I marched a week ago with 310,000 people in NYC , to send a message to the world that climate change is real and needs our attention. I believe this to be true because I have scientific training, attend scientific conferences, read papers on climate, and read reports by climate change researchers. I care about it because I am a Christian. I love the natural world, the art work of God. I love my neighbor, I love the creator.  Caring about giant changes in the world wrought by human action has to be a part of this love.

Next to me was a group of scientists. Coming from all over, they did not all know each other before the march.  They wore lab coats, and little stickers that said “Science Stands”.  I walked and talked with a biologist from Texas.  One of the organizers was a microbiologist from NYC.  They were marching not only about climate, but about science  and science education itself.   I could have easily chosen to walk with them and I was thrilled that the organizers put scientists and faith communities together in the same section.  In my life, these communities do not need to be at odds.

The group I was walking with included Christian college students, people from the Christian Reformed Church, staff from Young Evangelicals for Climate Action. John and Barbara Elwood (of the blog BelovedPlanet).   Ahead of me was a group from Harvard’s Divinity School.  Far to the front, a friend of mine was walking with a group of investors.  The crowd was so large that she had marched, and was on her bus on the way back to Washington, D.C. before I finished walking.  I have never been in a group so large. It was energizing and humbling to be a part of such an action.

Climate change, and other environmental degradations, are the outworking of excess, cumulative impacts of all of our actions, and unintended consequences of things we sometimes did for good reason.   This reality- that it is no one person, and no one action we have to change, makes it more difficult to solve.  Nonetheless, pretending that it isn’t really happening will not help us. People often ask me for a list of things they can do. I often resist giving such a list, in part because I don’t think most of the change we need now will be because individuals change their light bulbs. It will be because of corporate actions,  large scale impacts which will both come out of the many small behaviors of individuals but will also change those behaviors.  It will involve changes to the way governments and large corporations do business.

I do not know the impact of the Sept 21 Climate March. I do know we tried to send a signal to the UN , the world, and to leaders of the US that this matters and needs attention now.  I know it sent a signal to me, myself, to work on the things I am able to, and yell about the things we need to do together.

I am writing this blog because I am so compelled by the wonder of nature around me.   Many of my favorite books are about people living extraordinary lives of observation. Annie Dillard spent a year in the Wilderness writing A Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, Thoreau escaped to Walden to live in a cabin. Henry Beston lived in a shack on the beach described in  in The Outermost House, braving the fierce howling winds of winter. One of my new favorites, Elizabeth Tova Bailey wrote The Sound of a Wild Snail Eating, while on a sickbed. In Desert Solitaire, Edward Abbey escapes civilization to  the red canyons and shimmering air of the hot southwest. Some writers like Julie Zwickefoose who wrote  A year in Eden live on farms, or in wild places.  They have pets, and move slowly, and write of homemade bread and jam. Birds flock to their feeders and they know them all.

Well, world- I live here, not there, now, not the past or future. I live  on a third of an acre on a busy street, here where the salt from the winter plows kills the edge of my grass. I’m here in a place of privilege- a larger lot than many in the heart of cities will ever find, and yet an infinitesimal plot compared to the great unreached farms of Australia where cattle wander in search of water, small compared to the wild reaches of Appalachia, small compared to the national park where I would want to go- to have a year if I were such  a pilgrim. How vast are the reaches I would hike, how closely I would watch the creeks, how cold and warm and tired and boundlessly energetic I would be were I to take a year to go and be.

The call of my real life, my two sons, my spouse, one pet and two jobs, holds me here with ties I have chosen and love. And so my pilgrimage is broken into a mosaic- a glimpse of the transcendent her and there, the windows into truth and beauty are flashes in the everyday. Heart stopping joy and the crazy fun of curiosity, the morbid fascination of the odd, all here- where I am. And I share it with you now, in the hopes we will travel together, for I suffer an overwhelming love of the fierce and wild, the real, the live and dead, the complex and messy world-  that threatens to undo me.

Recently, a friend pointed out a creature clinging quietly on the bricks on the side of the fitness center at work.  Although it was the middle of a summer day, the creature was a normally nocturnal Luna moth (Actias luna). This species was named because of its moon-like spots by the father of biological classification, Carolus Linnaeus himself, in 1758.  The wings of Luna moths are pale green to bluish green with maroon or yellow rims, and with long tails swooping off the ends of the hind pair of wings. Both pairs of large wings have eyespots shaped a little like moons, that can be used to frighten predators.   The hind-wing tails can also be used to confuse the echolocation of bats  that swoop in to snag a moth out of the air and eat it.

This moth was photographed in an evening on a screen door. The friend sent the picture to me to find out what it might be. You can see the underside of the moth. You can also see that the wings are ragged, possibly from flying past vegetation or escaping predators.

This moth was about 5 ft off of the ground (about 1.5 meters) resting on a brick wall at about 11:30 AM. The hind wings are tucked under the forewings but the tails are very striking and you can see the maroon on the leading edge of the forewings. Sometimes that color goes around most of the wing edges.

Orienting Luna Moths in the Natural World

Insects are part of the kingdom Animalia, itself a part of the eukaryotes. The Eukaryote domain is a group of kingdoms whose members all have a membrane around a nucleus in their cells. Insects are the class in the phylum Arthropoda (“jointed foot”) which also includes other animals with exoskeletons such as lobsters and spiders. Phyla are subdivisions of kingdoms. Within the animal kingdom, insects are the class with the highest number of known species (about 900,000). In fact, insects account for more than half of all named eukaryotic species. Moths and butterflies are in an order of insects called the Lepidoptera (meaning “scale wing”). To give perspective, ants, wasps and bees are in a different insect order, the Hymenoptera (“membrane wing”) , and flies are in yet another order, the Diptera (“two-wing”). If you have ever accidentally brushed a moth or butterfly or seen one dead on the ground, you may have seen tiny powder-like scales coming off of the wings.  This is the reason for the name of the group.

Inside the order Lepidoptera, the Luna moths are members of a family of large moths called the ”Saturniidae”,  named after Saturnia, an alternative name for Juno, the Roman Queen of the Gods. There are 2,300 species in the Saturniidae but only 68 of these species live in North America. The species Actias luna, which I was seeing sitting on the red brick wall, is only found in North America. You might think that 2,300 is a large number of species to be in a family, but realize that there are 70,000 known species of weevils, a family in the beetle (Coleoptera or “case-wing”) order.  For an insect family, Saturniidae isn’t very large.

Luna moths are in a subfamily of the saturniids referred to as the Giant Silkworm Moths. (The silkworm used to make silk is not actually in this family and is not native to North America but some of the Giant Silkworm Moths do make a small amount of silk).

How do Luna Moths Live?

With a wingspan of about 4.5 inches (around 11 centimeters), Lunas are one of the largest moths in North America. Some other saturniids are even larger.  Luna moth caterpillars also get large large right before they form a pupa, and can eat a wide variety of plant leaves.

Two other large moths in the same subfamily are the Cecropia silkmoth (Hyalophora cecropia) and the Polyphemus moth (Antheraea polyphemus). Like the Luna moth, these two are large, nocturnal, and have caterpillars that feed on leaves of trees. They all find mates by coming out in the summer night, moving toward light, and using pheromones, or chemical attractants.  Insects use pheromones as chemical signals for an array of activities including finding food, escaping predation and finding mates. Antennae of saturniids, especially males, are brushy and featherlike and are among the most sensitive chemical receptors to be found. Some moths have 60,000 receptors and can detect a single molecule of pheromone that has wafted from a mile away!  Female Luna moths will release their pheromones and wait. Males will swim upwind until they find the source, often near midnight.  Then pairs of Luna moths join,  remain connected and mate for up to 24 hours.  Later the female will  lay several hundred eggs in small batches on vegetation. These eggs will hatch in a bout a week, and the caterpillars will be munching away on the leaves where they hatch.

Even More to Know!

There is a great deal more to say about the Luna moth and its relatives but I’ll just stick with a few more surprising features:

*Luna moth caterpillars hatch and grow quickly, molting several times and growing each time before forming a cocoon and inside it, the thin pupal covering.

* Luna moth caterpillars can rear up, spew a distasteful substance and make a clicking noise with their mouths to scare off predators

*Like other moths, Luna moths have a pupal stage when their body undergoes a dramatic metamorphosis.  During that stage, the moth absorbs its entire digestive system and forms reproductive structures.  As adults, Luna moths have tiny or absent mouths and never eat. They reproduce and die within about a week.  Not all moths do this.

* Sometimes Luna moths have multiple generations in a summer.  Later generations are colored slightly differently. As climate change occurs, multiple generations are occurring more northerly.

*Overall, large moths, including the Saturniidae, have declined in New England over the last 50 years.  Luna moths, fortunately, appear to be holding steady, although they are not common.

NATIONAL MOTH WEEK!!! July 21-29, 2018

July 21-29 is National Moth Week! Who knew?  You can be a part of something big by collecting data and submitting it to groups that want to know what moths are out there. Collecting information for scientists to use is a part of citizen science.  In fact, moth week occurs in countries all over the world as well.

Believe it or not, looking for moths is called mothing.  It is usually done at night.

If there is enough interest, I will try to arrange a local mothing event.  You could also organize one! Get your family out on the lawn and use one of the fun techniques described here:

http://www.mothscount.org/uploads/How_to_start%20_mothing.pdf

Thanks to my friend for pointing out a delightful and amazing Luna moth. I hope you all get to see one as well some enchanted evening in the last week of July! 

If you are interested:

Here is some information on National Moth Week

http://nationalmothweek.org/

Several of these moths  can be seen if you navigate from here: https://www.butterfliesandmoths.org/taxonomy/Saturniidae.

Here is an interesting but somewhat technical paper about large-bodied moth declines in New England

http://nationalmothweek.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/Moth-Decline.pdf

more on insects:

https://www.si.edu/spotlight/buginfo/bugnos

Foam at the base of a pine tree near Frost Hall, courtesy of Kate McMillan and Abby Stroven

Walking in the woods at Appleton Farms (Ipswich) with a class recently, I was soaked by seemingly unending rain. Our hardy group was out looking at vernal pools when several students asked me about foam at the bottom of several tree trunks. We saw that trickles of foam were coming down the trunks and piling at the base. What was the cause?

Then two staff members saw the same thing on campus and sent me a picture. I did not have an immediate answer for the cause of the foam, but I knew that sometimes foam forms in nature, and that it was not necessarily a problem. But just to be sure, I did some digging around.

Guess what? Foam forms on the trunks of trees in heavy rains because of chemical interactions similar to those that occur when you make soap. That is, it’s like a simple soap made in nature. On pine trees, foam forms because some of the chemicals found in pine sap are soap-like. On other trees, sometimes foam is formed from a chemical process that is created by the combination of air pollutants and plant materials. The air pollutants land on trees during dry periods and build up. During rains, they interact chemically, forming a soap and run down the trunks, foaming as it hits bumps in the bark. A similar process occurs on roads when rain occurs after a dry spell, leaving small pockets of foam by the edges of the road.

Sometimes, however, there is more foam than just the small amounts we saw this week. Foam can appear to pour out of a specific place in the trunk of a tree and down to the base. This is a sign of a bacterial disease called slime flux (also called foamy canker, alcoholic flux, or wetwood) . Trees that are stressed, especially by drought, can be weakened. Bacteria can get into damaged areas of the tree. Through wounds such as breaks in the bark. The bacteria break down tree tissue and produce alcohol and carbon dioxide. The gasses force themselves out of the wood, making a bubbling foam of sap and producing a wet area on the trunk. Sometimes insects such as bees come to feed on the alcohol mixture. If you wound a tree in your yard by hitting it with a lawn mower or weed whacker, the same problem can arise.

For more information on foam on trees see this

http://vtstateparks.blogspot.com/2012/05/whats-with-foam-i-saw-on-trees.html

and this:

http://en.allexperts.com/q/Plant-Diseases-715/white-foam-Oak-Tree.htm

Acorns from small to large of the Willow Oak, Quercus phellos (very small, at center), the Southern Red Oak, Quercus falcata, the White Oak, Quercus alba, and the Scarlet Oak, Quercus coccinea, from southern Greenville County, SC, USA, scale bar at upper right is 1.00 cm Photo by David Hill, published under Creative Commons https://www.flickr.com/photos/dehill/7891890620/

My aging dog sits by my side in the evening and together we listen to the plunk of acorns on the roof. I can tell he is getting older; years ago every acorn was accompanied by shock and vigorous barking protestations. But while he is barking less, this year has involved a lot of acorns sounds. Acorns cover the ground. People come up to me and ask, “What’s with the acorns?”

The ninety species of oaks in North America all produce seeds called acorns, which were once an important part of the diet of Native Americans. They had to be soaked and dried and ground into flour. While we don’t eat them today, acorns are a big part of our world and a part of the diet of seed predators such as squirrels.

And here’s the scoop. Yes, there are more acorns this year than most years. It’s a plot by the oaks.

Periodically, the region’s oak trees have a year when they put out many more acorns than usual. Such a year is a called a mast year, and it is important to maintaining the trees. Most years, the oaks put out acorns but most of the acorns are eaten by squirrels and chipmunks, some end up in the bottom of pond, paved over in roadways, or like the parable- falling on some other type of barren ground. Very few even germinate, much less survive the other dangers they need to escape to reach adulthood.

Then along comes the mast year. The oaks put tremendous energy into making more acorns than usual; a large oak will produce 10,000 acorns in a mast year. This synchronous high production means that the animals that eat acorns are unlikely to eat them all, an effect called predator satiation. More oaks germinate, more grow, and a little cohort of the year grow up together.

This phenomena of seed production is intriguing because the natural selection that pushes oaks to produce more offspring in some years acts on all of the population at once. It would not work if they simply made more acorns all the time, or one tree had a single unexpected year of high production by itself. They all have to do it together and it has to be periodic.

Mast years occur in other plants as well. In some ecosystems a mast year combined with a fire that has cleared out habitat will produce a lot of seedlings, more than mast year by itself. White pine forests have been found to work this way.

The most famous mast events in the world are those associated with bamboo. Bamboo is a broad term for about a 1,000 species in the same subfamily of grasses. Some species native to Northern India have a reproductive cycle in which they bloom and put out masses of seeds every 48 years, and then die. This event, called Mautam, produces enormous amounts of food for rats and results in a “rat flood” and unfortunately, a local famine for humans.

Fortunately for us, a mast year in the mixed forests of New England is unlikely to dramatically increase stored product pests and cause us to be over run with rodents. Squirrels and chipmunks are likely to thrive this year, however, and most of us will enjoy them. My dog, immune to the acorns, may bark at the squirrels they attract. Then another year, the numbers of acorns and of squirrels and chipmunks will fall again.

Several people have asked me what triggers a mast year. Scientists do not know. We do know it is not simply the weather such as precipitation or temperature patterns. Neither does a mast year predict the winter conditions likely to come. So for now we will just enjoy the mystery.

These young’uns emerged from a flower bed in front of McDonald Hall today. There were about 10 of them, and they started walking in different directions. They are baby snapping turtles, laid there by a mother snapping turtle weeks ago, probably in June. In Massachusetts all but three species of turtles are protected and cannot be collected in the wild. Snapping turtles are not protected, but like all turtles, have a long life span and do better if simply left alone. Because of their slow movement and long life spans, turtles have not fared well in the rapidly changing world of the last couple of centuries.

Generally, when turtles are wandering, they have an instinct telling them where to go. It they are in the road, move them out of danger in the direction they are going. It is OK to move hatchlings toward water, but realize that for many young animals wandering or breaking their way out of shells, and other difficult tasks can be important in their development.  In any case, if they look like they are going down a storm drain, into traffic, or into some other dire strait, feel free to move them to the edge of a water body and leave them near some type of cover like leaves. Adult snapping turtles, in contrast,  bite (seriously). So if you ever need to move one, let it chomp on a sick and move it without getting your hands close, or put it in a box.

But anyway, what should you do if you find them? In general, leave wild animals alone to do their thing. But it’s a scary world out there, so Don’t step on them and PLEASE DON’T DRIVE ON THEM.

Interesting Biology Tidbit: Turtles are interesting because in many species, sex ratio is determined not by genes but by the temperature the baby experiences while developing in the egg. This is a very primitive trait, older than the determination of sex by sex chromosomes. As climate warms, turtles experience a shift in sex ratio, moving to more males.  Conservation biologists are trying to figure out ways to help turtles survive in changing circumstances.