The Roving Naturalist

If you've seen the latest video on "What is ecology?" then you know it's time for us to try to come up with a collaborative group ecology research project to do together! The goal here is for us to demonstrate how the process of ecology research works in a real, tangible way that will yield results we're interested in as a community. Post your ideas in the comments section below, or you can tweet them to @RvingNaturalist In a few weeks, I'll pick my 4 favorite ideas and put them in a Twitter poll for everyone to vote on. So stay tuned for the next step in our research process!

Part of being a naturalist is learning to identify and name organisms in the surrounding environment, and the first step to identification is usually being able to classify an organism as a plant, animal, or fungi. But what do we do when the classification isn't immediately clear? Lichens are a strange group of organisms that don't immediately fall into any of the easily-identifiable categories we're familiar with. That's because they're actually a combination of two organisms from different groups. The structure of a lichen comes from the mycelia (threadlike structures) of fungi, which allows for the wide variety of lichen shapes you can find. While most of us might picture small bits of greenish crust on tree trunks or rocks when we hear the word "lichen" (see below), lichens can also appear powdery, gelatinous (above), leafy, stringy, or even branching. What's most interesting is that the fungi that form half of the lichen partnership are oblig...

Imagine this: you're in a flower garden, surrounded by fragrant blooms of every color and shape. As you reach to pick a particularly lovely flower, out of the corner of your eye you notice a flash of yellow-and-black stripes. What do you do? Photo courtesy of Woody Meristem I'm going to guess that your immediate answer is something along the lines of "Pull my hand away before I get stung!" And it's a more than reasonable response. But how did you know? Most of us have probably been conditioned to this response from unpleasant first-hand experience with yellow-and-black striped stinging insects. Those of you lucky enough to have avoided being stung might still know that these colors are worth staying away from due to "group knowledge." The yellow-and-black stripes of a bee are forever associated with its painful sting. This is a phenomenon called "aposematism," which is a fancy way of saying that an animal displays bright color...