I have neglected your odonate-related needs, faithful reader(s?)! Behold, your odonate of the week. I picked an interesting one to make up for my silence.
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Category: Science
Debunking the drug store: Stodal
For those of you who aren’t aware, I am on a mission to debunk at least a small part of Shoppers Drug Mart. This time, it’s Boiron’s Stodal cough mixture.
I hadn’t heard of Stodal before. Apparently it “relieves all types of coughs”, which seems like a pretty bold (and evidence-based claim). This surprised me as it is produced by Boiron, a homeopathic manufacturer. Now there are lots of perfectly good cough medicines out there, even if some of them taste like you’re drinking the products of a high school chemistry experiment. So what does Boiron bring to the table?
Caterpillar eyespots
For the past 18-or-so months, Tom Hossie, a PhD student working in the same lab as me, has been carrying out research into caterpillar eyespots. This is an absolutely fascinating area of research, not only because it involves looking at pretty animals, but because there are so many unanswered questions to investigate. Here’s an example of the kind of caterpillar that sparked his interest in this topic:
The little guy even looks like he has eyelids! Tom is seeking to answer as many questions as possible during his 3-4 year PhD and has made a roaring start with an extensive field study that will hopefully be published soon (I’ll blog about that once it is in print!). I’d highly recommend checking out his blog (http://caterpillar-eyespots.blogspot.com) for more details about the project and eyespots in general! He has lots of excellent photos from his current trip to Costa Rica.
How cryptozoology could actually do some good
I have posted a few times about “cryptids” and mentioned that the study of cryptids is called “cryptozoology”. This has been very much a fringe science ever since its inception in the 1940s. The disparagement has resulted from an over-reliance on anecdotal evidence and what some would call an “overabundance of credulity”. What I am going to discuss here is not so much pure cryptozoology as the concepts that underpin it.
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Odonate of the week: Libellula pulchella
This week’s odonate of the week is Libellula pulchella, the twelve-spotted skimmer.
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Homeopathic elephants…
People who know about me within the skeptical community know that I am no friend of homeopathy. However, there are some cases where the sheer stupidity of an idea can limit the damage that it can cause.
The weird and wonderful world of katydids
The katydids (or, as my compatriots and I know them better, the bush-crickets) can probably lay claim to a number of titles in the animal world. Here are just a few:
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Odonate of the week: Pyrrhosoma nymphula
This week’s odonate of the week is Pyrrhosoma nymphula, the large red damselfly (we call a spade a spade in the UK…). The male is the first photo (note the small, black genital claspers at the tip of the abdomen) and the female is the second photo (note the rounded tip to the abdomen with the short ovipositor projecting from the tip).
A trip to Pink Lake, Gatineau Park
A few weeks ago I cycled up into Gatineau Park, just outside of Ottawa in Quebec. It’s nice having wilderness this close to the city, even if I don’t use it enough! My target was Pink Lake, about 8km inside the park boundary and that made for a 30km round trip. It’s hard work getting there (the lookout in the photo is about 120m or 400 feet above when I started) but good fun free-wheeling most of the way home. I didn’t know anything about the lake (there are a lot of them around and I assumed it was just like the others). However, when I saw the interpretation signs at the site I noticed it was “meromictic”. What this means is that the lake waters never entirely mix and it produces a fairly special environment for life. The signs gave some information about the biological implications which I thought I would share.
Evolution of superstition
I posted a few days ago about a trip that I took down to the Polaris Sci-Fi Convention in Toronto. Since I have a full 45 minute talk all laid out I figured I would give a little bit more detail about the topic.
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Katatrepsis 