Category: Society of Biology - Page 3

The meadows of Transylvania – a biodiversity hotspot

Dr Barbara Knowles FSB, Senior Science Policy Adviser at the Society of Biology, devotes much of her time to preserving Transylvania’s hay meadows. Dr Laura Bellingan FSB, Head of Policy at the Society of Biology, visited her recently and has written about her experience: If I’m asked to think of biodiversity hot-spots worthy of conservation, wilderness areas with sparse if any human populations tend to come to mind. Certainly, long-established farmland wouldn’t be my first guess. However, as surprisingly often is the case, the seemingly obvious answer is wide of the mark! It is indeed true that an island of biodiversity, with statistics that rival wilderness areas has been created by centuries of dairy farming in rural Transylvania. My colleague Barbara Knowles visited this area almost five years ago. She was so enchanted by its unique and complex ecology, natural beauty and friendly people that she has devoted…

Can gulls get drunk on ants?

Rebecca Nesbit from the Society of Biology has been working on the flying ant survey On Friday I received a phone call asking ‘are seagulls in Devon acting weirdly because of flying ants?’. The answer was very likely yes – flying ant day is a special day for gulls, and for many people the excited squawking of feasting gulls is the first sign of flying ant day. The next question, however, was ‘could seagulls be made delirious by formic acid from the ants?’. Gulls have apparently been hit by cars because they are ‘stupefied’ and wandering onto roads. The popular press are answering this second question in increasingly dramatic ways: gulls are made ‘yobbish’ by ants apparently! But the real answer has to be the scientist’s favourite of ‘maybe’. I haven’t found any studies confirming that formic acid is causing the gulls’ behaviour, but we do know that Lasius niger (the black…

Weird and wonderful species adapted to their hostile habitats

By Amy Whetstone, Qualifications and Skills Officer at the Society of Biology The yeti crab and axolotl are two bizarre but brilliant species that are rarely in the limelight, but I believe deserve to be. So broaden your animal lexicon and spread the word about these peculiar aquatic species, who have adapted to cope in the harsh and inhospitable conditions they inhabit. Yeti crab, Kiwa hirsuta. This pale eerie-looking crab is so named because of its long hairy arms. It has good reason, however, for its strange appearance, not least the inhospitable environment in which it lives. The yeti crab was first discovered in 2005 at a depth of over 2200 meters which explains it pale appearance; no sunlight penetrates this depth so there is no need for fancy colours. So deep in fact that it can only be reached by using an unmanned submersible. The next…

Inspiring future generations (and feeding them)

People will fight passionately for medical advances, and indeed science has done a huge amout to save lives and reduce suffering caused by health problems. But the point was made at UK PlantSci 2013 that, ultimately, this is only valuable if we can feed people. I don’t think there is a single delegate at PlantSci who doesn’t have concerns about lack of funding for agricultural research, but there was an uplifiting session about tackling some of the problems facing plant science. I don’t mean climate change and population growth, but lack of skills, funding and understanding. If people don’t understand what plant scientists do or what they achieve, how can they be expected to value plant science? The UK Plant Sciences Federation was founded so we can work together on this kind of issue, and education is very high up the agenda. School children learn lots of facts, but…

No single answer – messages from PlantSci

This week I’m lucky enough to be at UK PlantSci 2013 in Dundee – the 2nd conference of the UK Plant Sciences Federation. The conference opened this morning with a keynote talk from Professor Charles Godfray, who spoke very convincingly about the need for food production to become radically more sustainable. At the moment, our food production system is compromising our future capacity to grow food. Professor Godfray, who is Director of the Oxford Martin Programme on the Future of Food at the University of Oxford, explained that we have to address the challenges of feeding 10 billion people in a new way. Not only will we have more people to feed, but also they will be richer. They will expect more varied diets, which require more resources to produce. Population growth and changing diets were a focus of his talk and he believes that these are both important…

Podcast: #policylates debates – do we need more scientists in Parliament?

Next Thursday we will be holding the first ever Society of Biology #policylates debate, ‘Do we need more scientists in Parliament?’ If the results from our website poll are anything to go by then the answer would be a resounding yes. To find out if the answer is really this clear cut, Press Officer Rebecca Nesbit investigates in this podcast. She speaks to guests about the advantages and pitfalls of having more scientists in Parliament, science policy and the #policylates debate series. We will be live tweeting as @Society_Biology at the event next Thursday 29th November from 7pm using the hashtag #policylates and will be taking questions to put to the panel. If you have any questions or views to share please comment below or join in the discussions already taking place on the Society of Biology LinkedIn group or our previous blog. Rebecca’s podcast guests were: Harry Dayantis – Imperial Science Communication graduate Dr Jennifer Rohn – Cell biologist, novelist and founder and Chair…

Do we need more scientists in Parliament?

Haralambos Dayantis blogs about the Society of Biology’s upcoming debate on ‘do we need more scientists in Parliament?’ The first #policylates event at Charles Darwin House is only a few weeks away, where panellists will be discussing whether we need more people with STEM backgrounds in Parliament. The issue has already generated some discussion on the Psci-Com mailing list, and various debates in Parliament have touched upon the issue. In a debate on cuts to the House of Commons’ operational costs on the 8th November, Adam Afriyie MP argued against cuts to the Parliamentary Office of Science and Technology (POST) of which he is chair. Supporting Afriyie’s defence of POST, Andrew Miller MP (chair of the Science and Technology Select Committee) noted the importance of scientific advice in Parliament: “There are hugely important challenges that none of us, whatever our backgrounds, are properly equipped to deal with. Even if…

What you said about Open Education Resources

Dr Eva Sharpe, HE Policy Officer at the Society of Biology, reports on the results of our survey into the use of Open Education Resources Earlier this summer, I blogged about a Society of Biology project to promote the use of Open Education Resources (OER) by the bioscience community. As one strand of the project we’ve been collecting existing bioscience resources which we’ll be promoting through a new website launching this autumn. Over the summer we surveyed HE bioscience teachers on their current use of OER, any barriers they have found, and comments on our plans for the new website. Here I summarise the responses. Only half of our respondents were currently using or creating OER. Those that weren’t using OER gave a mixture of reasons, from only teaching postgraduate courses and therefore needing very specific teaching resources, having excellent “in house” content available, and a pool…

The Everyday Brain

by Zara Gladman On Friday 19th October 2012, schools, universities and individuals across the country will attempt to set a record for the World’s Largest Memory Game. Guided by neurobiologist Dr Daniela Peukert, I stuck on my thinking cap and took a journey around this highly complex organ . . . We all have one. Einstein’s was smaller than average. The scarecrow from The Wizard of Oz pined for one. I am of course talking about that squidgy, tofu-like lump of “grey matter”, encased in your skull: the brain. This amazing organ controls just about everything you do, from making a cup of tea to falling in love. The biggest part of the brain, the cerebrum, can be broadly divided into two regions called “hemispheres”. Generally, the right hemisphere controls the left side of the body and vice versa. The right hemisphere is also associated with functions like creativity and…

An American crayfish in London (and beyond!)

by Zara Gladman, PhD student at the University of Glasgow and intern at the Society of Biology In my last blog I waxed lyrical on the wonders of crayfish, those large freshwater invertebrates that grace our rivers, lochs and your M&S sandwiches. Today I’d like to discuss one of the biggest threats to aquatic biodiversity: the introduction of non-native crayfish to new ecosystems. For the past four years, my life has been devoted to learning everything I can about one such invader, the North American signal crayfish (Pacifastacus leniusculus, pictured right). Originally from western North America, this species was imported into Sweden for aquaculture in the 1950s and 60s. Thereafter, introductions were made to several other countries including the UK. Today, the signal crayfish is the most widespread non-native crayfish species in Europe. This is not good news for our native plants and animals. Signal crayfish are large, mobile “keystone…