Another thought-provoking article from The Conversation. (A plug for them – do subscribe and support them – the articles are wide-ranging and written by people who know what they’re writing about. Their ‘byline’ is: academic rigor, journalistic flair)

There’s a lot of advice about, well, pretty much everything on the internet these days. And plenty of friendly apps that can help you figure out what’s going on, what’s going wrong, and what to do about it. Some of the information can be thought-provoking and exciting (oh hey, of course, why didn’t I think of that)l and some is helpful and some, unfortunately falls on the not-quite-right to downright-bad end of the spectrum.

The suggestions in this article by Nick Goitz, an extension educator at the University of Connecticut, address four things he has commonly seen that raise red flags for him. Read the article to get all the details. I’ll just point out one bit that is plant advice I also always give people: check the source. Blogs, assorted articles, and youtube videos MIGHT have good information but sites that are associated with academic institutions (.edu), particularly extension agents and botanists, and with professional nurseries will have the most current scientific knowledge about the topic.

If you see something intriguing somewhere online (and I’ve posted some fun youtube videos here), just look further to be sure any advice will actually help rather than harm the plants in your life.

Orchid mantis, Hymenopus coronatus. Igor Siwanowicz. Source: https://theconversation.com/secrets-of-the-orchid-mantis-revealed-it-doesnt-mimic-an-orchid-after-all-36715

When I first saw the image, I thought – this has to be photoshop at its finest. But no, there really is a praying mantis that is commonly known as the orchid mantis, Hymenopus coronatus. The image here, by Igor Siwanowicz, was shamelessly copied from an article in The Conversation. 

The article was published in January 2015 with a title of “Secrets of the orchid mantis revealed – it doesn’t mimic an orchid after all.” The mantis in this image doesn’t look exactly like the orchid although some other images I’ve found surfing the web certainly do. The article discusses some then new research that suggests that mimicry that’s close enough is good enough: these mantises apparently mimic a “generalized” flower.

While flowers, and orchids are prime examples, are known to mimic insects, according to the article, the orchid mantis is the first known insect to mimic a flower.

An interesting find today. I’m just going to quote straight from the home page for PalEON: “PalEON (the Paleo-Ecological Observatory Network) is an interdisciplinary team of paleoecologists, ecological statisticians, and ecosystem modelers from across a number of institutions. Our goal is to reconstruct forest composition, fire regime, and climate in forests across the northeastern US and Alaska over the past 2000 years and then use this to drive and validate terrestrial ecosystem models. We will develop a coherent spatiotemporal inference framework to quantify trends and extreme events in paleoecological and paleoclimatic time series. Variables such as forest composition, fire regime, and moisture balance will be inferred from corresponding paleoecological proxies, with rigorous estimates of uncertainty.”

Check it out! What else can I say…