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Tag: Science

  • Ants and Life on Mars

    I had recently seen two interesting news. One was about an ant species that must clone males of another species to produce hybrid offspring for worker caste. The other was about the possibility of there having been life on Mars.

    The ants are haplodiploid relatives of wasps, females are diploid, males are haploid. In Messor ibericus species the queens can produce two types of male offspring, one of their own species, other from a related species Messor structor, with which they have been estimated to have a common ancestor about 5 million years ago. The queens mate with both types of males, because ibericus males are needed to make new queens, whereas structor males are needed to make hybrid workers. The structor male genome survives because the queen can somehow clone haploid offspring from sperm (though the mitochondria of the ova come from ibericus.) It should be noted that the ibericus-born genetically structor males are morphologically different from wild structor males, which the authors of the study hypothesized to result from differences in mitonuclear environment, from differences in brood rearing conditions, or from genetic differentiation of the ‘cloned’ lineage of structor males. This case is interesting, because it stretches the concept of biological species to have genomes of two species, separate but intertwined by sexual reproduction to maintain the colonies of the species lineages.

    Little black ants in Finland, crawling in and around their hole in the ground. Not connected to the ants discussed above.

    As for life on Mars, NASA scientists published a paper on speckles on Mars rock, which on Earth would have formed by metabolism of accumulated microbes. I do not know enough of mineralogy to follow the paper, but the NASA press release was much more accessible. The speckled rock was found in area that had contained long ago liquid water. While alternative processes have not been totally excluded, the most likely ones were. This biosignature is the strongest evidence that Mars has some time in the past hosted life. This implies either life evolving easily in multiple locations or if life evolves rarely, panspermia, i.e., life spreading in space, and it has been speculated that life on Earth and Mars being related. Also, considering the prevalence of lithospheric life on Earth, I would not consider it impossible that there still exists (microbial) life deep underground in Mars.

  • Insects Are Vanishing – A Video

    I have now made a short video (6 min 45 s) on the subject, its consequences, its causes (especially discussing metapopulation dynamics) and about one idea how to combat this trend (microrewilding.)

  • Insects Are Vanishing

    A small Hymenopteran and a probable bug in the same flower in Berkeley, June 2025

    Recently, a samizdata channel I watch has had multiple reports that insects are missing this summer, in locations scattered around United States.

    This was not unexpected. The reduction in insect numbers started decades ago, if German amateur entomologists’ data is to be believed, but it has since been recorded around the world, including places like Colorado and Costa Rica.

    The scientists have sounded an alarm – insect are possibly the most important group of land animals in terms of species numbers and biomass. They are important pollinators, decomposers, soil and biome modifiers, and they disperse nutrients even when not serving as important food source to other species in food web.

    Bee colony collapses around USA and the rest of the world have been reported for years, and is important for food production and economic reasons. Without the ~2 million beehives transported annually, canola, almond, citrus, and many other insect pollinated crops would collapse. Because not only the natural pollinators are about gone, all the flowers in monoculture orchards are blooming only few weeks a year.

    The loss of insects has been attributed on a variety of reasons, among other things pesticide use (and other environmental poisons, including chemtrails and 5G radiation), monoculture, spreading diseases (especially Varroa mite born in bees), and changing climate. While a large number of species are affected, reading the reports has given me an impression that the selection of missing species seems to vary from place to place, suggesting multifactorial causes. The modern world apparently does not have space for bees or butterflies.

    I would probably blame monoculture, i.e., humans have appropriated too fat a slice of ecological resource flows for themselves. Traditional agricultural landscape in Europe had many verges, ditches and hedges, where wild plants and insects that relied on them could flourish. Now such places are rare.

    For example, I have observed in horror, how most species of the meadow flowers, once common on road sides near Turku, Finland, seem to have had a population collapse in the past decade. I blame this on the municipal maintenance crews mowing the verges before the seeds have ripened. Annual plants fare the worst, but I suspect perennials will eventually follow. Any insects relying on those flowers also likely fared poorly.

    As the small wild spots grow fewer and further between, I suspect we have crossed a critical threshold on insect metapopulation dynamics. Ilkka Hanski, studying Glanville fritillary butterflies living on dry meadows on rocky islands, showed that as long as there were enough patches with butterflies near each other (in this case, the minimum was estimated to be 32 patches covering total 10ha over 5km2 area), individual patches of plants or insects living on them could be ephemeral, i.e., the butterflies on a given patch could disappear or appear from year to year, but the butterfly populations of individual patches form a metapopulation that keeps the species going if the amount and density of patches are sufficient.

    Extrapolated onto insects in general, I think the on-going collapse may indicate that despite good people setting their individual gardens for butterflies, bees and other insects, if a garden population is lost, for example to local bad weather or disease outbreak, there are no longer enough insect patches left nearby to repopulate the patch. Sooner or later, isolated gardens will lose their insects. And then the metapopulation is gone.

    What can be done to reverse this trend? I suggest starting by restoring some verges. Also not mowing your yard while the flowers are seeding, as ugly as the drying seedheads may look. Insects are not very big, so they do not require nearly as large sanctuaries like roaming megafauna, but there should be plenty enough patches to maintain a viable metapopulation, so that if some species is lost from one spot, it can be colonized by insects from the neighboring spots. I believe this type of microrewilding to be compatible with current human population, possibly even essential if we want to retain their ecosystem services necessary for food production. Assuming there are no confounding factors like (possibly) 5G radiation to prevent its success.

  • Update on K2-18b

    There might not be hycean worlds, that is worlds with hydrogen rich atmosphere over liquid ocean.

    A recent study could explain the spectral signature of another potential hycean world, TOI 270d, by an atmosphere over a magma ocean, an environment not conductive to our kind of oceanic of organic life. Bummer.

    But a lava world with boiling atmosphere is interesting to me – those were the conditions of early Earth during Hadean Eon, just after forming. Once the lava cooled enough to form a crust and tolerate liquid water, we got our early ocean, either from meteors or from inside the mantle.

    Earth was small enough to cool soon, now only the ferrous core is molten, maintaining the Earth’s magnetic field and volcanism, both essential for life. Magnetic field shields us from space radiation whereas volcanism recycles back to surface nutrients, gases and water that would otherwise have sedimented or seeped into ground.

    The reason we have oceans in the surface is volcanism, which pushes water towards the surface. Yet, lithosphere contains water, maybe multiple times the amount in world’s oceans.

    So, while a hycean world is not proven, it is not impossible, either. I wonder if maybe, once a large lava world with lots of hydrogen and water vapor cools down enough to have an ocean, a hycean world arises.

  • Interesting Things I Wanted to Post

    I don’t usually work on Sundays (the day of rest and so on), but the recent news about heightening tensions between two nuclear powers have been alarming. No, not the war in Europe, or the slow boiling in Middle East. I am talking about India and Pakistan. Here is what I get from the non-mainstream news/commentary streams I follow.

    Negligible Chance of Mushroom Clouds

    Apparently, there was a terrorist attack in Kashmir where 26 Indian tourists were killed. This region has been contested by Pakistan and India for decades and occasionally, a war has flared up. India blames the attack on Pakistan, which claims innocence. Regardless of truth, the relationship between the countries tensed up, as in India giving 48 hours for all Pakistanis to get out of the country, whereas Pakistan closed Indian borders and Pakistani airspace from Indian airlines, while revoking visas from Indians and telling the Indian government to reduce their embassy size to 30 people, no military attaches allowed. India informed that they will no longer recognize the Indus River Treaty, which allocates the rights over this common river between the two countries. This is very important, because Indus river waters about 80% of Pakistani farmland, and if India were to block the water, it would create a famine that would collapse Pakistan. Pakistan has informed that if India messes with Indus river, it will be an act of war. Presumably, India has already been accused of flooding some Pakistani villages along Indus tributary. The same podcast claimed that there has been clashes along the border, not just small arms fire but actual artillery shelling. This is before the formal declaration of war. The Indus river question is an existential threat to Pakistan, which is estimated to have at least 170 nuclear warheads and has a first strike policy. India is estimated to have over 160 nuclear warheads and if things escalate, we could see mushroom clouds, though this is still a very small possibility.

    Oddly enough, when president Trump was asked about this issue, he seems to hint that United States will stay out of this conflict. That would be a refreshing novelty, a war that USA is not starting or participating in.

    Earthquake (Space) Weather

    A Podcast that YouTube recommended to me says that the magnetic field of the Sun is weakening. Apparently, this may be somehow connected with the likelihood of big earthquakes. Sun’s magnetic field weakens and strengthens by 11-12 year sunspot cycles but the peak magnetic field has been weakening over the latest solar cycles (data starts in 1970s, so we don’t know how things were earlier). This presentation fits the hypothesis that solar weather including sunspot activity triggers earth quakes that has been making rounds around interwebs for some time, except that in this presentation it is the weakening solar magnetic field that creates sunspots and correlates with the frequency of big earthquakes.

    The earthquake – sunspot connection has been explained by the effects of space weather on telluric currents, i.e., the electric currents going through Earth, telluric currents being stronger along fault lines. Living within a walking distance from Hayward fault, I have been interested in earthquakes, waiting for the Big One.

  • K2-18b

    Scientists in University of Cambridge have published their analysis of the data collected by James Webb telescope, presenting the results showing likely dimethyl sulfide (DMS) and/or dimethyl disulfide (DMDS) signal in the atmosphere of an exoplanet K2-18b. This is thought to be a hycean world, which is supposed to have large liquid water ocean with hydrogen atmosphere but not all scientists agree even that. There were preliminary results suggesting DMS in the atmosphere published earlier, but this later analysis by the group presented more evidence claiming to have strengthened the earlier findings to 3 sigma levels.

    DMS on Earth is produced by microbes like phytoplankton, and the researchers consider it in the atmosphere of K2-18b as a potential sign of large amounts of life in the ocean of K2-18b. However, the possibility of some exotic chemistry occurring in extraterrestrial conditions (different gravity, temperature, availability of component chemicals, space chemistry, etc) has not been excluded and may explain the signal, in which case it would be abiogenic. Besides, collecting spectroscopy signals from faraway planets (in this case about 120 light years away) is difficult, and more data is needed to verify the DMS/DMDS signal instead of some other chemical with similar spectrum at 5 sigma certainty.

    In any case, an interesting possibility and worth noting, just in case.

  • Tuna

    The Poplar Report alerted me to textured vegetable protein in canned tuna, so I decided to look at the current tuna stocks – are we that close to (commercial) extinction? Or is it just the current trend of substituting food ingredients to cheaper or maybe adding weird chemicals for profit?

    If I correctly remember, I had considered tuna overexploited since 1980s and had avoided eating it maybe since junior high school. Moreover, this century has had lurid food fakery scandals including the percentages of mislabeled fish sold in USA, often cheaper fish species being passed for more expensive ones.

    Tunas, both the canned variety and the sushi can contain mislabeled fish, with especially sushi being notorious for fakery (escolar, also sold as ‘white tuna’, can cause severe gastrointestinal distress), the more expensive varieties were more likely to be faked, risk of fakery presumed to grow with demand exceeding the supply, but sometimes also the cheaper species were mislabeled. (in Spain the likelihood the bluefin tuna you ordered in restaurant is something else is on average 73% with seasonal variation based on bluefin fishing season.)

    Now, checking at the state of the tuna stocks, I was surprised to read that conservation methods to protect commercial tuna stock had apparently worked and that depending on report 15 out of 23 stocks or 11 out of 23 stocks monitored were estimated to be fished at sustainable levels in 2024 reports (assuming I correctly understood their summary tables) with 88% of tuna coming from sustainably fished stocks (according to one of the reports). The contrast to 2007 doomsday news is promising, but when looking at the FAO report from 2007, I noticed that even then 13 – 14 out of 23 stocks were fully or moderately harvested, the status of the rest being unknown (3 stocks), overexploited (4 – 5 stocks) or depleted (2 stocks). Maybe the difference between today and then is in the levels of overexploitation reducing?

    Nevertheless, it is nice to read some good news, assuming the tuna statistics are real. However, considering the unreliable climate reporting, I cannot avoid creeping suspicion that the earlier tuna depletion may have been overrated or the current improvements overstated. And maybe I should go to supermarket myself to check if I can find TVP in tuna can, possibly to buy a can of Albacore labeled as sustainably caught.

  • Hot Statistics

    Everyone knows the Hockey Stick model of global temperature changes in our measurement record. Late 20th and early 21st century average temperatures have increased in a worrisome manner resulting in many UN climate summits and VIPs flying around in their private jets. Now, according to a recent Freedom of Information request to UK’s Met Office, over 100 of the 302 weather stations listed as supplying temperature averages do not exist. The Met Office declined to tell “how or where the alleged ‘data’ were derived” for these over 100 sites that do not exist.

    This is not just UK issue, NOAA has been claimed to fabricate data for over 30% of their reporting sites by taking the averages of the surrounding stations to represent a defunct, or a ‘ghost’ station, although the numbers at least are labeled as estimates. In UK, some closed weather stations ‘continue’ with similar reported estimated monthly data.

    Unreliable measurements from the actually existing weather stations are another large problem. Nearly 8 out of 10 Met Office sites are rated in junk classes with error margins ranging from 2C to up to 5C, or unsuitable for climate data reporting. The default classification for Met Office weather stations is 1, “unless manually adjusted” so there may be more unreliable data sources.

    The disproportionate closure of rural weather stations compared to the urban ones has further skewed the average temperatures, because urban environments tend to generate heat islands, so loss of rural stations will increase the average temperature of the remaining measurements.

    While unreliability of measurement data was discussed in terms of Net Zero in The Daily Sceptic, I wonder about its effects on near term weather forecasts. Maybe the invented data is also being fed into models predicting daily weather?

    Muhos, Finland, in February

  • Termites Farting Around

    Termite farting has been studied for quite a long time.

    A Nature paper by Ito (2023) estimates the global termite methane production 2020 as 14.8 +- 6.7 Tg per year from estimated 122.3 Tg termites (dry weight). Termite biomass estimates range from 40 – 200 Tg (dry weight), and their methane emission estimates vary even more, but by Ito’s estimate, termites produce about 2% of global methane.

    The global annual methane production is estimated by IEA to be about 580 metric tons, and Ito’s maybe ~15 metric tons would be on the ballpark of 2.6% of that.

    These farts are actually produced by termites’ gut symbionts, complex communities of microbes that help termites to digest lignocellulose and contribute to nitrogen metabolism.

    Termites evolved some time during Mesozoic from gregarious cockroaches that ate rotting wood with changes in gut symbiont microbiota, diets and eusociality. Today, termites are important in carbon cycle (and other nutrient cycles).

    There is some uncertainty about the fate of the termite farts (such as how large fraction of them even make it out of the termite hive or gets absorbed into surrounding terrain). For example, some termite hives can survive tens of thousands of years and may accumulate carbon in the mounds, and affect soil and ground water carbon sequestration.

    I was trying to find some papers on their role in Phanerozoic carbon cycles but with poor success, though it could be said that termites (plus their gut symbionts) are currently quite significant decomposers of plant cellulose, and there apparently has been enough of them already 150 million years ago that a mammal species had evolved to eat them.

    In other words, there is still a niche for people researching the effect of termite farts on global climate – past, present and future. Assuming the atmospheric carbon question remains politically and culturally relevant (for dissenting voices, see, e.g., these articles in Science of Climate Change and The Daily Sceptic).