In the jungles of Belize last January, [Wild] noticed something odd about the trap-jaw ants passing through his outdoor insect photography class: They all had shrunken heads and swollen abdomens. A day after making the observation, Wild and his students came upon an ant with a worm bursting out of its side. Parasites were at work. Nematode worms enter the ants as larvae and grow inside the ants’ body cavity, siphoning off nutrients and distorting their hosts’ natural anatomy. When the eight-inch-long nematodes are ready to mate a few weeks later, they push their way out of their half-inch-long hosts, killing them.
Via Popular Science
The California Floristic Province (byflora-file)
Being a California native myself I have a fascination with California’s native flora. There are about 6300 native taxa of plants found in California, and a third are found nowhere else but the limited area that comprises the California floristic province. It has the highest diversity of plant species in North America, north of tropical Mexico.
The plants of California are specially adapted for the Mediterranean climate here. Mediterranean climates have long, dry summers and cool, moist winters. In Mediterranean climates the majority of the precipitation occurs during the moist winter months, and summer months receive almost no rainfall, which often means 6-8 months of no rains. For this reason many plants here have switched around the normal seasonal growing patterns. Spring is triggered by the autumn rains, and during the dry summer months plants enter their dormancy.
Mediterranean climate zones comprise only 3% of the Earth’s landmass, but account for 10% of the known plant species. In addition to California, Mediterranean climates are found in only four other areas of the world: the Mediterranean Basin, the Cape region of South Africa, central Chile, and southwestern Australia. Many of the plants used in ornamental gardens and propagated by the nursery industry have ancestral orgins in the Mediterranean climes of the world. This climate has truly created an amazing diversity of flora.
(California Floristic Province Map and statistics from California Native Plants for the Garden, Bornstein, Fross, & O’Brien, Cochuma Press, 2005.)
(Mediterranean Climate Map via wikipedia.)
(via brilliantbotany)
98 year old Dobri Dobrev, a man who lost his hearing in the second world war, walks 10 kilometers from his village in his homemade clothes and leather shoes to the city of Sofia, where he spends the day begging for money.
Though a well recognized fixture around several of the city’s chruches, known for his prostrations of thanks to all donors, it was only recently discovered that he has donated every penny he has collected — over 40,000 euros — towards the restoration of decaying Bulgarian monasteries and churches and the utility bills of orphanages, living entirely off his monthly state pension of 80 euros and the kindness of others.
(via haysally)
“Repeat Rape: How do they get away with it?”, Part 1 of 2. (link to Part 2)
Sources:
- College Men: Repeat Rape and Multiple Offending Among Undetected Rapists,Lisak and Miller, 2002 [PDF, 12 pages]
- Navy Men: Lisak and Miller’s results were essentially duplicated in an even larger study (2,925 men): Reports of Rape Reperpetration by Newly Enlisted Male Navy Personnel, McWhorter, 2009 [PDF, 16 pages]
By dark-side-of-the-room, who writes:
These infogifs are provided RIGHTS-FREE for noncommercial purposes. Repost them anywhere. In fact, repost them EVERYWHERE. No need to credit. Link to the L&M study if possible.
Knowledge is a seed; sow it.
I’ve seen this on my dash a lot today, and even though I’ve seen these statistics before, they still upset me deeply each time I read them. I kept scrolling past, not because I didn’t care, but just that I couldn’t bare to keep looking. I need to pass this along though, because it’s hugely important.
(via what-a-catch)
