A Flame Scallop (Lima scabra) showcasing its ‘electric’ bioluminescence.
Video Source
Born in 1707, Carl Linnaeus would rise to such a level of greatness that the philosopher Jean-Jaques Rousseau once said “Tell him I know no greater man on earth,” and was heralded by many of his contemporaries and apostles as Princeps botanicorum - the Prince of Botany. This praise was not without merit: he’s the reason we name almost everything in biology the way that we do. Prior to Linnaeus, the science dealing with naming, organizing, and classifying organisms, called taxonomy, was a disorganized and confusingly complex mess. The word taxonomy is derived from an irregularly-conjugated Ancient Greek word taxis which means arrangement, and the Ancient Greek suffix -nomia, derived from the Ancient Greek word nemein, meaning to manage.
Linnaeus had a passion for botany, and while he went to school to study medicine, his long-term goals always included learning about plants. At 25, he won a grant to travel to Lapland and document the local flora and fauna. While there, he began to classify the flowers he found with what we now know as the bionomial classification system - from the Latin bi, meaning two, and nominus meaning name. Prior to this system, species were given long, many-worded descriptive names, and there were several competing outlines for classifying plants and animals into groups, none of which were particularly accurate or helpful to a scientist not intimate with the specific branch of biology the outline was designed for.
The binomial classification system uses two identifiers for a species - the “generic name” (also known as its genus), and the “specific” name (also known as the species). Linnaeus introduced this system in his book Systema naturae, first published in 1735. Even though the first edition was basic and just twelve pages long, it introduced to the scientific community a system that was simple, understandable, easy to remember, and easy to add new species to. Throughout his life, Linnaeus and his apostles continued work on Systema naturae, and by its 10th Edition in 1758, it classified over 4400 species of animals, and 7700 species of plants.Portrait of Carl Linneaus by Hendrik Hollander, 1853, in the public domain.
Image from Haeckel’s Tree of Life in the public domain.
Guest post for Kids Need Science.
via erinkilkenny:
17 year Cicada emergence GIF, because I had to see it animate.
The Brood II 17-year cicadas are up and poppin’ along the east coast of the US, according to WNYC’s citizen-science Cicada Tracker map.
Want to know more about these rarely seen prime number nomads? Your humble blogger talked to New Hampshire Public Radio about cicada science. Give it a listen, they say my voice is soothing*
*No one has actually said that yet.
Sigh
Spring Peepers
Small frogs that make a big noise called spring peepers (Hyla crucifer). They start breeding from March to June. When males start calling for mates, they are unusually loud.
Skuh-wee.
Amazing Everyday Objects Seen by a Scanning Electron Microscope
These amazing images are from the book Microcosmos by Brandon Brill, in which a scanning electron microscope takes images of common everyday objects. Above, from left to right, we see:
- An ant holding a microchip.
- Eyelash hairs growing from skin.
- The surface of a strawberry.
- Velcro.
- Household dust, including: cat fur, twisted synthetic and woolen fibers, serrated insect scales, a pollen grain, plant and insect remains.
- A razor blade.
- Rusty metal nail.
- Mushroom spores.
