David Bradley – Page 51

The “Green Fairy” moth – The Wormwood

If you’ve been with me on Instagram for a while, you might be thinking, oh I know this one, he posted the quiffy little beggar a few weeks ago.

Well, you’re close, but no cigar, the previous lepidopteral quiffmeister was The Shark, this is the closely related Wormwood, Cucullia absinthii.

As its name would suggest its larvae feed on wormwood (and mugwort) and the adults have evolved to resemble the seedhead of that type of plant. You’ll notice the “absinthii” of its scientific binomial, which refers to the wormwood plants scientific name Artemisia absinthium, which is used to make the Green Fairy drink, absinthe.

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The Gypsy Destroyer of Trees

The Gypsy Moth Lymantria dispar (Linnaeus, 1758) is perhaps the archetypal moth, browns and greys enormous protuberant antennae in the male, lots of high-frequency flapping, and definitely drawn to a candle…or in this instance, an ultraviolet, actinic lamp.

Gyspy Moth in flight, shutterspeed 1/8192th of a second

I remember seeing images of this creature in nature and science books when I was a child along with the caterpillar (larva) of the Puss Moth, the one that looks like it’s got a face painted on its rear end. I also remember being quite perturbed seeing images of such creatures close up, something about their seemingly alien nature when compared to the more usual faces of mammals and fish even that you see in children’s nature books.

The Gypsy Moth was common in 19th century in the East Anglian and Southern Fens, but was extinct as a breeding insect by the turn of the century. It remains a major pest of deciduous trees in mainland Europe and elsewhere and there are now colonies in London and southern England. The family name, Lymantria, means tree destroyer.

It is impossible to know whether this male specimen drawn in by my actinic lamp is a vagrant from the mainland carried in ahead of a forecast heatwave from the South East or whether it is part of a local population. The females are a lot bigger and not so agile on the wing. Intriguingly, the miniscule larvae are dispersed on the wind like seeds.

In North America, there is a call to rename the Gypsy Moth to have a less socially sensitive name. The suggestion is that it should be referred to by an English version of its French name, the Spongieuse, which alludes to the spongy mass of eggs laid by the females, so the Spongy Moth.

Timing social distancing to protect people and hospitals

COVID-19 lockdown and hospital surges

A new study suggests that for major cities it would help avoid catastrophoic overloading of hospitals, if local lockdown measures are reinstated when the seven-day average of hospital admissions goes above a certain number. The lockdown would be eased when the admission rate falls of when the hospitals are below 60% of capacity.

This would minimize economic and social disruption but at the same time protect health services.

One proviso is that high-risk populations must be shielded adequately during the times when the city is not in lockdown.

“Timing social distancing to avert unmanageable COVID-19 hospital surges” – Proc Natl Acad Sci

The recency illusion

I was caught out by the recency illusion today. A friend posted a video of a spider weaving its web. I added a comment about research I’d read about when I was writing for the New Scientist in the early 1990s where the scientists showed that plying a spider with different stimulants, such as caffeine and cocaine, or other drugs such as cannabis, led them to produce weird and wonderful alternative web patterns. I revised my comment because I then remembered reading about that research when I was at university in the 1980s.

I commented that in my 30+ years as a science writer I reckon I’d seen a lot of research reinvented, not for the sake of reproducibility tests, but simply where the researchers hadn’t realised that the work had been done before. It’s happened several times over the last couple of years and makes me seriously think it’s time I retired, hah!

Anyway, I looked on PubMed to find that distorted spider’s web research and found a paper from 2004, yes, well that proved my point. But, then I found a paper from 1969 and a review of the area from 1971…so it had already been done before I even started school let alone reached university. I went to the 1971 review’s reference section and it cites papers from the 1950s long before I was born and my parents hadn’t even met!

The term “recency illusion” was coined by Stanford linguist Arnold Zwicky, to refer to one’s perception that words, meanings, phrases, and grammatical constructions are new at the time you first hear them. They generally aren’t. There are many examples of what lots of people think of as modern phrases that can be found in Shakespeare, for instance. Zwicky later defined the illusion as “the belief that things you have noticed only recently are in fact recent.” As in wondrous webs made by spiders on crack…

How to identify British Moths

Sean Foote is a marvel. Over on Twitter he responds to tagged tweets from people who have photographed a UK moth or two and would like to know what species of moth they have. I’ve used his services on numerous occasions often to confirm an identification, but more often when I simply didn’t have a clue as a relative n00B moth-er. It’s an entirely free service although users can “buy him a coffee” here as a mark of appreciation.

He keeps records, as you would, and publishes details of the most requested identifications, he’s also got a nice Top 100 with tips on how to identify some of the more ambiguous Lepidoptera. I’ve compiled a list of the Top 40 here. Don’t forget to leave a tip for him if you find them useful.

1. Square-spot Rustic. 393 queries
2. Common Rustic agg. 292 queries
3. Uncertain/Rustic. 279 queries
4. Large Yellow Underwing. 270 queries
5. Double-striped Pug. 258 queries.
6. Common Pug. 254 queries
7. Marbled Minor agg. 251 queries
8. Willow Beauty. 247 queries
9. Common Marbled Carpet. 213 queries
10. Flounced Rustic. 185 queries
11. Bee Moth. 180 queries
12. Dark Arches. 178 queries
13. Turnip. 168 queries
14. Chrysoteuchia culmella. 167 queries
15. Light Brown Apple Moth. 166 queries
16. Mottled Rustic. 157 queries
17. Celypha lacunana.Â 154 queries
18. Riband Wave. 150 queries
19. Eudonia lacustrata. 149 queries
20. Clouded Drab. 148 queries
21. Vine’s Rustic. 147 queries
22. Small Dusty Wave. 136 queries
23. Cnephasia sp. 134 queries
24. Rustic Shoulder-knot. 132 queries
25. Pale Mottled Willow. 127 queries
26. Smoky Wainscot. 124 queries
27. Clay. 124 queries
28. Lesser Yellow Underwing. 120 queries
29. Ingrailed Clay. 119 queries
30. Common Plume. 113 queries
31. Yellow Shell. 107 queries
32. Shuttle-shaped Dart. 106 queries
33. November Moth sp. 105 queries
34. Common Quaker. 103 queries
35. Cabbage Moth. 102 queries
36. Dusky Brocade. 98 queries
37. Brindled Pug. 98 queries
38. Scoparia ambigualis. 96 queries
39. The Nutmeg. 95 queries
40. Cloaked Minor. 94 queries

Hunstanton Fulmars

Recently, I mentioned the presence of an intriguing seabird spotted flying over our very land-locked Cambridgeshire village – the Northern Fulmar, Fulmarus glacialis. The nearest flock of nesting Fulmar is on the layered cliffs that back the North beach at Sunny Hunny, Hunstanton on the North Norfolk coast looking out across The Wash and beyond to St Botolph’s in in the Lincolnshire town of Boston.

Fulmars sit in the Petrels and Shearwaters group of birds, the Procellariiformes meaning the tubenoses. So-called because along the crest of their bill they have a tubular structure that encloses one or two nostrils. They might be confused with gulls but a closer view reveals them to be rather different and even at a distance their stiff-winged flight is a giveaway.

Sandwich Tern taking a dive at Hunstanton, one of dozens

Lots of Swifts over the cliffs, making flying pecks at the limestone

Wreck of the trawler The Sheraton (launched 1907) at Hunstanton…the vessel was a WWII patrol vessel, ultimately wrecked in 1947.

Fruit of The Tall Sock Destroyer

This unassuming plant, flowers and fruit in the photo, which just happens to be growing locally along the edge of a sugarbeet field, is actually an endangered species on the “red” list…it’s a type of wild carrot that goes by the scientific name of Torilis arvensis, but you can call it The Tall Sock Destroyer*

*It’s also known as Spreading Hedgeparsley, which sounds more like a skin disorder people who run through amber fields of grain might get rather than the worst-ever Marvel comic superhero…

Its fruits have sticky little purple barbs that under normal circumstances cling on to the wool of passing sheep and the fur of other animals and spread the seed wherever those animals might graze. In times of herbicide use and less brazen shepherding, the plant has not thrived and is very much endangered, so it’s lovely to know that it’s growing on the outskirts of our fen edge village in Cambridgeshire. NB This is only the second time I’ve “twitched” a plant.

Sciencebase in the time of Covid

Up front: Nothing much has changed for my working practices since the coronavirus pandemic struck and we were all put into varying degrees of lockdown and social distancing. I’ve carried on with regular clients covering science news across a wide range of disciplines for the outlets that have all been mentioned here on numerous occasions over the last 25 years of this website…

As a household, we never did run out of loo roll nor any other essentials despite not stockpiling nor panic buying…

Lockdown did mean more “at home” time, no choir nor band rehearsals, only in-the-house solo music creation and broadcasts and a couple of online collaborations which I’d done often enough in normal times long before the so-called new normal. My Lockdown EP is almost a mini-album now with eight tracks. As for everyone lots of interactions with friends, family, colleagues, and collaborators via video chat servers, which is entertaining enough but tiring on the eyes.

There were lots of garden-based and very local photographic and video opportunities: PondWatch, GardenWatch, even ShedWatch on Facebook and the expansion of Lepidopteral diversity in the garden as the spring turned to summer. Indeed, anything of biological could quickly become a major focus for a blog post and I quickly add photographic specimens to Instagram and Imaging Storm. Then, there’s AllotmentLife to be taken care of…

If you need to drill down into any of this stuff there is a whole category structure within the Sciencebase website that has evolved over the years:

Photography,Â Classic Chords, Chemistry, Social Media etc

Spreading Hedgeparsley, The Tall Sock Destroyer

There’s a growing list of wildflowers classed as endangered in The British Isles, among them Apparently, Spreading Hedge-parsley, also known as the Tall Sock Destroyer. A friend of mine, Pam, spotted some growing along a sugarbeet field margin on the north edge of our village. I had to “twitch” it, it seemed so exotic.

It’s a delicate-looking plant of the carrot family, I was not particularly worried about ruining my socks even if that vernacular name sounds like its the worse of the DC/Marvel superheroes. Identification has now been confirmed by the county recorder here in VC29. So, here’s one of my snapshots of Torilis arvensis.

Let’s hope its presence in our village persists. It’s a good sign if we are seeing endangered species growing again, it could be their comeback. It would be interesting to know whether this is a positive effect on the environment of reduced traffic and human activity because of the Covid-19 lockdown. Who knows? And, after we ease lockdown will things revert to their problematic pre-pandemic condition?

Torilis arvensis fruit bodies – Photo by Pamela Newman

The bristly seed-bearing fruits have slightly curved bristles which presumably readily stick to the wool of grazing sheep and the wool of hikers’ socks. Its decline is mostly blamed on agricultural herbicides but the lack of grazing sheep on intensively farmed arable land in modern agriculture may also be to blame for the seed not to be spread as widely as it once was.

Torilis arvensis flowers – Photo by Pamela Newman

That’s okay, tonight – vocal remix

I can’t leave a finished thing alone…the “instrumental” I wrote and recorded and blogged about last week now has a vocal…

Words and Music by David Bradley

Vocals, six-string Taylor acoustic guitar, Fender Telecaster, electric guitar, and Yamaha bass, harmony vocals, and production by dB.Â Drums by Klaus Tropp.Â Video derived from a “C0” Creative Commons montage of Hong Kong filmed from the air at night. Annotations by dB.

That’s okay, tonight

Step up to the light, learn you’re not the only dreamer
Find a place for you to shine
Try as you might, you won’t find another schemer
Who twists the knife like you’re not mine

…and I’m telling you…
You were the calm before the storm,
You told the lies that kept me warm
And you had it all, though I could’ve sworn you’d thrown it all away

No, I don’t want another fight
I’ll see you in the glare of the morning light
No need to cry tonight
No, I don’t want another fight
We’re okay for tonight