News - Page 8

The many nests of the hairy wood ant

Guest blog from Samuel Ellis, a PhD student at the University of York Centre for Complex Systems Analysis There are an estimated 22,000 species of ants, and it is likely that the weight of ants on the planet is greater than the weight of humans. They are very important to ecosystems all over the world including in this country. I am currently conducting a study on the hairy wood ant (Formica lugubris) at the Longshaw Estate in the Peak district. This species is part of a closely related group of six species called the red wood ants which dominate woodland environments across Europe. These ants build distinctive dome shaped nests of pine needles (with underground chambers) which can be up to 1m high (but are more usually around 30cm). They are apex invertebrate predators outcompeting other ant species and hunting for invertebrate prey on the forest floor…

Flying ant day is back

Submit your flying ant sightings! After the excitement of flying ant day, which happened in the last week of July in most of the UK, there has been a sudden encore and swarms of flying ants were sighted around the UK on 8th August. In some cases at least it appears that the same nests have produced a second batch of males and new queens. Thank you to everyone who has filled in our flying ant survey – we have had over 5000 records so far which will be fascinating data for analysis. Even if you submitted sightings previously your results from this week will be just as valuable as those from July. We will present the results in October during Biology Week. This sound track to this quick video explains about flying ants, and my last blog post answers some more questions.

Have your say on Open Education Resources

Eva Sharpe, Higher Education Policy Officer, Society of Biology calls for people to fill in a HE teaching survey There are many excellent teaching resources publicly available for lecturers to use and re-use in the biosciences across various websites, publications and discussion forums. Although some of these resources are featured in specific online repositories such as Jorum, many are hosted directly on institutions’ own websites and require a bit of searching to find them. Preliminary results of a survey we’re currently carrying out suggest that the main barriers to the use of Open Education Resources (OER) are that people don’t always know where resources are located or can’t find what they are looking for. The Society of Biology recently received funding from the Higher Education Academy and JISC through their OER Programme to work with the Heads of University Biosciences (HUBS) to address this by promoting the use of OER by the bioscience community. As part of…

Calling everyone with wacky ideas for the MRI scanner!

In honour of the Biology Week competition calling for ideas of objects to put in an MRI scanner, here is a guest blog from Katy Ordidge. Firstly, let me introduce myself… My name is Katy Ordidge and I am a second year PhD student working in UCL’s Centre for Advanced Biomedical Imaging (CABI). We are a fairly large lab, consisting of 18 PhD students, 6 post-docs, a senior research associate and our director, Mark Lythgoe (@MarkLythgoe). We are actually a bit like a large and rowdy family! The best thing about working in CABI is the people. We try to help each other out as much as possible, for example, by teaching someone to use a piece of equipment, or even being on hand with tea and chocolate when a big experiment goes wrong. Life in a research lab can be quite hard going at times. Sometimes you have to spend…

Is it a bird, is it a plane?

Sometimes it isn’t ants that alert people to flying ant day, but raucous flocks of gulls. Flying ant day occurs once a year, around now, when winged black garden ants emerge in their millions ready to mate. This is quite a spectacle, partly because of the birds it attracts. Thousands of gulls often loudly make their presence known where they aren’t normally present in large numbers. Often, they are nowhere near the sea. In fact, many of our species of ‘seagull’ will spend lots of time inland. The gulls making the most of flying ant day include the herring gull and the black-headed gull. Black-headed gulls are smaller and daintier than herring gulls, and are the most common gull species seen inland. In the summer it is recognisable by its black head (actually chocolate brown) but it loses the colour over the winter. Like most gulls, black-headed gulls live…

Bring biology to life with ARKive

Guest blog by Lauren Pascoe from Wildscreen Whether you want to explore the wonders of the natural or are in need of some inspiration for this years’ Society of Biology photography competition, ARKive has it covered. ARKive is an initiative of Wildscreen, a not-for-profit organisation whose mission is to inspire the global community to discover, value and protect the natural world using the power of wildlife imagery. With over 15,000 fascinating species fact-files and over 100,000 films and photos from the world’s best wildlife photographers and filmmakers, gathered together and freely available online at www.arkive.org, we hope to shine a spotlight on the world’s biodiversity. Like the Society of Biology and its ‘How Biology Can Save the World’ photography competition, we believe that imagery is powerful and effective means of raising environmental awareness. Amazing and awe-inspiring wildlife films and photos can be instrumental in igniting that…

Why become a Chartered Scientist?

The Society of Biology has recently been awarded the 27th licence to offer Chartered Scientist by the Science Council, in addition to our current Chartered Biologist Status. Although for a lot of our members bioscience is their main interest, their work often crosses into other areas of science, and Chartered Scientist status will benefit their recognition in pan-science roles. Professionally recognising those who work in the life sciences at a high level, Chartered Status helps public confidence in professionals and gives employers confidence in their employees. Chartered Status is open to Members (MSB) and Fellows (FSB) of the Society of Biology with a Masters level qualification or equivalent, who can also demonstrate the required professional competences and a commitment to Continuing Professional Development (CPD). The world in which all professionals practice is changing, and the biosciences are no exception. Professionalism is continually strived for but encompasses much more than just a job…

Science, sport, and politics combine for Parliamentary Links Day

Around 250 MPs and distinguished scientists gathered at the House of Commons to discuss Science and Sport, as the Society of Biology hosted the biggest ever Parliamentary Links Day. House of Commons speaker Rt Hon Jon Bercow MP opened the event, telling delegates that although there was a ‘great distance to travel’ in terms of promoting scientific understanding among MPs, there had been a great deal of progress in recent years. Science and Universities Minister Rt Hon David Willetts MP said Parliamentary Links Day had become “the biggest gathering of scientists coming to parliament”. “Often the sporting environment is one of the first places where technical innovations are seen and can be tested. Sport drives innovation,” he said before taking questions on scientific understanding in politics. In the first of two panel discussions Andy Parkinson, chief executive of UK Anti-Doping, explained how new scientific techniques meant…

Flying ant facts

Submit your flying ant sightings! We have had an overwhelming response to our flying ant survey and some very interesting questions about flying ants. So I thought I’d bring them all together, along with a couple of videos of ‘my’ flying ant colonies in Hertfordshire. You can also read about why ants fly on our website or the BBC. If you have any more questions, add a comment below and I will do my best to answer them. Firstly, a question from Mandy from Rochdale: Hi, just read your article about flying ants, I recall an incident about 16 years ago. Went outside to be greeted by a carpet of thousands upon thousands of dead and dying flying ants covering the garden. Is this a normal phenomenon or would it have been something toxic they flew into, It has always puzzled me. This is a natural event, which many of…

A personal thought on photography, art, biology and science

A guest blog from Dr Wei-Feng Xue, winner of last year’s photography competition “What inspired you to be a biologist?”. Wei-Feng is a Lecturer in Chemical Biology at the University of Kent and uses his flikr photostream to communicate photography. People often ask me, as a child what did I want to do when I grew up. “Have you always wanted to be a bio-scientist?” they ask. Perhaps it surprises some when my answer is “no”! As much as I wanted to become a scientist, I was also equally excited about becoming a visual artist or a designer. I spent a lot of time on painting, crafting, drawing, photographing and designing, but science eventually won the career path “tug-of-war”. In a blink of an eye it feels, I had my degree in science, completed a postdoc in a biosciences lab, and more recently started an academic position in a…