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Today we have another photo-and-text essay from Athayde Tonhasca Júnior, featuring another introduced insect from Japan.  Athayde’s captions are indented, and you can enlarge his photos by clicking on them.

AND. . .special kudos for Athayde, for he noted this:

If I’m correct, this will be my 100th contribution to WEIT. As we all make a fuss about 100 (is it because it marks the boiling point of water?), I thought it would be worth mentioning it. 

That’s a lot of education he’s given us over the years, so thank you, Athayde!

***********

Menacing tenants

In an apple orchard somewhere in the American state of Pennsylvania, an adult Japanese horn-faced bee (Osmia cornifrons) has just emerged from its nest and makes its way into the big wide world. The apple grower has high hopes for that bee; in fact, he bought many of them when they were still inside their cocoons. The Japanese horn-faced bee was introduced from Japan in the 1970s, and since then it has been widely used in the Eastern United States to improve the pollination of apples and other fruit trees such as peaches, pears and cherries.

A female Japanese horn-faced bee © Chelsey Ritner, Exotic Bee ID:

In their natural habitats, the Japanese horn-faced bee and similar species nest inside cavities such as hollowed reeds, tree holes and cracks in stones. Females use a range of materials, especially mud and pebbles, to build individual nest cells in which they lay an egg. When bees are done, they seal off the nest entrance with mud – so they are known as mason bees. Fruit growers offer bees nesting alternatives such as drilled blocks of wood or bunches of cardboard tubes tightly packed together.

Two types of mason bee nests used in orchards: cardboard tubes (a) and wood blocks (b) © Kline et al., 2023:

The future seemed promising for that Japanese horn-faced bee in Pennsylvania. But opportunists were on standby, ready to pounce when an unsuspecting bee leaves its nest. In the blink of an eye, a gang of hypopi (singular hypopus) jumps on the bee, holding on for dear life as their ride flies away.

Hypopi, also known as hypopodes, are a special nymphal stage found in some mites. In this case, the hairy-footed pollen mite (Chaetodactylus krombeini). Hypopi have no head or mouthparts, but are armed with special structures for hanging on; either powerful claws or a sucker plate to glue themselves to their host. These adaptations greatly facilitate phoresis, which is when an organism attaches itself to another for the purpose of transportation. Phoresis is typically found in small and poorly mobile organisms such as nematodes and mites. But curiously, the hypopus stage is usually facultative for mites; it occurs only when conditions deteriorate (food scarcity, overcrowding, dry climate, etc.), so that skedaddling increases the likelihood of survival.

A hypopus, the stage adapted for phoresis © Reynolds et al., 2014:

The departing bee has no chance of avoiding the lurking hitchhikers who react instantaneously to the slightest touch to their dorsal setae (bristles) or to air movement caused by a passing body. And the feats of some of these mites defy credulity; the tiny Histiostoma laboratorium (formally known as H. genetica), a scourge of vinegar fly (Drosophila melanogaster) laboratory colonies, lurches into the air to grab fruit flies flying above them (Hall, 1959. J. Kansas Entomological Society 32: 45-46). Some species that have hummingbirds as hosts rush to the birds’ nostrils at a rate of 12 body-lengths per second, which is a speed proportional to a cheetah’s (Colwell, 1985)

Hypopi attached to their host © D.E. Walter, Invasive Mite Identification, Colorado State University and USDA/APHIS/PPQ Center for Plant Health Science and Technology:

After being mobbed by hypopi, the bee carries on with its life. If it’s a female, she will mate and start a nest of her own. When her brood cells are ready, her unwanted companions come out of their lethargic state, jump off and resume their development, maturing and reproducing quickly, all the while feeding on the pollen and nectar gathered by the bee. When their numbers reach certain levels, they may feed on the bee’s eggs and larvae (details are sketchy). In a few months the mites may reach thousands and overrun the brood cell, leaving space for nothing else.

Hairy-footed pollen mites inside a mason bee nest cell © Pavel Klimov, Wikimedia Commons.

Such massive numbers of kleptoparasites (organisms that steal food from another one) spell serious trouble for Japanese horn-faced bees; their eggs and larvae die or develop poorly for lack of food or direct attack from mites. Some adult bees may not even have a chance to start a new family; they are so burdened by mites that they cannot fly. They fall to the ground and become easy pickings for ants and other predators.

A mason bee loaded with pollen mites © GeeBee60, Wikimedia Commons:

Several mason bee species are susceptible to the hairy-footed pollen mite, but managed Japanese horn-faced bees have been hit particularly hard, with losses reaching up to 50% of the population. It’s not difficult to understand why. The same way crowded slums make people more vulnerable to all sorts of diseases, jam-packed nests increase the chances of mites passing from one bee to another. And the hairy-footed pollen mite does not even depend on phoresis: adults can walk from one nest to another nearby, getting inside through holes in the sealing mud made by parasitic wasps. To make the situation worse, this mite can turn into a dormant stage that survives several years inside an empty nest, rousing back to activity as soon as new tenants arrive.

The effects of the hairy-footed pollen mite on the Japanese horn-faced bee are a reminder of the unintended consequences of well-intentioned actions. Bee houses or bee ‘hotels’ have been promoted as enhancers of wild bee populations, but there’s no indication of such effects. They do however increase the risk of pathogens and parasites: not only mites, but a range of fungi, parasitic flies and wasps bedevil mason bees (Groulx & Forrest, 2017).

A bee hotel: not such a great idea © Colin Smith, Wikimedia Commons:

American fruit growers do their best to keep mites under control by replacing the nesting tubes yearly, sterilising wood blocks, or removing and storing bee cocoons during the winter. If you have a bee house but don’t have the resources, time or inclination to do the same, you should follow Colin Purrington‘s advice: buy a garden gnome instead.

As a scientific concept – does race exist? Is it a useful construct, or is it more misleading than useful? I wrote about this question in 2016, and my thinking has evolved a bit since then. My bottom line conclusion has not changed – the answer is, it depends. There is no fully objective answer because this is ultimately a matter of categorization which involves arbitrary choices, such as how to weight different features, how much difference is meaningful, and where to draw lines. People can also agree on all the relevant facts, but disagree simply on emphasis. (If all of this is sounding familiar it’s because the same issues exist surrounding biological sex.)

Here are some relevant facts. Humans – Homo sapiens – are a single species. While we are an outbred species with a lot of genetic diversity, we have passed through several fairly recent genetic bottlenecks (most recently around 900k years ago) and the genetic disparity (amount of difference) among humans is relatively small (about 0.1%). It is also true that genetic variation is not evenly distributed among human populations but tend to cluster geographically. However, genetic variation within these clusters is greater than genetic variation between these clusters. Further, obvious morphological differences between identifiable groups tend to be superficial and not a good reflection of underlying genetic diversity. But at the same time, genetic background can be meaningful – predicting the risk of developing certain diseases or responding to certain medications, for example. Genetic variation is also not evenly distributed. Most genetic variations within humans is among Africans, because all non-Africans are derived from a recent genetic bottleneck population about 50-70k years ago.

How should we summarize all of these non-controversial and generally agreed upon facts? You can emphasize the clustering and say that something akin to race exists and is meaningful, or you can emphasize the genetic  similarity of all humans and lack of discrete groups to say that race is not a meaningful or helpful concept. So, as a purely scientific question we have to recognize that there is no completely objective answer here. There are just different perspectives. However, that does not mean that every perspective is equally strong or that our choice of emphasis cannot be determined by other factors, such as their utility in specific contexts.

But there is another dimension here – the term “race” has a specific history of use. It is a very loaded term, unlike, say, referring to “genetic clusterings” or terms we often use with reference to other species, like subpopulations or breeds.  The term race has a cultural history, generally referring to continent of origin. There is also a scientific history going back to Linnaeus, who thought there were four human races which he characterized by color – white, black, yellow, and red. Linnaeus’s “races” persisted in scientific thinking for two centuries, and still dominates our culture. When people say something like – “race does not exist” or “race is a social construct”, this is what they are referring to. It does not mean there are no genetic clusterings, just that the traditional races are not genetically meaningful. As one geneticist put it in a recent BBC article:

“By the time we began to look at how genes are shared in families and populations, we saw that similarities do indeed cluster in groups, but these groupings do not align with the longstanding attempts to classify the races. The true metric of human difference is at a genetic level. In the 20th Century, when we began to unravel our genomes, and observe how people are similar and different in our DNA, we saw that the terms in use for several centuries bore little meaningful relation to the underlying genetics.”

In medicine there is a very practical aspect to this discussion, because we use genetic history to help us estimate statistical risks in various medical contexts. Over my career we have moved away (admittedly, not entirely, cultural inertia can be strong) from characterizing patients or research subjects by race. This is not because it is politically incorrect, but because it is scientifically misleading. Instead we use a less specific term like “ancestry”. This is really just an extension of family history, which has long been a separate part of a patient’s history. We want to know the medical history of their immediate relatives because that can help us predict their disease risk. Ancestry is basically a “family” history but going back further, to successive ancestral clusterings (without favoring any particular level). Do you have ancestors who came from Africa? Do you have ancestors who were part of a founder population with a specific genetic illness?

Labeling someone as “black” or “caucasian” or “asian” is not genetically meaningful. There is nothing special about that level of clustering and these are not real or meaningful genetic groups. If you look, for example, at a genetic map, rather than skin color, you would never intuitively cluster humans into the traditional races.

But again, cultural inertia can be strong. From a science education and public understanding point of view perhaps we need to simply stop using the term race and instead refer to ancestry, or genetic populations or clustering. We should use language that properly reflects the scientific reality rather than the social history.

There is one more point of complexity, however. Sometimes we are having a social conversation. If race is a social construct, it has meaning in a social context (even if it is not scientifically meaningful). Identified race is a real social factor that influences people’s lives. So now we need to find a way to talk about genetic ancestry and social race as two distinct things, even though they were highly conflated in the past (and still in many people’s minds today). That’s a tricky one. Still probably best to dispense with the highly loaded term “race” and just come up with distinct terminology depending on whether your are discussing a social group or a genetic clustering.

The post The Race Question first appeared on NeuroLogica Blog.

To create useful randomness in a quantum computer, you could add more quantum bits, but using quantum chaos does the trick too

Tombs that are scattered across Ireland may have helped bring ancient societies together for feasting and remembering their ancestors

Last week, HHS announced that all "new vaccines will undergo safety testing in placebo-controlled trials." Sounds good? Not so fast. This is really a deceptive weaponization of evidence-based medicine to undermine confidence in vaccines and eliminate at least some of them.

The post HHS is weaponizing evidence-based medicine to falsely portray vaccines as unsafe first appeared on Science-Based Medicine.

On 20 April, 2025, the African Space Agency (AfSA) was formally launched at an inauguration ceremony in Cairo, Egypt. The decision to create AfSA was made by the African Union (AU) in 2016 to coordinate the continent's approach to space, and enact the African Space Policy and Strategy. AfSA will coordinate African space cooperation with Europe and other international partners.

I’m having big-time computer problems today, so there may not be any more posts. Bear with me; I do my best. But at least I got this one up.

Today is Sunday, and therefore we have photos from John Avise of dragonflies and damselflies of North America. John’s captions are indented, and you can enlarge his photos by clicking on them.

Dragonflies in North America, Part 3 This week I continue a series of posts on Dragonflies and Damselflies (taxonomic Order Odonata) that I’ve photographed in North America.  I’m going down my list of species in alphabetical order by common name.  Also shown is the state where I took each photo. 

Eastern Pondhawk, Erythemis simplicicollis, male (Louisiana)

Eastern Pondhawk (Georgia), side view of male:

Eastern Pondhawk (female), Louisiana:

Eight spotted skimmer, Libellula forensic (British Columbia, Canada):

Flame skimmer, Libellula saturata, male (California):

Flame skimmer, female, California:

Flame skimmer (another female), California:

Four-spotted skimmer, Libellula quadrimaculata (British Columbia, Canada):

Great pondhawk, Erythemis vesiculosa, female, Florida:

Halloween Pennant, Celithemis eponina, female, Florida

Halloween Pennant, female, head-on, Florida:

Little Blue Dragonlet, Erythrodiplax miniscula, male, Florida:

Little Blue Drag0net, female, Florida:

Little Blue Dragonlet, tenneral female (Savannas, FL.:

 

I may have posted this before, but I’m sure that even if I did, some readers may have missed it. It’s Bert Jansch (1943-2011), playing a song from his first album, the former called “Running from Home” (written by Jansch) and the album simply called “Bert Jansch.” The album was recorded on a reel-to-reel tape recorder and released in 1965. Jansch got £100 for it.  I heard the album in high school and was greatly impressed, and in fact have never forgotten it. It has at least five world-class songs, including his most famous performance, “Angie“, a song written by Davey Graham. “Angie” has been covered several times, but no version is better than Jansch’s, not even Graham’s.

This is one of my five favorites on the album, “Running from Home,” here performed along with Finn Kalvik in 1973 (the original from the album is here).  The structure is just A-A-A-A. . . there is no chorus. And it’s three-finger picking (“Travis picking”) with Jansch alternating the top strings with his thumb.

Jansch’s songs can’t really be classified as folk, rock, or pop. They are sui generis. But one thing they all are is plaintive. 

Yesterday when I criticized Agustín Fuentes’s article in Natural History trying (and failing) to show that sex isn’t binary, I gave the magazine a break. After all, it hasn’t been nearly as bad as Scientific American, and I gave it a break because it published a gazillion essays by Steve Gould (yes, some of them were misguided, touting punctuated equilibrium, but they were all entertaining).

But now I’ve changed my mind, for I’ve learned that the editors actually published a justification in the magazine for publishing Fuentes’s piece. I guess they knew it would be controversial, and it is. It’s just flat wrong, but also misleading in a very annoying way: making points about variation within the sexes that have nothing to do with his thesis (and the title of his book from which the article was taken): “Sex is a Spectrum: Why the Nonbinary View is Problematic.”  His presentation shows that some (but not all) aspects of sexual behavior, sexual dimorphism, and so on are more continuous that the discontinuous existence of the sexes themselves. In all animals there are two reproductive systems, male and females, with exceptions ranging in proportion from 0.00005 to 0.00017.  And that, ladies and gentlemen, friends and comrades, is in all relevant respects a binary.

Fuentes, in other words, was attacking an argument that nobody had made, since we all realize there’s variation in sex-related traits, but his thesis was not about that. It’s about whether there is variation in the types of gametes in plants and animals (especially humans) that are the basis for defining sex (actually it’s really a “recognition” of a binary, not an a priori definition designed to impose a false binary on nature). And Fuentes uses many of the bogus tropes employed to “prove” that sex is nonbinary, even showing a photo of a bluehead wrasse, a fish that forms polygynous groups. When the alpha male dies, one female gets rid of her ovaries and develops testes, taking over the top job.  But there are still only two sexes!  I have to say that you have to be either ignorant or tendentious to use this animal as an argument against the sex binary, and Fuentes isn’t ignorant.

At any rate, the editors’ apologia–or rather “explanation”—is below. What burns my onions about this is their contention that “the science behind Fuentes’s thesis. . . is solid.”  The claim that “the number of mating types (often called “sexes”) has been variable over hundreds of millions of years, ranging from two and sometimes three in most animals, to as many as seven in single-celled animals. . ” is wholly misleading.  Well, Dear Editors, all animals and vascular plants have just two sexes (which ones have three?), though single-celled organisms, algae and fungi can have more “mating type”, which I’m okay with calling “sexes”if you want. But Fuentes and the editors, are defending the thesis that animals, including our own species, have nonbinary sex. This is not true.

Note as well that the editors have been taken in by the claim that the variability of “sexual behavior” and of “sexual activity” within and among species show that there is variability in the number of sexes beyond two.  This is a false argument, as anybody who knows biology and isn’t warped by ideology should know.

What bothers me most about this editorial is the editors’ sanctimonious claim that they are acting “in the public interest” by recognizing the “science” in this debate, but the bogus-ness of that science is all on Fuentes’s side. Shame on you, editors of Natural History? Have you actually followed this debate? How can it be that the Supreme Court of the UK has apprehended and resolved this debate better than do editors of a science magazine.

This is what happens when scientists’ work is distorted by their ideology, and by now I shouldn’t have to tell you what the distorting ideology is.

Here is the editors’ preface:

h/t: Robert

Interview with Melanie Trecek-King; News Items: Internet Fakes and Violence, Lab Grown Teeth, RFK On Autism, AI Designed Instruments; Who's That Noisy; Your Questions and E-mails: Big Bang Miracle; Science or Fiction

Our stalwart readers have come through with several batches of photos, so we’re good to go for about a week.

Today’s contribution comes from UC Davis math professor Abby Thompson, also a Hero of Intellectual Freedom. Abby’s captions and IDs are indented, and you can enlarge her photos by clicking on them.

In Northern California, April blew in the way March is supposed to, like a lion, with gusting winds and high surf.

The first set of creatures below have a lovely common name: by-the-wind sailors, and a mellifluous scientific name: Velella velella.   Each mini-sailboat is actually a colony of hydroids.     They’re blown willy-nilly across the surface of the sea, and when the winds and tides hit just right, they wash up onshore in incredible numbers.  The first picture is the beach so covered with them it looked like it had snowed.  The second is a closer-up picture of a cluster of them.  The third and fourth show first a single “boat” floating right-side up, with the sail sticking up perpendicular to the surface, and then a few upside down, showing the tentacles which usually hang underneath.  Velella velella are related to Portuguese men o’ war, but their tentacles don’t sting (much- at least not for humans).

Both Velella velella and Portuguese men o’ war have nudibranch predators, including Fiona pinnata and Glaucus atlanticus (blue dragon).  The spectacular blue dragon seems to be always blue, and Fiona pinnata can take on the beautiful blue of its prey. Glaucus atlanticus  concentrates the (painful) venom of the Portuguese man o’ war  and reportedly is excruciatingly painful to the touch.  Luckily the two really venomous species need warmer water than we have in Northern California.

Velella velella (by-the-wind sailor):

Epiactis prolifera (brooding anemone) This species broods its young on the outside of its column. The babies are the cream-colored flower-like things:

Epiactis prolifera again- in this one, the kids seem to have taken over the place, as kids are wont to do:

Nucella ostrina (Striped dogwinkle). These usually have boring grey and white strips, but every once in a while they’re this spectacular orange. Also I like the name “dogwinkle”:

Doto amyra (nudibranch):

Paradialychone ecaudata (another species of feather duster worm). These just appear as a fuzz on the bottom of the pools, until you look at them with some magnification:

Camera info:  Mostly Olympus TG-7 in microscope mode, pictures taken from above the water.

After 300 episodes of New Scientist Weekly, it's time for a refresh. Our flagship podcast has a new name but remains a show that can restore optimism and nourish your brain

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The White House Releases its 2026 Budget Request for NASA. Cuts to SLS, Gateway and Orion

The center of the Milky Way is a busy place, tightly packed with stars and dominated by the supermassive black hole Sagittarius A*. It also features powerful magnetic fields that regulate star production, influence gas dynamics and gas cloud formation, and even affect the accretion processes around Sagittarius A*. Gigantic filaments of gas that look like bones form along the magnetic field lines, and one of them appears to be fractured.

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Space junk and meteoroids are falling to Earth every year, posing a growing risk as they re-enter the atmosphere at high speeds. Researchers are using infrasound sensors to track these objects, including bolides, which are meteoroids breaking apart in the sky. New research shows that infrasound signals can help track these objects, but the trajectory needs to be considered, especially for objects entering at shallow angles. This study highlights the importance of improving monitoring techniques for planetary defense and space junk management.

New research reveals how Saharan dust impacts solar energy generation in Europe. Dust from North Africa reduces photovoltaic (PV) power output by scattering sunlight, absorbing irradiance, and promoting cloud formation. The study, based on field data from 46 dust events between 2019 and 2023, highlights the difficulty of predicting PV performance during these events. Conventional forecasting tools often fail, so the team suggests integrating real-time dust load data and aerosol-cloud coupling into models for better solar energy scheduling and preparedness.

As the number of electric vehicles increases, their increased demand could strain the grid – but small financial incentives convinced drivers to ease that demand by charging during off-peak hours