Category Archives: Biology

Mendacious creationists won’t fess up

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First some context. Back in 2012 I wrote an article on yet another benighted creationist attack on 19th century zoologist Ernst Haeckel, written by The Institute for Creation Research’s (hereafter ICR) Dr. Brian Thomas, (Thomas 2012) implying that Haeckel—and some comparative embryology plates from the 3rd edition of his book The Evolution of Man (1874)—are responsible for the idea that the embryos of tetrapods (terrestrial vertebrates) at one point in their development posses structures often commonly referred to as “gill slits”, more properly pharyngeal clefts and pouches.

This is of course utter nonsense, as I have written on this extensively in other posts (see related links below); however embryological pharyngeal structures are not the real point here. Rather it is a quote, or I should say misquote, cited by Thomas, from a textbook, Biology (2007), authored by Sylvia Mader and a “correction” ICR has made in an editor’s note since added to his article.

In his article Thomas uses the “quote” in question—and Mader’s use of comparative embryo illustrations based, at least in part, on Haeckel’s—to imply that Mader is A) unjustifiably interpreting embryological evidence as being supportive of evolutionary theory, and B) That she isn’t up to date on the true state of comparative vertebrate embryology and Haeckel’s “discredited” illustrations.

First Thomas’s mangled quote of Mader:

Thomas: Mader wrote:

At some time during development all vertebrates have a postanal tail [spinal cord-like scaffold] and exhibit paired pharyngeal pouches… In humans, the first pair of pouches becomes the tonsils, while the third and fourth pairs become the thymus and parathyroid glands. Why should terrestrial vertebrates develop and then modify such structures like pharyngeal pouches that have lost their original function? The most likely explanation is that fishes are ancestral to other vertebrate groups.3

But how does Mader know that the pouches “lost original function?” She doesn’t—she makes the statement on the basis of evolutionary belief, not on scientific observation. She even lists the pouches’ critical functions for human development. Since the pouches are tissues organized into folds and have known functions, then there is no scientific reason to even suspect that they reflect any evolutionary past.3

Now Mader’s quote with some context and significant parts mysteriously missing or altered from Thomas’s version (the parts of significance missing/altered in Thomas’ version in boldface):

The homology shared by vertebrates extends to their embryological development (Fig. 17.16). At some time during development, all vertebrates have a postanal tail and exhibit paired pharyngeal pouches. In fishes and amphibian larvae, these pouches develop into functioning gills. In humans, the first pair of pouches becomes the cavity of the middle ear and the auditory tube. The second pair becomes the tonsils, while the third and fourth pairs become the thymus and parathy­roid glands. Why should terrestrial vertebrates develop and then modify structures like pharyngeal pouches that have lost their original function? The most likely explanation is that fishes are ancestral to other vertebrate groups. (Mader 2007, p. 296)

As I noted in my previous post on Thomas’s article, he replaces Mader’s reference to the fact that the pharyngeal apparatus of vertebrate embryos develop into functioning gills in not only fish but also the larva of amphibians as well, with three little dots (beware creationists bearing ellipses…!). I think it is fair to speculate that Thomas does this due to the fact that these functioning gills in amphibians inconveniently bridges a gap between gilled fish and fully terrestrial, air breathing, vertebrates; something he would rather not have his readers contemplate.

This omission, as we will see, is not mentioned in the more recently added editor’s note.

In the second boldfaced part of the correct Mader quote we see that Thomas somehow altered the quote to make Mader wrongly say that the first pair of pharyngeal pouches are modified during development to become tonsils, rather than the middle ear and auditory tube (eustachian tube). On the other hand it is in fact the second pharyngeal pouches that gets modified into the tonsils.

All this has been merely the backdrop for the quote from Mader’s Biology (2007), Thomas’s mangling of said quote and ICR’s “correction” of Thomas’s mangle. Somehow in the intervening year since I pointed out the problems with Thomas quote or Mader—and I don’t know if it was my pointing it out that caused it—an editor of the ICR’s website became aware of Dr. Thomas’s little oopsie on which pharyngeal pouch becomes what, and decided to add a face saving note correcting the error, however the devil is in the details of this “correction”:

Editor’s note: Updated embryology specifies that the first pair of embryo pouches develops into the middle ear, not the tonsils as the above Mader quote states. “The first pair of pharyngeal pouches become the auditory cavities of the middle ear and the associated eustachian tubes. The second pair of pouches gives rise to the walls of the tonsils.” (Gilbert, S. 2014. Developmental Biology, 10th ed. Sunderland, MA: Sinauer Associates, Inc., 478.)5

Here we learn that “Updated embryology” has created a need to correct misinformation stated in the “Mader quote” on the developmental destiny of the first pharyngeal pouches. That would be the quote where Mader provided accurate information in her textbook which was then mangled by Thomas while conveying it to his audience.

It’s not Thomas’s fault you see, it is because Mader needed to be “updated”.

How contemptible do you have to be to first butcher a quote from a scholar and then when your malfeasance is pointed out to imply that it is the scholar’s information that is at issue rather than your honesty and/or competency?

Update: Having gone back and looked at Thomas’s article I realized that despite the editor’s note correcting the misinformation about the first pharyngeal pouch (arch?), the misquote of Mader has not been corrected. This leads me to speculate that they (whomever at ICR added the note) haven’t actually figured out that Thomas screwed up the quote.

Top notch stuff.

Related Links

“Creationist foists “fraudulent” embryo picture on his readers” (2012) by Troy Britain

“Gill slits” by any other name…” (2012) by Troy Britain

“Responding to a comment on my article: “Gill slits” by any other name…” (2016) by Troy Britain

“Haeckel’s ABC of evolution and development” (2002) by Michael Richardson & Gerhard Keuck

“Ernst haeckel’s ontogenetic recapitulation: irritation and incentive from 1866 to our time” (2002) by Klaus Sander

“Pictures of Evolution and Charges of Fraud Ernst Haeckel’s Embryological Illustrations” (2006) by Nick Hopwood

“Accuracy in embryo illustrations” (2008) by the National Center for Science Education

“Haeckel’s embryos: fraud not proven” (2009) by Robert J. Richards

References

Haeckel, Ernst (1874) The Evolution of Man

Mader, Sylvia S. (2007) Biology (9th ed.), McGraw-Hill

Thomas, Brian (2012) Do People Have ‘Gill Slits’ in the Womb?, ICR website accessed on 3-17-2024

Some bugs from my mother’s garden

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Mom found some caterpillars munching on flowers in her back yard today. At first I thought they might be larvae of the moth Manduca quinquemaculata, AKA the “five-spotted hawkmoth” the AKA the “Tomato Hornworm”:

However my mother said she had looked those up and that these caterpillars were different. After looking them up myself I agree they do look a little different, but not much. I’ll be tagging my friend Don—a lepidopterist—to see what he thinks they might be (perhaps a closely related species?).

There were a number of individuals ranging in size and coloration. There were these two individuals that were about 1.5 to 2 inches long (fingers for scale):

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Here is a close up of one of the smaller larva. Note the shed skin on the stem below and to the rear of the caterpillar.

catter_crop

Then there were these two larger larvae (2.5 inches or so). Note the slight difference in coloration between the two:

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Then there was the beefiest cater-critter of them all. About 3 inches in length and rather radically different in coloration. Different species or do they change coloration as they molt? Again I’ll be deferring to my freind Don on this one.

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My mother is going to attempt to rear them to adulthood, so perhaps I will have an update with some pictures of the adults in future.

Update: My friend Don got back to me and said the following (with a caution that these are not the group of moths in which he specializes:

“Looks like a white-lined sphinx moth larva. Hyles lineata. They feed on a variety of plants, and with this year’s rain should be all over. I’ve seen the larvae by the thousands at places like Anza Borrego State Park. The adults come to blacklights in most places around here.”

Looking at pictures of H. lineata this appears to my non-person eyes to be correct;

So I was on a panel discussion about micro vs. macroevolution…

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Several weeks back I get an email from Phil Calderone, a member of one of the local atheist/agnostic/freethought groups (I.E.A.A.), asking if I would like to act as a fill in on a (then) upcoming “believers vs. non-believers” panel discussion on the subject of micro vs. macroevolution. Apparently, one of the persons originally invited was not going to be able to participate and he needed a fill in and was pointed towards me by Dr. Brad Hughes, who many years ago I had helped (along with others) prepare for a debate with “Dr.” Kent Hovind.

After some trepidation—due to having never done any public speaking before—I agreed to participate as long as it was understood that I was unlettered and neither a paleontologist or biologist but rather a mere amateur naturalist who has had a bit of experience in the creation/evolution debate. 

The format of the discussion was meant to be a relatively informal back and forth between four people with two on each side. One the “believers” side there was a gentleman named Kelly Clemensen, of something called the Areopagus Project, and Dr. Paul Giem of Loma Linda University (see also Giem’s web page here). On the non-believers side was myself and Phil Calderone who was to moderate but had to fill in the second non-believers chair for another person who couldn’t make it.

I will not go into any more description of the event as it was recorded on video and you can watch the proceedings for yourself below. However, truth and honesty before all I will be addressing at least two places where I know I screwed up in the discussion below the video.

Please feel free to point out any other mistakes I made, or address the many points made by the creationists that went unaddressed by either Phil or me during the discussion. I know there are whole bunches of things that our opponents said that was missed or deserved more in depth dissection.

Now that you have, hopefully, watched the video there are two places that I realized I messed up pretty much right after the debate. One was minor memory failure, misattribution about punctuated equilibrium. The other was a more significant—at least in my opinion—point were I brought up a group of fossil organisms that was really something of a red-herring—though I committed the fallacy out of partial ignorance—and should have known better from other statements I myself had made at other points in the same discussion!

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ICR blocked me on Facebook

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boy-that-escalated-quickly

So, the Institute for Creation Research put up a link on their Facebook page to one of their latest Acts & Facts articles on the whole Ernst Haeckel/vertebrate embryos thing and since the sort of stuff creationists write about this subject is a pet peeve of mine (as readers of this blog will no doubt have gathered) I decided to post a quick comment on the following quote from the article:

Guliuzza: Shouldn’t students be skeptical when they’re told that evolutionists can simply look at folds in embryos and see gill slits? The truth is that these are only folds of tissue in the pharynx region of vertebrates during the pharyngula stage of development. For mammals, birds, and reptiles, they never develop into a structure that is in any way like fish gills.

I wrote that this statement was not true as would be known to anyone who had cracked an embryology textbook and asked if Dr. Guliuzza (the author of the article) was therefore incompetent in this area or if he was being deliberately misleading. Further I provided a link to my blog post on the subject of “gill slits” so that anyone interested could look at the evidence for themselves.

I also corrected one of their other commenters on what Thomas Huxley and Charles Lyell’s professions and religious perspectives were. I also noted to the commenter that all science, not just evolutionary biology, leaves God and other supernatural agents out of its explanations.

I used no harsh language, I did not call anyone any names and I engaged in no mockery (unless you count my pointed question about Guliuzza competency/honesty) and yet the end result was that my link and all my comments have been deleted and I am apparently now blocked from commenting on ICR’s FB page.

I’ll leave the reader to decide what this says about ICR and the robustness of their scholarship.

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Creationism Nit: Archaeoraptor?

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So the other day I found myself near one of the local Bible book stores and since I had the time wandered in to see what creationist fare they might have in their apologetics section. As it turned out not a lot, however in the homeschooling section they did have this little tome titled, Exploring the world of biology: From mushrooms to complex life forms (2009) by a John Hudson Tiner and published by Master Books (which as far as I know is still a subsidiary of the Institute for Creation Research):

the-world-of-biology-tiner

I am not sure why Mr. Tiner—who is apparently a math teacher—chose to start with mushrooms in his “exploration” but even leaving out simpler organisms makes his exploration a tall order when he only has 160 pages to work with.

Regardless, I am not here to critique the entire book, or even the section from which I have drawn my nit (I couldn’t do so in good faith anyway, as I only flipped through the book and took a couple quick photos). I am only here for the nit, nit, nit!

And the nit is this from page 133:

archaeoraptorHere we have a black and white photo of a fossil which is labeled Archaeoraptor liaoningensis.

Huh, yeah, it is just that the problem is the picture is not of that notorious fraudulent fossil. See for yourself; compare the picture above with following picture of the actual “Archaeoraptor”:

Source is the Fossil Wiki page

You don’t have to have a degree in comparative anatomy to tell these two specimens apart.

What Tines has done is publish what is clearly a cropped photograph of the Berlin specimen of Archaeopteryx siemensii —perhaps the single more famous and recognizable fossil in the world—and mistakenly labeled it as Archaeoraptor.

Archaeopteryx siemensii

The Berlin specimen of Archaeopteryx siemensii

So, yeah, “oops!” Mr. Tines may want to familiarize himself with Archaeopteryx before he opines on the state of the fossil evidence for the evolution of birds from other dinosaurs (let alone starts writing books that might fall into the hands of impressionable children). 

For more info on the Archaeoraptor story see:

“Archaeoraptor Fossil Trail” By Lewis M. Simons from the October 2000, National Geographic magazine

Responding to a comment on my article: “Gill slits” by any other name…

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I have decided to move this up from the comments section (cuz why not?) of my article “Gill slits by any other name…

Andy: Hi Troy, I read your post, and it is very well argued.

Thanks. [He said knowing that a “but” was coming.]

Andy: At the moment, I am a biology student at a local university, and one of my personal headaches is the promotion of either creation-ism or evolution-ism. To be honest with you and with all due respect, I really don’t care for either explanation.

Andy, with all due respect, you should know that for someone like me who has been in the “trenches” debating people pushing pseudoscience for years, the fact that you would refer to evolutionary theory as “evolutionism” is a large red flag that would strongly lead me to suspect that your understanding of evolutionary theory and science itself is likely wanting.

Unfortunately, your next sentence does little to disabuse me of my suspicion. Creationism is set of theological beliefs regarding a creation story written down in the 6th or 5th century B.C.E., accepted on faith and in the face of contravening facts by a tiny minority of people with any scientific background. Its mechanisms (God did it) are untestable and to the extent that it makes claims testable against the empirical world it has been falsified a thousand times over.

On the other hand evolutionary theory is a scientific explanation for a vast number of facts that is testable against further observations of the empirical world and used by the vast majority of the relevant scientific community as a guide to further research…whether you “care” for it or not.

That you would casually place them on the same level is yet another huge red flag.

Andy: As a student, the only thing that I am concerned about is true scientific facts that have been tested at a laboratory to the molecular level.

We are only three sentences in and we have three red flags. In my experience people who use terms such as “true scientific facts” (as opposed to what, “false scientific facts”?) tend to not to be particularly familiar with either the facts or what counts as scientific.

However, that is a nit compared to the philosophical problems with your above statement. Why on Earth would you limit yourself to what is testable in a laboratory at a molecular level? Better yet, why should anyone else take your narrow limits as to what to be concerned with seriously? Using your bizarre limitations, we would be throwing out vast swaths of empirical data, and not just in biology.

Molecules are great but they are not a perfect path to knowledge nor are they the only path.

Furthermore, the point of science is not simply collecting random facts, rather it is about explaining the facts that we observe [insert Darwin quote about collecting pebbles here]. In this case, we have detailed anatomical, physiological and genetic similarities between the pharyngeal structures of terrestrial vertebrate (hereafter “amniotes“) embryos and non-amniote vertebrates (amphibians and “fish”), set against a particular paleontological backdrop that needs a coherent explanation.

You do not like creationism, great. That should be a given and I am with you. However if you do not like evolutionary theory, then what is your better explanation for the gill-like appearance of the pharyngeal structures of amniote embryos (and everything else evolution explains)?

You cannot just sit back and say, “I don’t buy any of it” and expect to be taken seriously, especially in face of the apparent success of evolutionary theory.

Andy: My teacher presented this same example about the gill slits during a microbial genetics lecture.

I am not sure how the “gill slits” of vertebrate embryos are relevant to the genetics of microbes but OK…

Andy: I was just exhausted of listening, so, I raised my hand and said that the information was outdated and more up-to-date data has been collected explaining that they are no longer gill slits, and they are pharyngeal pouches.

Huh, did you read my article to which you are supposedly responding? You are literally arguing semantics here. Regardless of what we call these structures in the embryos of amniotes, they exist, they resemble—in detail—the developing gills of non-terrestrial vertebrates, and we want to understand why this would be so.

Andy: He asked what was my source, and my reply was, with all due respect, professor, but your source is 150 years old and newer information was out that did not concentrate on a belief based teaching. He stopped and said he will do some more research and get back to us. He continued with the lecture as it was intended.

I am sorry but “your source is 150 years old”, even if true, is not an argument; old ≠ incorrect. FA = -FB (for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction) gets robotic probes to Mars despite the fact that Newton came up with the formula over three hundred years ago.

Furthermore, what is this “belief based teaching” to which you refer? Once again, if you read my article you would know that referring to these structures as “gill-slits” is not dependant on a belief in either creation or evolution as is evidenced by the fact that pre-Darwin creationists called them this.

Oh, and what is your source Andy?

Andy: I agree; they look like gills until you dissect it, and then they look like pouches. I know in biology we name a lot of things base on morphological characteristics, and that is a great easy way to remember things.

No, no, no, again did you even read my article? Here, look at this diagram again:

Source bionalogy.com, with modifications.

Source bionalogy.com, with modifications.

There are clefts (or grooves) on the outside of the pharynx (red arrows) with corresponding pouches on the inside (blue arrows). These clefts and pouches are each separated by membranes that, in mammals, normally remain unperforated with the first (tympanic) membrane forming the so-called eardrum. Some of the post tympanic membranes do normally perforate and then reclose in some birds and reptiles embryos. They also temporarily perforate in the gill-bearing larvae of some amphibians and, of course, in fish they stay perforated and become gills.

Since I know some people are queasy about diagrams here are a few photographs of coronal sections done on various mammal embryos. First, an electron microscope picture of what I think is a stage 13 human embryo (Etchevers, 2008)(blue arrow points to the pharyngeal pouch and red to the corresponding cleft).

(Etchevers, 2008)

For comparison, here are some stained sections from a mouse (left, Zhang et al. 2005) and a pig (right, Shone & Graham 2014) at a similar point of development; once again blue arrows for pouches and red for clefts. Also, note in these photos that the aortic arches—the blood vessels—are visible within the pharyngeal arches (green arrows).

(Left, Zhang et al. 2005 – right, Shone & Graham 2014)

These are not just “pouches”! There are arteries (the blood vessels shown above), muscles, nerves and cartilaginous structures found on either side of the cleft/pouch pairs in the embryonic gills of “fish” and the corresponding pharyngeal arches of amniote embryos.

How do you get from this to, “they look like gills until you dissect it, and then they look like pouches” without ignoring all of these observable facts? These things exist and you need to explain them Andy.

Andy: The only thing that really gets to me is that either creationist or evolutionist keeps trying to push the subject in school.

The reason a competent science teacher (i.e. one who teaches evolutionary theory) would bring them up is because they are structures that have interested biologists since they were first discovered and whose existence is elegantly explained by descent from a common ancestor (evolution).

Andy: Honestly, I paid for one of my books close to $300. I feel that my book should be filled with up-to-date information that has been tested, and that is going to help me in the future and not filled with propaganda of any kind.

The pharyngeal structures of amniote embryos are not propaganda. They exist and are observable by anyone with eyes to see. For example, please note that the photographs of the pharyngeal sections of mouse and pig embryos I reproduced above were both taken from papers published within the twenty-first century. Any modern textbook on vertebrate developmental biology is likely to have similar photos or diagrams of these structures.

Andy: I guess it is easier to print the old stuff than to update the books to what they are intended to do, and that is to provide useful information that can help us treat diseases and give our patients a fighting chance.

Sorry Andy regardless of whether it comes from an older source or a current one, pharyngeal clefts, or “gill slits” exist in amniote embryos whether or not you want to accept the facts or the current best explanation for them, so please spare us the overwrought “won’t someone think of the ill people?!” shtick.

Andy: To this day, I haven’t seen a mermaid or an angel either in nature or in a lab, so, I will have to dismiss both claims as pending research and proper laboratory testing.

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Yeah so at this point, I am starting to have doubts that you are for real Andy and not just a troll looking for attention. What the hell does a mermaid have to do with anything Andy? Please tell me you are not seriously suggesting that evolutionary theory somehow supports the existence of mermaids [Hint: the exact opposite is the case]. Because if you think it does, you may want to rethink your career path—perhaps something in the arts?

Andy: Please don’t take this the wrong way. I am a paying student who is discordant with the never-ending stories.

As I said, after the mermaid comment I am no longer sure how to take you Andy. Perhaps your response or lack thereof will clarify that question.

Regardless I want to thank you Andy. Formulating my response to you has made me consider adding a few things to my “gill-slit” article that I think could use some expansion or clarification. So anyway, Poe, troll or sincere, something positive has come from your comment, thanks.

References

Etchevers, Heather (2008) Development of the branchial arches (slide presentation downloaded on 10-29-16)

Shone, Victoria & Graham, Anthony (2014) Endodermal/ectodermal interfaces during pharyngeal segmentation in vertebrates, Journal of Anatomy, 225(5):479-91

Zhang, Zhen et al. (2005) Tbx1 expression in pharyngeal epithelia is necessary for pharyngeal arch artery development, Development, 132:5307-5315

Secular Museum Blunder

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To demonstrate once again that I am an equal opportunity critic, here is a nit I have to pick with a secular museum, namely the Riverside Metropolitan Museum located in downtown Riverside, CA. It is a small museum and most of its limited public floorspace is taken up by displays dealing with Native American culture and artifacts. However it also has a number of displays on natural history, primarily that of the mountains & deserts in Riverside County. It is near some of these displays I found the following stuck to a wall:

Rhamphorhynchus_at_RMM

And here is the lone label seen in the bottom right-hand corner:

Cuviers_pterodactyl

It reads, “Baron Cuvier’s Pterodactyl“, apparently a reference to the fact that it was the “father of paleontology” Georges Cuvier who dubbed one of the earliest discovered pterosaur fossils “Ptéro-Dactyle”.

Yeah, the problem is though the cast of the fossil accompanying the label is very clearly not of the genus Pterodactylus named by Cuvier. Rather it is a cast of a Rhamphorhynchus. Here for comparison is the holotype specimen of Pterodactylus:

Pterodactylus_holotype_w-arrow

The red arrow points to Pterodactylus’ rather diminutive tail, which stands in rather stark contrast to Rhamphorhynchus’ long kite-like tail which ends in a diamond shaped vane (see above). 

Amusingly this is not the first time that these two genera have been confused. Apparently Rhamphorhynchus was originally misidentified as a species of Pterodactylus but after a few rounds of reclassification finally ended up as its own genus by the hand of Richard Owen 1861.

So a wag of my finger to the Riverside Metropolitan Museum; you need to fact check your displays.

Consilience and whale evolution

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Way, waaay back in December of 2005 (ye gods has been ten years already?!) I wrote a Feedback response on the Talk Origins Archive to a question about the vestigial pelvic bones found in modern whales. In this case the questioner did not believe them to be truly vestigial, no doubt due to holding erroneous beliefs regarding the subject. In my response I of course took the time to correct their faulty views, however I also used the opportunity to talk about the concept of consilience wherein multiple independent lines of evidence converge on a single explanation, giving us greatly increased confidence that those explanations (hypothesis/theories) are likely to be accurate reflections of reality, i.e. “true”. 

I have now and again thought of going back and using that post as a spring-board for a more detailed examination of this subject and who knows, I may still do so someday. In the meantime however, here is a great video from Stated Clearly that I ran across on Facebook recently that uses the same topic—whales—to essentially do the same thing I did all those years ago; make a point about the consilience of evidence pointing to a pretty definite conclusion with regards to not just the ancestry of cetaceans but the evolution of life in general. Better they include more details than I did and it has animations.

Check it out:

I miss answering the feedback question on Talk Origins…

And now a little poorly concealed bragging

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bragging

hopwood_haeckel_book

Last weekend while I was awaiting delivery of my copy of Cambridge University historian of science Nick Hopwood‘s new book Haeckel’s Embryos: Images, Evolution, and Fraud (2015) on 19th century biologist Ernst Haeckel and his (in)famous embryo illustrations, (which I have written about a few times here an PCWP and elsewhere), I got a Facebook notification that I had been “tagged” in a post by my friend (in real life, not just Facebook) and colleague Dr. Nick Matzke. The somewhat cryptic post said the following:

Hey look who’s in the acknowledgements – Troy Britain

Attached to this comment was the following picture:

hopwood_page

Thereafter the comments conversation between Nick M. and I went like this:

Me: Wait, wait, wait, this isn’t Hopwood’s new book is it (my copy is in route)?!

Nick: Yep it is!!

Me: Holy crap!

Nick: Immortality!

Apparently Professor Hopwood was kind enough to mention me (and Nick Matzke as well) in the acknowledgements section of his new book (page 304).

 The relevant section reads as follows:

For crucial pieces of advice, I thank Thomas Brandstetter, Troy Britain, Solveig Jülich, Ron Ladouceur, Nick Matzke, Signe Nipper Nielsen, Ron Numbers, Jesse Olszynko-Gryn, and Constance Sommerey…

Quite an honor! All the more given the company of people like Nick Matzke, Ron Numbers and the rest.

Thank you Prof. Hopwood, you are too kind! And thank you for writing this book! It needed to be done and I look forward to reading it (or rather the rest of it, I’m up to chap. 3 already)!

BraggingAPhysicalInterpretation-27984

What I have been up to lately

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I have been a bit neglectful of my blog of late and I feel I owe my readers (who are not Facebook friends, and thus know already), an explanation. In part  it has been due to my usual procrastination but it has also been due to a change in career. For over twenty five years I have been in the small press printing industry (“quick printing” of letterheads, business cards etc.), however this business has taken a turn towards extinction so I have been looking for some sort of escape hatch into something else. Something preferably somewhat more in line with my interests in natural history.cdfa_logo_v_300

As a result of my search I recently lucked into a job with the California Department of Food and Agriculture (CDFA) as an “Agricultural Aide”, or more descriptively an insect trapper.

troy_in_cdfa_uniform

Yours truly in my CDFA uniform.

Basically I catch flies for a living now.

The initial job is temporary (with a one year duration) but I hope to maneuver myself into a permanent position, with a bit higher pay and additional benefits.

Time will tell whether I will be successful in this endeavor. In the meantime this new job has at least broken the shackles that bound me to a printing press and given me something different to add to my resume if a future employment search becomes necessary.

Before, in my last printing job, I was mostly working part time. Now with the state I work four ten hour days (Mon.-Thurs.) and I feel every minute of it. Basically I have been coming home, eating dinner and falling asleep. This leaves less time and energy for blogging. Though hopefully I will start to adapt and get some of the projects I have been working on finished and published. In the meantime here is a quick pictorial view of my day to day life in the CDFA.

I drive a large truck with a State seal on the door around a particular part of Southern California…

truck

…servicing two different types of fly traps typically hung in various types of fruit trees. The McPhail (the interesting old fashioned glass type, baited with yeast pellets)…

mcphail

…and plastic, two part, Multilure traps (baited with a pheromone soaked sponge, the green thing inside).

mltOnce a week I visit every trap (30 or so a day), replace the bait when needed (every week for the McPhails and every six weeks for the MLTs) and gather up any Mediterranean Fruit Flies (Ceratitis capitata) that I might find in the traps.

mediterranean_fruit_fly17

Image source, The University of Florida website.

Sometimes there are only a few and sometimes there are literally hundreds in a trap. Further, they are often not alone in the traps. There are frequently a variety of other species of flies as well as lace wings, bees, wasps and moths. More so in the McPhail traps (which are less species specific) but even in the MLTs.

picking_flies

Most, if not all, of these Med Flies are sterile files released by the CDFA as a biological control. However some might be wild flies and that is what I am really looking for, though I don’t make that determination. I simply gather the captured flies up and place them in vials of alcohol:

medflys

They are then turned over to someone else who goes through them looking for wild specimens (sterile flies are marked with ultraviolet dye prior to release); the presence of which might indicate a new infestation that would require further action on the part of the CDFA.

So that is basically what I have been up to as of late and which has been partly responsible for my lack of blogging. Fear not however, I have not given up the struggle against ignorance and unreason. I may just be a bit slower than usual at it.

mad_troy

Yours truly on the hunt.