everything is so interconnected that a flea could affect an unimaginable number of things. Parasites weave together the ecosystem in ways we barely understand.

Of course, you should still treat your dog or cat for fleas...but that's part of your symbiosis with the dog or cat, so even the space where a flea should be, is a space where organisms are bound together.

AMAZING POST— rbing to add a fun source!

These researchers essentially argue that parasites are the “invisible” stability in our food webs— that parasites when modeled over a normal trophic pyramid will form an almost upside down pyramid!!

This is one of their figures (based on a California salt marsh study looking at parasites based on trophic level of the host) and shows the interconnection of an ordinary macroorganism food web (red) overlayed with parasites (yellow)!

“Homage to Linneas: how many parasites, how many hosts?” (Dobson et al. 2008)

CA Marsh experiment specifically: “Parasites dominate food web links” (Lafferty et al. 2006)

WOAG

Side tangent, in terms of different species’ first meeting. I know we decided there would be such a thing as universal translator, but what about visual aspect of interaction?

Take Superman, for example, and his X-ray vision. He had to learn that looking into someone’s body, like under layers of clothes, is peeping and socially unacceptable on Earth, right? But checking for lungs’ cancer is ok? We even have this scene, when he was a kid and his senses went haywire, seeing the bones of the teacher through the doors…

So, how do you explain to “aliens” that use more focused/microscopic seeing that 20/20 vision the way you wish to be perceived? That this minuscule cluster of tiny arthropods living in your eyelashes is a less desired trait to be mentioned in respectable company, than your eye color? Or that commenting on the mites, happily munching on your dead skin cells like the smallest game of hungry hippos, giving you a look equivalent of meteor shower is a socially unacceptable and an equivalent of having to be compared to a dog with fleas?

What about on the insides? Like good bacteria living in our digestive track? Our very own colon lining?

What would happen, if teleported without those critters? Can such freshly sterilized human survive?

Would we need a calling card/manual with a cheat sheet, like an old computer monitor, with detailed specs on how one should “look” and “plug & play” a “human”?!

I think about this a lot.

@charming-or-tedious

The orange cat always had an advantage

(Source)

burying your face in his neck while you ride him on the couch. feeling his head turn and his lips glide a wet path over your jaw before he nips at it, breathing something about how good you’re making him feel — or maybe something with more of a teasing edge. getting tired? need me to do it for you? his hands cupping under your ass, getting a good handful before moving up to grip and guide your movements. maybe a light smack for encouragement. there you go, don’t stop now. ride that dick. you do it so well, baby. so well that i don’t think i can pull out.

ABOUT TIME!!! for those out of the loop homeowners’ associations in the US 1. suck horrendously in every way 2. were the beginning of the end of urban biodiversity

"Soltys decided to push back. She tidied up her plantings, but she also partnered with regional environmental nonprofits to help introduce a bill in the Virginia legislature to protect the right to grow native plants in HOA communities. Soltys was inspired by first-in-the-nation legislation passed in nearby  Maryland in 2021—born of a like-minded couple’s years-long and costly legal battle with their own HOA—that now serves as a template for other states. Last year, Maine enacted a similar bill, and Minnesota went a step further, requiring not just HOAs but all municipalities to allow natural landscaping."

I present to you - Apple Mage!

Teacher: ”What do you wanna be, when you grow up?”

Me:

I knew a man who once said, “Death smiles at us all. All a man can do is smile back.”

Gladiator (2000)

Candy cane snail, Liguus virgineus, Orthalicidae

This arboreal species is found in Haiti and the Dominican Republic

Photo 1 by pedrogenarorodriguez and 2 by margomora

<intrusive thought commends>

Peacocks are hilarious, really. They really are just like

Oh… oh, my…

you people are NOT reblogging this

before you post, remember S.T.O.P.!!!!

@livingbythewords