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“a\ THE BIGGEST 
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*2005 Center for Automotive Research study. Includes direct, dealer and supplier employees, and jobs created through their spending. 
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Opening 
July Fourth 2006 


i 


\ {LDCENTER.ORG 45 MUSEUM DRIVE 


STORY 


APRIL 2006 VOLUME 115 NUMBER 3 


48 THE WORLDS 
BEHIND THE GLASS 


Museum dioramas create such a compelling 


“virtual reality” that visitors can forget 
the artifice and engage with nature itself. 
STEPHEN CHRISTOPHER QUINN 


ON THE COVER: Whale shark 
accompanied by pilot fish off 
the coast of Western Australia. 
Photograph by Gary Bell. 


FEATURES 


COVER STORY 
42 THE BIGGEST FISH 


Unraveling the mysteries of the whale shark 
STEVEN G. WILSON 


54 ALASKA‘S 

UNDERGROUND FRONTIER 
An observatory that looks down—not 
up—at the planet’s microbial diversity 
CHRISTINE MLOT 


34 


40 


62 


64 


67 


70 


74 


76 


80 


Joe Rao 


THE NATURAL MOMENT 
I Spy 
Photograph by Simon D. Pollard 


UP FRONT 
Editor’s Notebook 


CONTRIBUTORS 
LETTERS 


SAMPLINGS 
News from Nature 


UNIVERSE 
When the Moon Hits Your Eye 
Neil deGrasse Tyson 
BIOMECHANICS 


Secrets of the Sacred Lotus 
Adam Summers 


THIS LAND 
Green Fingers 


Robert H. Mohlenbrock 


BOOKSHELF 
Laurence A. Marschall 


nature.net 
New Moon 
Robert Anderson 


OUT THERE 
Crash! 
Charles Liu 


THE SKY IN APRIL 


AT THE MUSEUM 


ENDPAPER 
Chernobyl] Paradox 


Mary Mycio PICTURE CREDITS: Page 10 


Visit our Web site at 
www.naturalhistorymag.com 


EXPLORE YOUR WORLD 


LIFE In THE 
UNDERGROWTH 


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This beautifully illustrated book 
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world over, their arrival on land 
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8 


THE NATURAL MOMENT 


~ See preceding two pages 


E nthroned on a golden flower, 
a female crab spider holds 
dominion over most visitors that 
stop to rest or refuel. But there’s 
not much pomp: no intricate web, 
no hairy legs, no red hourglass. 
Instead, the spider—weighing in 
at about 0.005 ounce—hides in 
ambush among the corridors of 
her petal palace. Crab spiders cam- 
ouflage themselves superbly, usual- 
ly matching the color of their 
home flower. In the ultraviolet 
spectrum, though, the spiders may 
actually advertise their presence; 
extra UV flare apparently lures in 
certain insects, such as bees, that 
are attracted to patterned flowers. 
When an unsuspecting mite or 
pollinating honeybee alights, the 
spider sinks its fangs into the vic- 
tim’s head or neck, injects a diges- 
tive fluid that liquefies the internal 
organs, and sucks the carcass dry. 
Nothing larger than a micron 
across can fit in its mouth—hence 
the need to liquefy. The drained 
hull is soon tossed or blown away, 
leaving a clean floral plate. 
Photographer and seasoned 
arachnologist Simon D, Pollard 
sighted this crab spider (Thomisus 
sp.) in Bukit Timah, a nature re- 
serve in Singapore. Eyes elevated 
on pointy projections characterize 
the genus Thomisus, and at one 
point Pollard could see only two 
little eyes—two of the spider’s 
eight—peeping over a petal at him. 
Crab spiders may be hard to spot 
(they see you more often than you 
see them), but they’re not rare. 
More than 2,000 species exist 
worldwide. Remember that the 
next time you stop for a sniff. 
—Erin Espelie 


NATURAL HISTORY April 2006 


UP FRONT 
2s 


Fish Story 


ost anyone who’s ever put on a mask and flippers knows 
the thrill of tropical reef snorkeling. You've slathered on 
the SPF 45, rubbed spit and seawater into your mask to 
clear the view, waded into the warm, clear waters off the beach, and 
kicked across the lagoon to the reef. The underwater world is mes- 
merizing, and you watch in fascination as stylish little Moorish idols 
skitter among the sea fans, and long, impossibly thin, almost trans- 
parent needlefish hang motionless above a growth of staghorn coral. 
Then you sense a murky form, almost invisible in the distance, 
much larger than anything in your immediate vicinity. Brain flash: 
how safe are these waters, anyway? If it’s a shark, do you stop to avoid 
the splashing that is said to attract them, or do you make a quick 
U-turn and head for shore? Whew! It’s just a sea turtle—but, oh, 
what a turtle! Four feet long from stem to stern, and big enough to 
ride. You swim with the creature while it drifts along, allowing you 
within touching range, and for a moment, until it tires of the lazy 
pace a human swimmer can manage, you feel as if you’ve met a visi- 
tor from another planet. Such a close encounter can be life-changing. 
Imagine, then, the frisson of coming nose to nose with a thirty- 
five-foot version of the leviathan that appears on our cover this 
month, the whale shark. Steven G. Wilson (“The Biggest Fish,” page 
42) doesn’t need to imagine; he swims with them for a living. “I felt a 
jolt to my lower back,” he writes, “and suddenly found myself being 
propelled through the water. All I could see was a whirl of spots. It 
took me a moment to comprehend that another, much larger whale 
shark had struck me with its dorsal fin and was pushing me forward.” 
Wilson’s experience was startling, to be sure, but he was never in 
real danger: whale sharks are filter feeders, and nothing much bigger 
than krill and other puny prey are at risk of becoming food. The en- 
counter, in any event, was a bit unusual; he was deliberately stirring 
up trouble by trying to dart another whale shark with an electronic 
tag. Most of the time, the animals are as docile as dairy cattle, and a 
lively ecotourism industry is building up around swimming with the 
creatures. On a number of reefs throughout the world—in the Yu- 
catan of Mexico, off the coast of western Australia, in the waters off 
the town of Donsol, in the Philippines, and elsewhere—you too can 
swim with whale sharks, if you dare! 


> ome well-deserved recognition came to our superlative colum- 
nists recently. Neil deGrasse Tyson, our regular “Universe” 
columnist, will receive the prestigious American Institute of Physics 
Science Writing Award this May, for best article by a scientist, for his 
column “In the Beginning” (September 2003). 

Joe Rao, our long-time “Sky” columnist (“The Sky in April,” 
page 74) and the weeknight TV weatherman on News 12 Westch- 
ester, has been nominated for a New York Emmy for On-Camera 
Talent in the weathercasting category. 


Congratulations to both! —PETER BROWN 


OUR . , a 
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10 


CONTRIBUTORS 
Sots TT 


Spotting a spider, even one hiding between the petals of a flower, 
has become second nature to arachnologist SIMON D. POLLARD 
(“I Spy,” page 4). After earning his Ph.D. from the University of 
Canterbury in Christchurch, New Zealand, Pollard began study- 
ing how flower-dwelling crab spiders drink nectar. Since then, 
his research interests have included jumping spiders in Borneo 
and the Philippines, water striders in China, and crab spiders 
that live and commit suicide in pitcher plants. He is the author of several earli- 
er articles in Natural History, and his work has also appeared widely in other 
publications. Pollard is curator of invertebrate zoology at the Canterbury Mu- 
seum in Christchurch. 


STEVEN G. WILSON (“The Biggest Fish,’ page 42) earned his 
doctorate from the University of Western Australia in 2001 for 
studies on the physical and biological factors that affect the ag- 
gregation of whale sharks at Ningaloo Reef, off the coast of 
Western Australia. Wilson had earlier worked as a high school 
biology teacher, dive-boat captain, and pearl diver. His research 
focuses on the migratory movements and vertical behavior of 


— 


aig § 
me all 
large pelagic fishes: tunas, billfishes, and sharks. He holds an appointment as a 


postdoctoral research scientist at Hubbs—SeaWorld Research Institute in San 
Diego, California. This May, Wilson will return to Ningaloo Reef to contin- 


ue his studies of the whale shark. 


Naturalist and artist STEPHEN CHRISTOPHER QUINN (“The 
Worlds behind the Glass,” page 48) joined the staff of the Ameri- 
can Museum of Natural History in 1974. He apprenticed under 
masters of diorama art Raymond deLucia, Robert Kane, and David 
J. Schwendeman. His first assignment was as a foreground artist for 
the wood stork diorama in the Leonard C. Sanford Hall of North 
American Birds in the museum. He is now senior project man- 
ager for exhibitions at the museum, where he oversees the creation of new diora- 


mas as well as the conservation and restoration of existing ones. Quinn illustrated 
the book What Color Is That Dinosaur? by Lowell Dingus (Millbrook Press, 1994). 


CHRISTINE MLOT (“Alaska’s Underground Frontier,’ page 54) studied microbi- 

a ology as an undergraduate, then switched fields to do graduate 
study in sclence communication. She has written for such mag- 
azines as Science and Science News. Recently she returned to her 
microbiology roots as a reporter, doing bench work in Jo Han- 
delsman’s plant-pathology laboratory at the University of Wis- 
consin—Madison. The lab work combines two of her favorite 
topics, Alaska and microbial diversity. Mlot was awarded a Knight 
Science Journalism Fellowship, and she has taught writing at the University of 
Wisconsin. She is a contributing editor for Nature Conservancy magazine. 


| PICTURE CREDITS Cover: ©Gary Bell/oceanwideimages.com; pp. 6-7: ©Simon D. Pollard; p. 29(top): Beth Wald/ 
Aurora Photos; p. 29(bottom left): OMrs. Nina de Garis Davies/Bridgeman; p. 29(bottom right): Paul Weldon/ TONAL 
VISION; p. 30(top): Andrew Peacock/©Lonely Planet Images; p. 30(bottom): ©Plush Studios/Getty Images; p. 32(top): 
Christian Ziegler; p. 32(bottom):; Roy Beckham/www.efinch.com; p. 34: ©David De Lossy/Getty Images; p. 36: 
ONASA/|SC/JPL; pp. 40-41: Illustrations by Tom Moore; pp. 42-43: ©Tom Campbell; p. 44: ©Ron and Valerie Taylor/ 
SeaPics.com; p. 45: Illustration by Emily Damstra with consultation by Jonathan Nelson and R. Aidan Martin; p. 47: 
©Jurgen Freund/naturepl.com; p. 48: CAMNH Photo Studio; pp. 50 & 53: OAMNH archives; p. 51: Denis 
Finnan/OAMNH, p. 52: Beckett/Finnan/OAMNH,; pp. 54-55: ©Patrick J. Endres/AlaskaPhotoGraphics; p. 55: Map by 
Joe LeMonnier; pp. 56-57: Illustration by Patricia J. Wynne; p. 58: ©David Benson; p. 59: ©USDA Forest Service; p. 60: 
Courtesy the Author; p. 62: ©Bill Banaszewski/Finger Lakes Images; p. 63(bottom): OMarjorie Tweedale/Finger Lakes 
National Forest; p. 63(top): Map by Joe LeMonnier; p. 64: ©Ralph A. Clevenger/CORBIS; p. 65(top): ©Anup Shah/ 


NATURAL HISTORY April 2006 


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12 


Eu Meein 


Weevil Evil 

Robert W. Jones’s fascinat- 
ing article on the boll wee- 
vil, “March of the Weevils” 
[2/06], recalls the lines 
from an old blues song de- 
scribing with chilling effect 
what the weevil did to 
African-American farmers 
in the South: 


Boll weevil told the farmer, 
“You'll need no Ford machine, 
I'll eat up all your cotton, 
Can't buy no gasoline.” 


I don’t see no water, 

But I'm about to drown, 
I don't see no fire, 

But ’'m a-burnin’ down. 


In my work on Maya 
plant use and agriculture in 
the Mexican state of 
Quintana Roo, I found 
that Maya in isolated vil- 


NATURAL HISTORY 


April 2006 


lages were growing strange 
(often very large) and an- 
cient varieties of cotton, 
usually under the name 
“snake cotton” (tamankaan 
in Maya). Those local vari- 
eties of cotton never had a 
bit of weevil damage. They 
should be sought out. 
Eugene N. Anderson 
University of California 
Riverside, California 


Robert Jones’s article pre- 
sents the history of the boll 
weevil invasion of the USS. 
Cotton Belt with great 
clarity. His presentation of 
one of the sidelights to the 
story was particularly 
lucid—the seemingly eso- 
teric questions concerning 
the taxonomy and classifi- 
cation of boll weevils and 


their host plants. The an- 
swers to those questions, 
which have added to biol- 
ogists’ knowledge about 
the life history and evolu- 
tionary history of the wee- 
vil, have also led to new 
avenues of research in the 
development of possible 
control measures. For ex- 
ample, investigators have 
discovered that parasites 
might be able to replace 
pesticide sprays 1n extermi- 
nating the weevil. 
Paul A. Fryxell 
Rancho Santa Ana Botanic 
Garden 
Claremont, California 


ROBERT W. JONES REPLIES: 
Eugene N. Anderson’ in- 
triguing comment pertains 
to the larger question of 


whether the pre-Colum- 
bian cultures of Meso- 
america had to deal with 
the boll weevil. Some in- 
vestigators maintain that 
the weevil is a recent pest, 
having switched from its 
wild host, Hampea, only 
shortly before invading the 
United States. But the dis- 
covery of a weevil in a 
cotton boll from Central 
Mexico dating from A.D. 
900 indicates that the wee- 
vil was a pest of cultivated 
cotton long before it ap- 
peared in the US. Yet in- 
digenous cultures were 
clearly able to grow sizable 
quantities of cotton, which 
suggests they had a variety 
of tactics and, as Mr. 
Anderson proposes, resis- 
(Continued on page 75) 


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FIND YOURSELF AMONG THREE-HUNDRED- 
million-year-old plant fossils embedded in some of the 
oldest visible rock on Earth. The natural wonders here 
are like nothing you've seen before. The world’s highest 
tides... they rise to over 48ft. (14 m) in some places. 
Falls reverse themselves and start to flow backward, and 
powerful tides sculpt 
the landscape. At low 


tide, spelunk through 


caves and touch the 


base of giant rocks 
reaching up from the ocean floor; at high tide, kayak 
around miniature islands. That's just the tip of the many 
natural wonders in New Brunswick. 

There's diverse landscape here. Extending northeast 
from the Bay of Fundy are some of Canada's most 
popular swimming beaches with some of the warmest 
salt water north of Virginia. Here you'll find the world’s 
second longest sandbar, and one of the continent's last 
remaining white sand dunes at the Irving Eco-Centre, 


La Dune de Bouctouche. On the northern portion of 


With 100 billion tons of 
seawater rushing in and 
out of the bay twice a day, 
bizarre things happen. 


the province lies the Baie des Chaleurs, named one of 
the world’s most beautiful bays. 

Along the interior of the province, rivers and waterways 
account for some of the best canoeing and kayaking to 
be had. Tour the St. John River Valley for 400 km (248 
mi.) of pure inspiration. Witness the change in land- 
scape from the calm of lush, green valleys to the 
whitewater rush of the Grand Falls Gorge. The world- 
renowned Miramichi River beckons you to cast a line 

with some of Canada’s best 
salmon fishing, and the beautiful 
Restigouche, St. Croix, and 
Kedgwick rivers will let you 
canoe for endless days along 
unspoiled wilderness. Be awed by 
the untouched vastness of some 
of the oldest mountains on the planet. Hiking possibilities 
abound throughout the province; for a spectacular view, 
climb some of the mountains, which are part of the 
Appalachian Range. 

With waterfowl parks and designated wetlands, New 
Brunswick is a true birdwatching paradise. Up to 95 
percent of the world’s sandpipers depend upon the Bay 
of Fundy mudflats for their survival. Prepare to be 
awestruck when they are airborne; coordinating their 
movements, the birds resemble a school of fish in flight. 
Not to be missed is the Grand Manan archipelago with 


eagles, puffins, and ospreys. On the eastern tip of the 


Clockwise from top left: The Hopewell 
Rocks, Hopewell Cape; Atlantic puffin: 
Chaleur Bay; Appalachian Range; Grand 
Falls Gorge, Grand Falls/Grand-Sault; 
Fundy National Park of Canada, Alma 


province, the eco-friendly Cape Jourrmain Nature Centre 
is also an important stopover for migratory birds and 
offers an educational look at history, art, and green tech- 
nology systems. Whether seeking forest-dwelling crea- 
tures while on a hike, spotting seals from a kayak or 
whales from a boat, you're sure to find an outdoor 
wildlife adventure in New Brunswick, Canada! 

From the phenomenal Fundy tides to the top of the 
Maritimes, New Brunswick welcomes you to discover 
all of its island retreats, coastal crags, horticultural 

ers, and panoramic mountainous views. Take your 
taste buds on a tour of the most succulent seafood and 
down-home cooking. Keep an eye out for the colorful 
flags that adorn lighthouses and boats all along the 
Acadian coast, a symbol for a lively culture that’s ready 
to take you by the hand. The whole northeastern coast 
runs through the heart of Acadia. Take a walk back in 
time at the Village Historique Acadien for a lively inter- 
pretation of the fascinating history of the Acadians, 
and, for a toe-tapping good time, visit the island of 
legends and laughs at Le Pays de la Sagouine. 


Unique shops in our hometowns ... galleries in our 


fej 
(o) 
Il 


cosmopolitan cities ... incredible values. That legendary 
East Coast hospitality will greet you down every street 
with the coziest B&Bs and inns to welcome you at the 
end of the day. 

It’s a world of natural wonder and it’s all waiting 


for you here in New Brunswick, Canada. 


The Hopewell Rocks, 
Hopewell Cape 


LAS Cai er 


Z 
a 


Pe es ty It was like walking on the moon... but it was the 
Y : ocean floor and the views were out of this world! That's New Brunswick's 
phenomenal Bay of Fundy—One of the Marine Wonders of the World! 


And we were just getting started... We strolled beside some the earth's 
last great sand dunes. A rich habitat for rare plants and birds. 


— oe Keep Exploring 


7 
| 


{ 
9 


APRIL, WHEN THE LONE STAR STATE IS ABLOOM WITH WILDFLOWERS, IS A PERFECT 
TIME TO ENJOY ITS CITIES OR DO SOME SPECTACULAR BIRDWATCHING. 


YOUR VISIT TO TEXAS MAY START OUT IN 
Dallas, a thriving metropolis that began with a sin- 
gle log cabin built in 1841, or in Houston, the 
state's largest city, first settled in 1836. In Austin, 
the Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center, dedicat- 
ed to native plants, is spectacular this month. All of 
these sophisticated cities will keep you busy with a 
plethora of historical and cultural attractions 
including many fine museums (be sure not to miss 
the Natural History Museum in Dallas). But in 
Texas, nature is never far away. 

As you head east from Houston toward the island 
of Galveston, about an hour away, stop by the 


Armand Bayou Nature Center, one of largest urban 


wildlife and wilderness preserves in the country. 


Top left: Mission San Jose, founded in 1720, 1s part of the San Antonio Missions Home to bison, raptors, and reptiles, the center 


National Historical Park; top right: along the Pine Canyon Trail in the Chisos Mountains. comprises three ecosystems —bayou, forest, and 


THE STATE 
1 2 5 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 


P : = ’ } ; 
wow. LravelTex.com/D 2 . wow. LravelTex.com B-14 
win. LravelTex.comn/A-18 «+ www. TravelTex.com/E-20 


SPEC 


[AL ADVERTISING 


With over 600 bird 

species, 

well be the birding 
‘apital of the 
United States. 


prairie—as well as butterfly gardens and 
1800s. 


In Corpus Christi, the center of Texas's 


a typically Texan farm from the 


Gulf Coast region, visit the Texas State 
Aquarium. Don't miss Port Aransas, 
which claims to be one of the top twelve birding 
sites in the country. In the spring, watch migrating 


hummingbirds, which are attracted to these wet- 
g 


lands, as well as wading and shorebirds. South of 


Port Aransas, you'll find Mustang Island, where 
acres of sand dunes, sea oats, and beach morning 
glory combine to offer the best of seaside camping, 
surfing, fishing, swimming, and shell collecting. 

In ‘he lower Rio Grande 
Mexico, visit the World Birding Center, headquar- 
tered in the Bentsen-Rio Grande Valley State Park. 
At Bentsen, you'll see birds found nowhere else in 
the United States but deepest South Texas, as well as 
rare visitors from across the Rio Grande. Green Jays 
and Plain Chachalacas congregate regularly in this 


floodplain forest, and flocks of migrating Swainson's 


Valley, just north of 


Texas May 


fall. Bentsen is only one 
of nine sites that make up 
the center, whose habitats 
range from dry chaparral 
brush and verdant river- 


side thickets to freshwater 


marshes and coastal wet- 
South Padre 


birds making the arduous Gulf crossing from south- 


lands. Island is the first landfall for 


ern Mexico and northern Central America. In 


spring, you'll find warblers, tanagers, orioles, and 


thrushes in wooded areas and shorebirds and water- 
fowl in the wetlands; with luck, spot endangered 
species such as Piping Plover and Peregrine Falcon. 

For more information and to order a FREE Texas 


State Travel Guide, call I-800-8888-TEX, Ext. 3860 


Follow the Official 
Bluebonnet Trail, which 
stars the State flower, in 
bloom this month. Acres 
of this native flower 
were planted along 
Texas highways, thanks 
to Lady Bird Johnson 


and Broad-winged hawks are common in spring and __ or visit TravelTex.com. G3 lhe a ws her 
OF TEXAS 
20 


Index 


Inner cowboy released 


Wild West tamed 


Serenity discovered............0...... 


State understood 


000 4000 


16 I7 18 19 


© 2006 Office of the Governor, Economic Development and Tourism, OJARO6 | 


Understand a way of life. 


other state can offer. 
Travel Guide, Accommodations 
Guide and Texas Highway 
Map, visit TravelTex.com or call 
1-800-8888-TEX (ext. 3861). 
M5 like a whole other COUNTY. 


Understand a culture. 
Understand a breed. Understand something no 
For your free Texas State 


Department of Tourism 


New Mexico 


i ee 


NEW MEXICO IS FAMOUS FOR ITS ANCIENT 
past. It is where dinosaurs once roamed, and where 
the Anasazi built their unique cliff-side dwellings, 
whose ruins are preserved at the Mesa Verde National 
Park. But the state is also worth visiting simply for its 
natural beauty. 
Learn about caving first-hand at the Carlsbad Caverns 
National Park. Known for their gigantic and often 
bizarre formations, the caves formed some 250 million 
years ago when the region 
With an average of was an inland sea. Take a 
310 davs of sunshine, 
New Mexico is an outdoors 


ranger-led tour or explore on 


your own, but dont miss 
Lechuguilla, the nation’s deep- 
pa radise for nature lovers. est limestone cave, or the Big 
Room, as large as eight foot- 
ball fields. At El Malpais National Monument, would- 
be volcanologists can explore underground lava flows 
formed 115,000 to 2,000 years ago. Hike on an estab- 


lished trail or go out on your own amid the volcanic fea- 


tures that dominate the landscape, including cinder 
cones, pressure ridges, and complex lava tube systems. 
Volcano buffs also will enjoy the Capulin Volcano 


National Monument; follow the two-mile road to the 


Top: Field of wildflowers; northern New Mexico 
landscape. Left: the steam-era Cumbres and Toltec 
Scenic Railroad. Right: unusual sand formations at 
the Bisti Badlands. 


SPECIAL ADVERTISING SECTION 


NEW MEXICO 
FROM HOT SPRINGS HIGH IN THE MOUNTAINS TO THE WORLD’S 


LARGEST DEPOSIT OF GYPSUM SAND, NEW MEXICO IS INTRIGUING 
TO THOSE WITH A PASSION FOR NATURAL HISTORY. 


New Mexico Department of Tourism 


rim for spectacular views of the volcanic landscape. 

At the northern end of the Chihuahan Desert, the 
White Sands National Monument comprises almost 
300 square miles of glistening, wavelike dunes of gyp- 
sym sand. The dunes are always moving and changing 
their appearance, making them fascinating to photogra- 
phers as well as nature lovers. They are home to a few 
plants and animals, many of the latter camouflaged in 
white, that can survive the harsh environment. Take an 
eight-mile drive from the visitor center to the heart of 
the monument, or a one-mile hike along the Dune Life 
Nature Trail. In contrast to White Sands, the Bistt 
which 


makes then all the more attractive to those seeking soli- 


Badlands are almost unknown and little visited 


tude in the high desert. The Bisti’s fragile sandstone for- 
mations, colorful and undulating mounds, and unusual 
eroded rocks make up a landscape that sometimes feels 
like it's on another planet. 


For more information, please visit www.newmexico.org. 


% 


for stg, ce 


cise was a Shade of blue 


jaa: 0 


FOR A VACATION EXPERIENCE THAT WILL TAKE YOU FULL CIRCLE, 
VISIT NEWMEXICO.ORG OR CALL 1-800-733-6396 EXT. 3343. 


SCANDINAVIA & 
NORTHERN EUROPE 


10- to 38-day CruiseTours» 


from 1,599" 


Captivating CruiseTours visit lands of 
castles, soaring fjords and Viking chieftains 
and explore cities like Stockholm, 
Helsinki, St. Petersburg and Tallin. All at 
a relaxed pace aboard the award-winning 
Marco Polo, with plenty of time ashore. 
You'll also enjoy hotel stays in 
Copenhagen, London and/or Reykjavik, 
Iceland. Discover for yourself 
why Orient Lines is known as 


“The Destination Cruise Specialists”. 


ORIENT LINES’ 


THE DESTINATION CRUISE SPECIALISTS 


www.orientlines.com 


For reservations, see your travel agent. 
For brochures, call 1-800-333-7300. 


r ponsible for typogray 
Corporation Lid, All Rights Reser 


SPECIAL ADVERTISING SECTION 


BUFFALO BILLS 
CODY) VEEIEO W S:P QIN CONGING aaa 


PARK COUNTY, IN NORTHWEST WYOMING, 
is Buffalo Bill’s Cody/ Yellowstone Country. In 1896 
Col. William F. “Buffalo Bill” Cody founded Cody, 
the heart of this county, which still maintains a true 
Western flavor. To learn about Buffalo Bill and local 
history, take Cody's trolley tour. Cody is the eastern 


gateway to Yellowstone National Park, the nation’s 


first national park (1872); the county also includes 
Shoshone National Forest, our first national forest (1891). Wildlife is plentiful: buffalo, 
deer, moose, bighorn sheep, elk, grizzly bear, black bear, and eagles are easily spotted in 
the grass prairies, mountain slopes, and wildflower meadows. Try your hand at fly-fish- 
ing on spectacular trout streams; float through the rapids of the Shoshone River Canyon; 
rock-climb the steep granite cliffs; hike or horseback-ride on the Cody PathWays, a sys- 
tem of paths and trails. Stay at the Victorian-style Irma Hotel, founded by Buffalo Bill 
in 1902 and named after his youngest daughter, or the Pahaska Teepee Lodge, which he 
founded in 1904 in the heart of the forest; both are on the National Register of Historic 
Places. Cody also has many museums devoted to Buffalo Bill, the Plains Indians, 
firearms, Western art, and natural history. The Buffalo Bill Dam, completed in 1920, 
was one of the first concrete dams in the country and transformed the area’s landscape. 
Don't miss Cody Nite Rodeo or the Branson-style Cowboy Music Revue. For more 
information, visit www.yellowstonecountry.org. 


WE HAVE PLACES WHERE 
TIME STANDS STILL. 


BUT THAT DOESN'T MEAN YOU HAVETO. 


The past is present in Cody, Wyoming. You'll 
also find wildlife, rodeo, shopping, dining and more. 
Call or write for FREE travel information. 


836 Sheridan Ave. Dept. NH * Cody, WY 82414 
800-393-2639 * www.yellowstonecountry.org 


MUNITED 


<SPECIAL ADVERTISING SECTION 


Ee | 


EGYPT IS ONE OF THE WORLD'S OLDEST CIVILIZATIONS—ITS HISTORY GOES BACK SOME 
5,000 YEARS—AND PROBABLY ONE OF THE OLDEST VACATION DESTINATIONS, TOO. 


ITS MOST FAMOUS SITE IS PROBABLY THE 
Great Pyramids of Giza (including the Great Sphinx 
and the pyramid of Khufu), but there are about a 
hundred other pyramids in the country, and almost 


all are grouped near Cairo. In addition to monu- 


ments from the era of the pharaohs, Egypt has a 


- x QS SS ee 
= a 


It’s where you always wanted to go. 


wealth of mosques, ancient Christian churches, and 
Jewish temples, testifying to its importance in the 
birth of these religions. Luxor, which has been 
called an open-air museum, is famed for its temples. 
The Temple of Karnak (just north of Luxor) is still 
the world’s largest religious structure, and the Temple 
of Luxor, built by Amenhotep II] and Ramses III, 
housed the festivals of Thebes. In between these 
famous sites, take a trek in the Western Desert, per- 
haps to the oasis of Fayuum, about 100 kilometers 
southwest of Cairo (an oasis is a depression in the 
desert where you'll find trees, springs and wells, and 
a year-round pleasant climate). Visit the beaches of 
the Red Sea, which has become known for its diving; 
or take a traditional cruise down the Nile River, 
heading south from Cairo, for an all-encompassing 
view of the country. 


For more information, visit www.egypttourism.org. 


There's never been a better time to visit Egypt. See the land wher 


Seven thousand years of culture, religion and timeless treasures await you 
the Ten Commandments. Explore the majesty of the Valley of the Kings. Divin« 


re 


of the Red 


5ea. You can do that in only one place 


on Earth 


C yt. Ve ea ent re youve a Ways areamed adou 
Egypt. Live the adv Ir | 1 lal t 


Call us at 1-877-77-Egypt 
www.egypttourism.org 


Left: Diving in the Red Sea 
Top: Horus Temple at Edfu 


Top: Victoria; Green 
Gables in Cavendish; 
West Point Lighthouse 


<SPECIAL ADVERTISING SECTION) 


PRINCE EDWARD ISLAND 


WHAT IF THE WORLD HAD BEEN TO PRINCE EDWARD ISLAND? 

THIS GENTLE ISLAND OFF CANADA‘S EAST COAST |S A SPECIAL 
PLACE WHERE ROLLING FARM FIELDS SPILL INTO THE SEA AND THE 

BRILLIANT COLORS OF THE LANDSCAPE GLOW IN OCEAN AIR. 


AVISIT TO OUR ISLAND REMINDS YOU OF 
the important things in life; it is a place where 
strangers are friendly and people have a sense of per- 
spective. If the world had been to Prince Edward 
Island, we think the world would be a better place. 

Imagine a complete holiday destination all tied 
up in one neat, compact, green package, a smile- 
shaped slice of paradise—this is our gentle island. 


Prince Edward Island is geographically and 


VO : A " = 
*s topographically seductive, with acres of 
m rolling pasture, potato fields, and woodlots, 


stitched together by country lanes and wind- 


ing rivers, all fringed by miles of coastline 


made up of alternating red sandstone cliffs 


and white sandy beaches. 


erly Touring Canada’s smallest province by car 


can mean following coastal drives in and out 

of uny fishing villages; exploring tree-lined, 

red clay roads through farms and woodlots; 

or plotting a course that takes you from warm 

ocean waters to top-class golf courses, antique 

shops to museums, or theaters to community concerts. 
Start in the capital city of Charlottetown, where 


Canada Was born; the event is commemorated at 


Founders Hall and the national historic site of 


Province House. Anne of Green Gables was born 


here too, and almost everyone wants to visit the 
Green Gables site in Cavendish and see the musical 
that has been on stage at the Charlottetown Festival 
for 42 seasons now. 

Touring the island by bicycle becomes almost 
irresistible once you've reviewed the network of 
trails and quiet back roads that crisscross the 
province. A cycling trail that connects one end of 
the crescent-shaped province to the other invites 
ambitious cyclists to take on a tip-to-tip Confederation 
Trail adventure. If land-based touring is just too dry, 
think of joining a sea kayak expedition. There are 
tour companies that will guide you from inn to inn, 
or to special deserted islands just off the coast. 
Paddling all day in the salty air develops an appetite 
and you can count on delicious evening meals of 
fresh island seafood, whether served at the table of a 
country inn, or over an open fire on a quiet beach, 

Save time for basking or strolling on the miles of 
deserted white and pink sand beaches followed by an 
evening at the theater, local pub, or concert of tra- 
ditional music in a community hall. You will fall 
asleep listening to the waves mingled with echoes of 
Celtic mustie. 

For more information visit www.gentleisland.com 
or telephone I-800-463-4PEI. 


€f WbAT If THE WORLD DAD BEEN TO PRINCE EOWARO ISLAND? (& 


Peopte STUCK IN TRAFFIC WOULD WAVE TDEIR 
WDOLE DANO AT EACHD OTDER ANO NOT JUST ONE FINGER. 


} . )\ 
: : ©Dyjuro . TAY 
mm! [here’s a place where things are different. A place where the bi ibd ; 
mn y (ito ’ A, —_ ’ 
: we gt ae roa Is Open an 1 ther ire no strangers, just frien u ha Ee u AVC } 6) 
- ’ Oac ( . r ¢ ere are oO C pers, S enas you Nave Bt 3 FP ( 
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y “ey Poptart toe rahmon yet to meet. We invite you to our Island where thx point ol ee i. 
. yr a fay, Aan \ Y 
Nhe Y every journey is never just a destination but the journey itself The Gi ay 
= Wo . 

Ole Noy < 
O cel aA Se 
Ph Nes he FOR YOUR ISLAND GUIDE, VISIT GENTLEISLAND.( 4 
04 ON Canali OR CALL 1-800-463-4PEI AND ASK FOR LE¢ ) 


¥ \ } 
oF oy 
CHECK OUT OUI EIGHE I ( I COM EK - 


SPECIAL ADVERTISING SECTION 


ORIENT LINES 


ORIENT LINES, THE DESTINATION CRUISE 
specialist, offers extraordinary vacations to every part of 
the world. Its flagship, the Marco Polo, carries over 800 
passengers on journeys of luxury and discovery; every 
modern convenience 1s provided, and guest lecturers are 
on board to enhance the experience. In spring and fall, the 
Marco Polo visits the Mediterranean (primarily Italy ) and 
the Greek Isles, with journeys ranging from a 10-day 
jaunt from Athens to Venice, to a 26-day Grand 
Mediterranean Discovery from Athens to Barcelona. For a grand and leisurely experience, 
take a classic transatlantic cruise, from Montego Bay to Barcelona or to Athens. In the 
summer, cruises focus on Britain and Scandinavia, the Baltic capitals, St. Petersburg, and 
the Norwegian fjords, with two nights in hotels in London or Copenhagen. Orient also 
offers cruises akin to the Grand Tours of old, including a 36-day Great Cities of Western 
& Northern Europe from Rome to Stockholm, and 
a 38-day Journey to the Top of the World from 
London to Copenhagen. In winter, explore South 
America, from the fjords of Chile to the rain forests of 
the Amazon, on three different cruises; take a 15-day 


tour of Central America; or journey to Antarctica. 


For more information, visit www.orientlines.com. 


WHILE JN FILM SCHOOL, ERIC DINERSTEIN—WHO BY 
his own admission was “training to be the anti- Thoreau"—was cap- 
tivated by a little green heron. He spent the next 30 years exploring the 
natural world, traveling to all ends of the Earth to discover and pro- 
tect wildlife. Now the chief scientist at the World Wildlife Fund-US, 
a aS ; : : is anor 

=) fe = Dinerstein recounts his explorations of the wildlife and landscapes he 
taco encountered — from the forests of Nepal to the Galapagos Islands to 
the eastern plains of Montana—in Tigerland and Other Unintended Destinations. 

Seeking the Sacred Raven, by Mark Jerome Walters, tracks the fate of the 
'Alala, a sacred Hawaiian bird and member of the raven family. Walters 


explores the role of the bird in Hawaiian culture and its decline to near- Beaking the 


extinction; once numbering in the thousands, today only SO 'Alala sur- me Sacred 
vive in captivity. He travels through the cloud forests of Mauna Loa Raven 


interviewing biologists and others to assemble the story of the sacred 
bird and the people who battled to save it. Walters captures not only 


the many dimensions of species loss but also the story of the Hawaiian 


people and culture, from the ancient Polynesian settlers, to Captain 
Cook, to the would-be saviors of the 'Alala in the 1990s. 

Both these titles are published by Island Press, which issues approximately 40 new titles 
per year on topics ranging from biodiversity and land use to forest management, agricul- 
ture, marine science, climate change, and energy. For more information about this 


innovative publisher, visit www.islandpress.org. 


SPECIAL ADVERTISING SECTION 


OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS 


@XFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS 


is the world’s largest university 


press. Its publications are written at 
a variety of levels, for a wide range 
of audiences in almost every aca- 
demic discipline. Brian Fagan’s From 
Stonehenge to Samarkand is a history of 
our fascination with antiquity, captured 
in the writings of noted archaeolog- 
ical tourists, from Herodotus to Rose 
Macaulay. Fagan, a renowned schol- 
ar and author, explores our irre- 
sistible impulse to visit strange lands 
in search of lost cities and forgotten monuments. His history features excerpts from earlier 
writings: Herodotus describes the construction of Babylon, Gibbon wanders through the 
ruins of the Roman Forum, Flaubert watches the sunrise from atop an Egyptian pyramid, 
and more. 

The Atlas of the United States offers a closer look at the oldest, richest, and most populous 
country on the continent, with newly drawn maps and instructive charts and graphs. The 
heart of this comprehensive volume is a unique thematic section covering topics ranging from 
environmental change to religious practice, and indigenous peoples to migration patterns. 
With hundreds of maps rendering every region from Barrow, Alaska to Venice, Florida in 


layer-colored contours, this atlas is the United States as it hasn't been seen before. 


ENA EGER 


BEFORE YOU EMBARK ON YOUR TRIP = : eee 
Rese aa me0eE— 
to a Distinctive Destination, spend some time Departure Lobby AI 


: i = - i YAR BSHtSy 
doing a bit of on-line research. For domestic 


travel, try the websites of the individual coun- ZO = ”-* ‘Q A 
A eta ~ = 
ties or states that youre visiting for a plethora ano 8S? 


of information, including an up-to-date calen- qq a va Saosin 


dar of events, fairs, and festivals; specialized Exit Baggage Claim 
; ; HO GBR BP SOS WER 
local attractions that might never have made it 


into your guidebook; local birding lists and Sia 0 e— 


Arrival Lobby 


viewing spots; biking trails, hiking maps, and Ba ee 


Fonte Car aany ect 


Information ATIF 
Pia] Ab Or Hotel Rovervation (Fm (eR) ay tere 


as 408 Check-i 
CrRFT i Bie ote 


® MHt-MARAM Kx22- 


much more. [There ts nothing like attending a 


local event, off the usual tourist path, to 


enhance your understanding of the destination. 

For international travel, check out the sites of the individual countries, which almost 
always have sections on ecotourism and nature traveling. Visit http://travel.state.gov, the 
website of the U.S. Department of State Bureau of Consular Affairs, for a wealth of 
information ranging from tips for traveling abroad, consular information sheets, and 
other vital information to plan your trip. Your airline’s website will list maximum sizes 


and weights for your luggage and other useful information. 


oe 
foo) af 


Happy traveling! 


OXFORD 
UNIVERSITY PRESS 


ATLAS OF THE UNITED STATES 


An indispensable item in any 
modern professional or personal 

library, this beautiful atlas offers an 
affordable gateway to places and 
features of the American landscape. 


x 
ANTHOLOGY if 
aARCRAEOLOGLUAL 


fark Wmding 


FROM STONEHENGE TO 
SAMARKAND: An Anthology of 
Archaeological Travel Writing 

For anyone fascinated with the land- 
marks of ancient civilization, follow 
in the footsteps of great archaecolog- 
ical travelers — from Herodotus to 
Rose Macaulay — and retrieve their 
impressions of famous sites. 


SPECIAL ADVERTISING SECTION 


SOME NATURAL WONDERS IN 
NEWFOUNDLAND AND LABRADOR 


WHALES MIGRATE NORTH AS BERGS DRIFT 
south, their paths crossing beneath the gaze of mil- 
lions of seabirds. Sometimes you can see all three at 
once, either from shore or from a tour boat. If you're 
lucky. Ever smelled the air from a 10,000-year-old 
berg? It's so old it’s fresh. 

On land, keep an eye out for moose because there 
are 125,000 of them. Their cousins come in great 
numbers, too, in Labrador where there are 450,000 

barren ground caribou. 
Bald eagles might be the most sought- 
after raptor, and you'll find them nesting in 
Terra Nova National Park, among other 
places. Because of its location on migration 
flyways, Newfoundland and Labrador is a 
good place to spot rarities, especially on 
headlands, those edges of the earth. 
This place is edgy in another way. Both 
land and sea straddle the boundaries of plant 


colonies. In some places, it is the southernmost edge 


Top: You'll find the largest barren ground caribou 
herd in the world in Labrador; Right: 10,000-year- 
old icebergs drift by the coast of Newfoundland 
and Labrador in spring and early summer. 


of northern alpine plants; and in other, the north- 
ernmost reach of underwater species. 

And because Newfoundland and Labrador is 
only a few hours by air from major centers, it’s easy 
to get here. When you do, Witless Bay Ecological 
Reserve, with its puffins and humpbacks, is half an 
hour from St. John’s and is patrolled by half a dozen 
tour boats. The most accessible seabird colony in 
eastern Canada is Cape St. Mary’s Ecological Reserve 
where thousands of golden-headed Northern 
Gannets nest atop a sea stack SO feet from a clifftop 
viewing point. 

Gros Morne National Park, on the west coast of 
the Island of Newfoundland, is a UNESCO World 
Heritage Site. It's one of the great natural wonders of 
the world, with its fjords, rare rocks, ancient mountains, 


and inspiring landscapes. It will change you. 


SAMPLINGS 
oar ET 


Cloudy Skies 


Cars, planes, trucks, and trains are infamous 
air polluters, but ships are often overlooked. 
Yet increased shipping in recent decades 
has led to a dramatic rise in ships’ fuel con- 
sumption, which more than quadrupled be- 
tween 1950 and 2001. Now, the effects of 
the ships’ correspondingly increased emis- 
sions have been detected in clouds. Hint: 
they aren't wisps of black soot. 

Cloud droplets form around airborne par- 
ticles, which engines and factories that lack 
adequate filters emit in abundance. More 
droplets make for denser, higher clouds. 
Because dense, polluted clouds reflect more 
light, and higher clouds have cooler tops than 
normal clouds do, the effects of pollution can 
be measured by visible-light and infrared sen- 
sors aboard satellites. 

Abhay Devasthale, a remote-sensing spe- 
cialist at the University of Hamburg in Ger- 
many, and two colleagues published data 
that highlight ship pollution in the air above 
the English Channel and its three dingiest 
harbors. Between 1997 and 2002, Dev- 
asthale reports, clouds there became about 


i e 
A Very Dry White 
The ancient Egyptians loved their wine. 
They buried their dead with wine-filled am- 
phorae, or clay vessels, to ensure a com- 
fortable afterlife, and they painted scenes 
of viticulture and winemaking on the walls 
of tombs. But what varieties did they enjoy? 
Written records and the dark color of 


Egyptian winemaking, tomb painting, 1400 B.c. 


t 


1.5 percent more reflective, and the tem- 
perature of their tops dropped by about 
three degrees Fahrenheit. Meanwhile, over 


nearby inland areas the trend was reversed. 


Thus, despite successful European efforts 
to reduce land-based emissions, ship ex- 
haust remains a troubling source of air pol- 
lution. (Geophysical Research Letters 
33:L02811, 2006) 

—Stéphan Reebs 


tomb-wall grapes suggest they drank reds. 
But now there's evidence that whites were 
popular, too. 

Maria Rosa Guasch-Jané, an Egyptolo- 
gist, and Rosa M. Lamuela-Raventés, a food 
and nutrition scientist, both at the University 
of Barcelona, Spain, and their colleagues an- 
alyzed residues in six of the twenty-six am- 
phorae from King Tutankhamun’s tomb. The 
team detected tartaric acid, which occurs 
naturally only in grapes, in each of the 
residues. Dark residue in one amphora in- 
cluded syringic acid, which is derived from 
the main pigment that gives red grapes 
their color. Yellowish residues in the other 
five amphorae lacked syringic acid, suggest- 
ing they were probably the remnants of 
white wines. 

The ancient Egyptians appear to 
have valued white wine as much as 
red. King Tut was buried with three 
amphorae near his sarcophagus; two 
of them held red wine and the third 
held white. (Journal of Archaeological 

Science, forthcoming) 

—Rebecca Kessler 


Ship pollutes the air in Ushuaia, at the southern tip of Argentina. 


Millipede Soccer 


For the coati, a small mammal that ranges 
from the southwestern United States to 
South America, few snacks are more tempt- 
ing than a juicy millipede. But something un- 
pleasant stands in the way of an easy meal: 
evolution has equipped the millipede with 
chemical defenses that deter most preda- 
tors. What's a coati to do? On first encounter, 
it rolls the many-legged arthropod between 
its front paws. The millipede responds in a 
panic, pumping out poisons as fast as it can. 
Soon, though, the supply of poisons is ex- 
hausted. Then, the coati simply drags the mil- 
lipede through the soil, effectively wiping off 
the toxins. Voila! It’s snack time. 

But there’s more. According to a study 
led by Paul J. Weldon, a biologist at the 
Smithsonian Institution in Front Royal, Vir- 
ginia, the noxious chemicals secreted by irri- 
tated millipedes actually trigger the coati’s 
prey-rolling behavior. The coati’s response is 
so “hard wired” that even a stick dipped in 
the millipede’s defensive chemicals elicits 
the behavior. The coati has won this evolu- 


tionary arms race in more ways than one. 
(Naturwissenschaften 93:14—6, 2006) 
—Nick W. Atkinson 


April 2006 NATURAL HISTORY | 29 


SAMPLINGS 


Made in India 


A dizzying variety of cultures and languages 


flourish among India’s billion-plus residents. 
Did the differences arise among the descen- 
dants of that nation’s first settlers, who like- 
ly arrived in South Asia from Africa more 
than 40,000 years ago, or do they 

reflect subsequent waves of immigration? 
Northern people often share cultural prac- 
tices such as farming, social castes, and 
Indo-European languages, which has 
prompted speculation that their ancestors 
immigrated in a more recent wave, possibly 
from West or Central Asia. 

But several studies have shown scant vari- 
ation in the mitochondrial DNA of Indians 
throughout the nation, and little similarity to 
populations outside South Asia. That sug- 
gests a single, early origin. Mitochondrial 
DNA is passed only from mother to child, 
however, and so, strictly speaking, what the 
studies have shown is that only one wave of 
female immigrants entered prehistoric India. 
The DNA of the Y chromosome, passed 
from father to son, can help show whether 
there was an influx of men. 

A team of geneticists led by Sanghami- 
tra Sahoo and V.K. Kashyap from the Na- 


At a crux in the family tree 


NATURAL HISTORY April 2006 


Indian men: the Ys that bind? 


tional DNA Analysis Centre in Calcutta 
examined the Y chromosomes of men 
throughout India. They, too, found little 
genetic evidence for a second wave of im- 
migrants to India. Only one small group, 
Tibeto-Burman-language speakers in the 
northeast, seemed to have arrived rela- 
tively recently, probably from East Asia. 
The Indo-European-language speakers, 
by contrast, appear to be native born. By 
and large, then, India’s cultural differences 
probably evolved within a somewhat ge- 
netically isolated population. (PNAS 
103:843-8, 2006) 


Time Dilation 


Like every other living thing, we humans 
and our nearest relatives, the chim- 
panzees, have “junk” DNA. It probably 
doesn’t code for anything functional, but 
it sure is useful to evolutionary biologists. 
Because mutations within noncoding DNA 
are not exposed to the rigors of natural 
selection, they accumulate. And because 
they tend to arise at regular intervals, 
they are useful as “molecular clocks.” 
Knowing the mutation rate and the num- 
ber of genetic differences between two 
species, evolutionary biologists can esti- 
mate when the species diverged: some 6 
million years ago, in the case of humans 
and chimpanzees. 

In the geologically recent past, how- 
ever, human generations have been longer 
than those of our cousins: about twenty 
years, on average, compared to the chim- 
panzee’s fifteen. Now a team of geneti- 


—S.R. 


Ocean Genome 


Microscopic life thrives in the open ocean, 
where it plays a key role in the complex flux 
of matter and energy. Yet its ecology re- 
mains poorly understood. 

At the ALOHA oceanographic station, 
sixty miles north of the island of Oahu, in 
Hawai i, microbial oceanographers Ed- 
ward F. DeLong of the Massachusetts In- 
stitute of Technology in Cambridge and 
David M. Karl of the University of Hawaii 
in Honolulu, and several colleagues sam- 
pled microorganisms at depths ranging 
from 32 to 13,000 feet. Their plan was to 
analyze how the gene sequences varied 
by depth, taking into account the physi- 
cal, chemical, and other biological prop- 
erties of the water column, as measured 
by ALOHA. 

Sure enough, DeLong and his colleagues 
detected predictable trends in gene func- 
tion associated with the distinct microbial 
communities they found living at various 
depths. Genes involved in metabolism from 
sunny surface waters, for instance, often 
code for photosynthetic pathways, whereas 
in deep waters, genes for metabolizing 
methane and other sources of chemical en- 
ergy predominate. From shallow waters, the 
investigators also recovered a surprising 
number of virus genomes that had incorpo- 
rated genes involved in photosynthesis from 
their cyanobacteria hosts. In the genetic 
bazaar of the sea, such gene exchange 
among microorganisms may be quite wide- 
spread. (Science 311:496-503, 2006) 

—Graciela Flores 


cists has determined that the difference 
in generation span has led to different 
rates of mutation in noncoding DNA. 
Navin Elango and Soojin V. Yi, both 
geneticists at the Georgia Institute of 
Technology in Atlanta, and their col- 
leagues conducted one of the largest 
and most precise comparisons ever 
made between the noncoding DNA of 
humans and our closest relatives. Ac- 
cording to their findings, the human mol- 
ecular clock does indeed tick slower than 
that of chimpanzees, which in turn runs 
slower than the clocks of gorillas and 
orangutans. Yet the differences are so 
small that longer generations among hu- 
mans likely evolved just a million years 
ago. (PNAS 103:1370-5, 2006) —S.R. 


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SAMPLINGS 


Survival of the Rarest 


Tropical forests may be more resilient than 


their reputations would have you believe. 


The forests appear to bolster the tree spe- 


cies most vulnerable to extinction: the 
rare ones. 

Christopher Wills, an evolutionary biolo- 
gist at the University of California, San 
Diego, led a study in which international 
teams took tree censuses on plots in seven 


tropical forests around the globe. The team 


repeated the censuses 
after five years for some 
plots, after ten years for 
others. Locally common 
species, it turned out, 
make up most of the 
young trees in a given 
age class, but locally rare 
species have lower death rates. The net re- 
sult is that rare trees become more com- 


mon within their age class as time passes. 


Why might rare species survive preferen- 


Sing It to Me 


tially? Some avoid competing for the same 
resources that more common species re- 
quire. Others escape pathogens and preda- 
tors that target their ubiquitous neighbors. 


Vicario, both neuroscientists at Rutgers 

University in New Brunswick, New Jersey, 
and a colleague have found evidence of a 
template elsewhere: in a part of the brain 
generally known as the NCM, which plays 


a role in hearing. 

Juvenile (left) and adult male zebra finches Femene ee TEVec evans e722 
young zebra finches for several weeks, then 
switched it off for a month while the birds 


matured. The neuroscientists then played a 


Young male zebra finches learn to sing by 
listening to adult tutors—often their fa- 
thers—and by rehearsing endlessly. To get —_ selection of tunes that included the tutor’s 
a tune just right, a young bird must com- song, the birds’ own songs, and new songs, 
pare the sounds it makes with its memo- while recording the electrical responses of 
neurons in the birds’ NCMs. By applying a 
standard test of familiarity, the investigators 
determined that the neurons in the NCM 
recognized the tutor’s song. What's more, 
the birds that were most familiar with the 
tutor’s song reproduced it most accurately. 


(PNAS 103:1088-93, 2006) —G.F. 


Fish Story in Reverse oN 


ries of the songs its tutor sang. The mem- 
ories—or “sound templates” for bird- 
song—must be stored somewhere in the 
bird’s brain, but where? Until now, investi- 
gators have primarily searched parts of 
the brain responsible for singing and song 
learning. Now, Mimi L. Phan and David S. 


Smallest fish, a male anglerfish (Photocorynus spiniceps, shown above left at 
actual size), is fused to the back of a much larger female. 


In January, ichthyologists announced they'd discovered the world’s smallest vertebrate. 
One female Paedocypris progenetica, a carp relative from Indonesian swamps, measured 
just 7.9 millimeters. That’s not so small, countered Theodore Pietsch, an ichthyologist at 
the University of Washington in Seattle. In September he’d described Photocorynus spini- 
ceps, a deep-sea-dwelling anglerfish from the Philippines, with males as small as 6.2 mil- 
limeters. Males bite into females and fuse for life. They supply sperm; females supply eggs, 
food, locomotion, and everything else. (Proceedings of the Royal Society B, forthcoming; 
Ichthyological Research 52:207-36, 2005) —R.K. 


ATURAL HISTORY April 2006 


Tropical forest, Barro Colorado Island, Panama 


Evidence that nature favors diversity sug- 
gests that tropical forests may be able to re- 
cover fully and quickly from at least moder- 
ate destruction. That’s good news, but Wills 
isn't celebrating. “If the forests are slashed 
and burned,” he warns, “all bets are off.” 
(Science 311:527-31, 2006) 

—Samantha Harvey 


Impermafrost 


People living in the Far North have often 
built their homes on solidly frozen earth. 
But their heirs may have to contend with 
wildly listing floors. Permafrost—soil 
frozen for two or more years, with a thin 
top layer that may seasonally thaw— 
makes up about a quarter of the land 
area in the Northern Hemisphere, roughly 
4.1 million square miles. As the Earth 
warms, however, permafrost is proving to 
be anything but permanent. 

That's what David M. Lawrence of the 
National Center for Atmospheric Research, 
and Andrew G. Slater of the University of 
Colorado, both climate scientists based in 
Boulder, have found. They ran a powerful 
computer model to predict the distribution 
of the top eleven feet of permafrost under 
various scenarios of greenhouse-gas emis- 
sions. The model predicted that if emis- 
sions remain high, as much as 90 percent 
of the North's surface permafrost will thaw 
by 2100. One consequence is that north- 
ern soils may slowly dry out, contributing 
somewhat—as may increased precipita- 
tion—to a 28 percent rise in freshwater 
runoff into the Atlantic Ocean. 

Perhaps even worse, thawed soils 
could release methane and carbon diox- 
ide into the air, intensifying the green- 
house effect. Whether enough trees will 
grow on the newly defrosted terrain to 
mop up the excess carbon dioxide re- 
mains to be seen. (Geophysical Research 
Letters 32:L24401, 2005) —S.R. 


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UNIVERSE 


When the Mo@ia 
Hits Your Eye 


More knowledge and better data 
only deepen the beguiling appeal 
of the best-known object in the night sky. 


By Neil deGrasse Tyson 


HISTORY: Ape 


ountless cultures have spun 

countless tales about Earth’s 

nearest neighbor 1n space. To 
the ancient Greeks, the Moon was a 
pale-faced young woman riding across 
the sky in a horse-drawn chariot. To 
the Aztecs, no strangers to blood and 
gore, the Moon was the severed head 
of a malicious daughter of the Earth 
goddess, which her brother, the Sun 
god, had flung into the sky. 

But colorful tales don’t satisfy sci- 
entists. We want data. So as soon as 
word of the newly invented telescope 
spread across Europe, astronomers be- 
gan to acquire or construct their own 
versions of this marvel and turn them 
toward the Moon. Early in August of 
1609—a couple of months before 
Galileo built his first telescope—the 
English mathematician and astron- 
omer Thomas Harriot made the first 
known drawing of the lunar surface as 
seen through the lens of an optical in- 
strument. Half a year later, a month 
before Galileo’s first batch of tele- 
scopic observations appeared in print, 
Harriot’s friend Sir William Lower, an 
English country gentleman, wrote up 
his own observations of the Moon in 
a letter to Harriot: 


In the full she appears like a tarte that my 
cooke made me last weeke; here a vaine of 
bright stuffe, and there of darke, and so 
confusedlie all over. I must confesse I can 
see none of this without my cylinder. 


That’s what happens when you look 
at the sky while you're hungry. 

No surprise that the Moon was one 
of the first celestial objects to be tele- 
scopically described and tracked: It’s 
big. It’s close. It’s bright. No surprise e1- 
ther that, nearly four centuries later, the 
Moon became the first destination of 
the U.S.—Soviet space race. As President 


John E Kennedy had hoped, Ameri- 


cans—specifically the Apollo 11 astro- 
nauts Neil Armstrong and Buzz 
Aldrin—became the first people to set 
foot on the Moon, on July 20, 1969. A 
full decade earlier (not that Americans 
think about it much), the Soviet Union 


David De Lossy, Full moon rising 


had become the first nation to land a 
spacecraft on the Moon and the first to 


photograph the Moon’s far side 
which is why many surface features on 
the far side have names like Mare 
Moscoviense and Gagarin crater. The 
Soviets were also the first to put a vehi- 
cle on the Moon: an eight-wheeled ro- 
botic rover. But flesh-and-blood Amer- 
icans, walking on the lunar surface and 
planting the flag, were what U.S. pres- 
idents wanted the world to see. 

You might think space scientists 
would have answered all the big ques- 
tions about the Moon by now, having 
studied it more than any object in the 
universe besides Earth itself. You might 
even think no country would want to 
bother sending its citizens there any- 
more. Wrong on both counts. Some of 
the Moon’s deep polar craters might 
harbor ice, which can be turned into 
drinking water and rocket fuel. Some 
of the rocks ejected from Earth during 
early catastrophic meteorite impacts 
may have been scattered across the 


Moon’s unweathered surface. Some of 
those rocks—whose Earth-based cous- 
ins would long ago have been destroyed 
might 


by our planet’s active geology 
harbor intact fossil evidence of Earth’s 
earliest life-forms. Some of the Moon’s 
mineral resources could conceivably be 
extracted and used by short-term and 
long-term lunar missions. And as you 
read this page, not only America’s Na- 
tional Aeronautics and Space Admuinis- 
tration, but also the European Space 
Agency, the China National Space Ad- 
ministration, and the Indian Space Re- 
search Organisation are all actively plan- 
ning their next missions to the Moon. 


2 ae can be even weirder than 
fiction. Today, astrophysicists and 
geologists generally agree that the 
Moon formed several billion years 
ago when a Mars-size protoplanet 
slammed into the adolescent Earth [see 
“Moonstruck,” by G. Jeffrey Taylor, Sep- 
tember 2003|. The impact must have 
been something to behold. It kicked 


up about a hundred quintillion (107°) 
tons of rock vapor and molten rock 
blobs—bits and pieces of Earth mixed 
with bits and pieces of the impactor— 
some of which shot tens of thousands 
of miles into space. 

Most of the material that hurtled 
outward eventually fell back to Earth. 
Some of it got no farther than about 
12,000 miles from our planet’s center, 
and formed short-lived rings. Of the 
material that traveled farther, most of 
it formed more durable rings, akin to 
the gorgeous ring system that now en- 
circles Saturn. From that disk-shaped 
orbiting platform, the bits and pieces 
of rock began to coalesce, first through 
chemical adhesion and ultimately 
through mutual gravitational attrac- 
tion. Within just a few decades the bulk 
of the rubble had merged into a single 
giant sphere, orbiting twenty times 
closer to Earth than the Moon does to- 
day. It must have been a spectacular 
sight—though no one was around to 
see 1t—to have the Moon looming 


here. 


“No argument 


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36 


twenty times larger in the sky than it 
does today. The image gives fresh 
meaning to a perennial question, 
“Why does the full Moon look so large 
on the horizon?” 

In case you're wondering about that 


12,000-mile boundary, it’s known as 
the Roche limit. Inside that limit, 
Earth’s tidal force exceeds an object’s 
ability to hold itself together solely 
through the strength of its own gravi- 


ty. So if you were a pile of rubble 
rather than a living organism, held to- 
gether by molecular bonds—and you 
had the bad luck to wander into that 
zone, you would swiftly disassemble in- 
to your component rocks. 


o most people, tides are just the 
daily back-and-forth sloshing 
that takes place where the ocean meets 


the shore. But that’s just the most visi- 
ble sign of what happens when one side 


of a rotating cosmic object finds itself 


closer than the other side to a strong 
source of gravity. As the object rotates, 
gravity pulls more powerfully on the 
side facing that source than it pulls on 
the far side, raising tides even in solid 
matter. “Solid body” tides stretch and 
pull solid matter, rhythmically deform- 
ing the object and thus causing friction 
deep within. 

The deformations show up in the 
object as bulges, which would nor- 
mally align with the offending source 
of gravity. But because the newborn 
Moon rotated quickly, its tidal bulge 
ended up a bit ahead of, rather than 
aimed right at, Earth. Meanwhile, the 


NATURAL HISTORY Af 006 


Moon was having a simultaneous and 
similar effect on Earth. When you do 
the math, you find that all that friction 
and bulge-making slowed Earth’s rota- 
tion, slowed the Moon’ rotation, and 
slung the Moon into ever-higher or- 


bits. And as the orbits grew progres- 
sively larger, the strength of the tudal 
forces precipitously dropped. 

Since its youth, then, the Moon has 
been rotating so slowly that it takes ex- 
actly the same amount of time to com- 
plete one full rotation as it does to ex- 
ecute one full orbit of Earth. In fact, 
Earth has locked the Moon into that 
arrangement—a natural culmination of 
their tidal pas de deux—yust as Jupiter 
has locked its inner satellites and Pluto 
has locked Charon, its largest moon. 
Whenever two bodies reach this stage, 
you get a “far side” dilemma: observers 
on one object (say, Earth) never get to 
see more than one side of the object 
that orbits them (the Moon). 

The Moon’s tidal forces on our 
planet continue to slow Earth’s rota- 
tion. Every century, the length of our 
day increases by about one and a half 
milliseconds. (To keep up, earthlings 
invented leap seconds, but that’s an- 
other story for another afternoon.) 
Meanwhile, the Moon’s orbit is con- 
tinuing to grow, by about one and a 
half inches per year, and so the lunar 
month is getting longer. What’s going 
on is that the Moon is trying to get 
even and give Earth its own far side. 
That will happen when Earth’s rota- 
tion rate has slowed enough to be 
equal to the Moon’s orbital period. 


The Earth-Moon system will then 
have achieved a “double tidal lock.” 
This never-invented wresting hold 
may sound rare, but it’s actually com- 
mon, particularly among double-star 


systems in our galaxy. Right here in 


our own backyard, Charon has man- 
aged to lock Pluto just as Pluto has 
locked Charon. 

By the time the Moon tidally locks 
Earth, the system will have slowed down 
so much that the Earth day and the 
lunar month will both last almost fifty 
present Earth days, greatly simplifying 
the calendar. Long before that, though, 
the Sun will become a red giant and 
vaporize the Earth-Moon system. But 
let’s ignore that complication. 

Consider instead the Sun’s tidal in- 
fluence on the Earth-Moon duo. The 
Sun, too, is busy doing the tidal lock— 
perpetually slowing Earth’s rotation so 
that, if there were no Moon, our plan- 
et would eventually show the Sun on- 
ly one face. Meanwhile, the Moon will 
reverse its earlier trend and begin to spi- 
ral back toward Earth. Eventually the 
Moon will drift within the Roche lim- 
it, break apart, and end up, once again, 
briefly resembling the rings of Saturn. 


he ever-changing lunar orbit 1s, 

by happy coincidence, just the 
right size to give sky watchers a thrill. 
The Sun is roughly 400 times larger 
than the Moon, but for the moment, 
it’s also about 400 times farther away. 
To an observer on Earth, then, they 
both appear about the same size on the 
sky. So dumb luck makes for striking 


total solar eclipses, in which the Moon 
just manages to cover the Sun’s bright 
disk, turning day into night and yield- 
ing a rare view of the dim but majes- 
tic solar corona. 

Before you start thinking that Earth’s 
sky was preordained to look beautiful 
only for people, consider that T’ rex and 
friends, too, saw beautiful eclipses. So 
will our successors in the tree of life 
hundreds of millions of years from now. 
Only after a billion or so years will the 
Moon have drifted far enough away to 
look smaller than the Sun at all times, 
thus ending a glorious era of eclipse 
watching. 

We can all thank the space race, by 
the way, for evidence that the distance 
between Earth and the Moon is chang- 
ing. In 1969 astronauts Neil and Buzz 
placed the first array of “corner reflec- 
tors” on the lunar surface. The array, 
which looks a little like an open wafHe 
iron, is made up of a hundred small 
quartz cubes cut in half at a forty-five- 
degree angle and secured to an alu- 


It’s as far from Disneyland as 


minum panel. Any beam of light that 
hits that configuration, regardless of the 
incoming angle, gets triply reflected 
within the half-cube and returns 
whence it came, exactly parallel to the 
original beam. Nothing magical here, 
just the ordinary rules of geometry. 
Hurl a bouncy ball into the corner of 
a room, and the same thing happens; 
apart from the curving effect of gravi- 
ty, the return path of the ball is parallel 
to its original path. 

Now aim a laser from Earth to the 
Moon’ corner reflector, and the beam 
bounces right back to you. Time the 
round trip, multiply that by the pre- 
cisely known speed of light, and, be- 
hold, you’ve got the precise distance 
from Earth to the Moon. 

Within a few years after the first 
reflector was laid down, three more 
followed—two courtesy of the United 
States and one, the Soviet Union. 
More than three decades’ worth of 
measurements have now shown that 
the Moon is moving away from Earth 


at the aforementioned rate of one and 
a half inches a year. Clearly, tidal forces 
are still busy working. 


INE matter the details of its orbital 
plight, the Moon remains an al- 
luring object in both the daytime and 
the nighttime skies. At dusk or dawn 
when the crescent Moon gleams, you 
can often see the rest of the lunar orb as 
a kind of ghost, even though no sun- 
light is hitting it directly. That phe- 
nomenon 1s officially called earthshine 
(though I have always preferred “moon- 
shine”), and Leonardo da Vinci, early 
in the sixteenth century, was the first to 
figure out its cause. Unlike his con- 
temporaries, who thought the Moon 
was endowed with its own luminosity, 
Leonardo understood that earthshine is 
evidence that the Moon reflects the 
light of Earth. 

Indeed, earthlight is far brighter 
than moonlight. Averaged over both 
light and dark areas, the barren lunar 
surface reflects only 12 percent of the 


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light that reaches it. By comparison, 
primarily because of all the white 
clouds in Earth’s atmosphere, but also 
because our vast oceans reflect a good 
deal of light, a patch of our planet’s sur- 
face material is, on average, three times 
more reflective than an average patch 
of the Moon. And because Earth is 
more than three and a half times wider 
than the Moon, it has thirteen times 
more surface area to do the reflecting. 
So, full Earth as seen from the Moon 
is forty times brighter than the full 
Moon as seen from Earth. You could 
easily read by earthlight. Full Earth re- 
flects a lot of light back out into space. 
And when that light reaches the Moon, 
enough 1s reflected from the otherwise 
unlit portion of the near side to make 
the dark surface faintly visible to the 
naked eye on Earth. 

So yes, earthshine 1s real. So is moon- 
shine, as we all knew already. But earth- 
rise 1s not. From the near side of the 
Moon, tidally locked and forever fac- 
ing Earth, our planet simply hovers in 
the sky, where it neither rises nor sets. 
The famous “Earthrise” photograph, 
taken in 1968 by Apollo 8 astronauts, 
was snapped as they orbited the Moon. 
But when your'e in orbit, the whole 
sky continually rises and sets for you. 
Fora permanent resident of the Moon’s 
far side, though, Earth sits forever out 
of sight. Visitors who want to pitch a 
tent there yet still talk to their pals on 
Earth will need to set up relay stations 
just past the outer limits of the far side. 
From there, Earth is low on the hori- 
zon but fully visible—and ready for you 
to phone home. 


he design of NASA’s newest ro- 

botic mission to the Moon, called 
the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, 
just passed muster, and the craft is now 
scheduled for launch in 2008. Within 
a decade, Chinese and Indian robots 
may be traversing the Moon. Within a 
few more decades, ordinary citizens of 
planet Earth may be doing so as well. 
The early trips, which will launch from 
Earth with just enough speed to coast 
to the Moon, will take about three 
days; with continuous-thrust engines, 


38 | NATURAL HISTORY April 2006 


there’s no telling how quick the later 
ones could be. 

Although earthlings certainly love 
the place, the Moon is not the sole 
satellite of our affections, and we in- 
tend to send spacecraft to orbit, study, 
and occasionally land on some of the 
solar system’s other moons as well. 
Some of those objects, a few of which 
might harbor life, have had vehicular 
visitors already. Between 1995 and 
2002 Galileo flew close to five of the 
threescore moons of Jupiter—includ- 
ing icy Europa, which it circled at such 


close range that features as small as a 
school bus (though no actual school 
buses) showed up on camera. Since 
2004 Cassini has been scrutinizing 
many of the nearly fifty moons of Sat- 
urn. On Titan, Saturn’s largest moon, 
rivers of liquid methane have carved 
channels in the frozen surface; on 
Enceladus, a smaller Saturnian moon, 
jets are streaming out of the south po- 
lar region, unequivocally signaling ge- 
ologic activity. Pluto and its satellite 
Charon are yet another destination: in 
2015 NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft, 
which left Cape Canaveral on January 
19, 2006, should reach them. 

To adults of “a certain age,” it was 
not long ago that the moons of the so- 
lar system were simply points of light: 
you tallied them and then ignored 
them, in favor of the planets they or- 
bited. But the twin multiplanet Voy- 
ager missions of the 1970s and 1980s 
showed that no two moons of the so- 
lar system are the same. Each has its own 
geology, impact history, temperature 
profile, and orbital dynamics. In the 
minds of scientists and citizens alike, the 
moons became worlds unto them- 
selves. And just like Earth’s moon, they 
became destinations worthy of our 
dreams and, of course, our missions. 


Astrophysicist NEIL DEGRASSE TYSON is the 
director of the Hayden Planetarium at the Amer- 
ican Museum of Natural History. His Natural 
History essay “In the Beginning” (September 
2003) won the 2005 Science Writing Award 


from the American Institute of Physics. An an- 


thology of his Natural History essays will be 
published this year by WW Norton. 


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BIOMECHANICS 


40 | NATURAL HgsTORY April 2006 


7 re 


ae 


Secrets of the 
Sacred Lotus 


For the lotus leaf, being dirt-free means 
shunning water with a rough, waxy surface. 


By Adam Summers ~ Illustrations by Tom Moore 


ccording to my wife, I can’t 

see dirt. I’m oblivious to dis- 

order, she says, blind to dust, 
ignorant about the positive effects of a 
good vacuum cleaner. Truth be told, 
more pressing things always do seem 
to suck up my time. But in my usual 


excuse—the endless quest to keep up 
with the latest research—I may have 
found the perfect rejoinder to further 
spousal recrimination. Recently re- 
leased in the United States, it’s a won- 
derfully clever product that mimics 
the leaf surface of the lotus plant. And 
it has the potential to make another 
endless quest—the quest for a clean 
house—a thing of the past. 

The sacred lotus (Nelumbo nucifera) 
has long been a symbol of purity in 
Asian cultures, and for good reason. 
Lotus roots are embedded in muck and 
get many of their nutrients from the 
soil, yet the plants seldom have much 
noticeable grime on their surfaces. In 
fact, if you think about it, wouldn’t 
you say most plants stay pretty clean? 
No doubt that’s a good thing, because 
a dark smear of dirt would surely in- 
terfere with photosynthesis. There’s 
no paucity of dirt, of course, so it 
makes sense to suppose that the clean- 
liness of plant leaves 1s related to the 
ease with which water washes away 
any offending particles of dirt. 

In the early 1970s Wilhelm 
Barthlott, a botanist now at the Uni- 
versity of Bonn in Germany, noted the 
dirt-resistant properties of the sacred 
lotus leaf. He and his colleagues have 
spent the intervening three decades 
cataloging the fine structure of leaf 
surfaces. Along the way, they've tried 


commercializing their research, in 
hopes of helping the rest of the world 
shed grime as readily as plants do. 

What Barthlott and company dis- 
covered is a bit counterintuitive. 
The secret to the self-cleaning prop- 
erties of a leaf is its extreme ability 
to shed, not dirt, but water. Such 
surfaces are described as superhy- 
drophobic; they are so water repel- 
lent that H,O just about leaps off 
them, taking dirt with it. 


hydrophobic surface, such as a 

piece of waxed paper, refuses to 
be wetted by water. On such a sur- 
face, water molecules have a greater 
affinity for other water molecules 
than they do for the wax. 

Wettability can be quantified by 
placing a drop of water on a surface 
and measuring the angle between the 
edge of the drop and the substrate. 
Try it: Squeeze a drop onto a clean 
glass surface, and it will spread out 
nearly flat, with a contact angle of 
less than twenty degrees. On waxed 
paper, though, the same-size drop 
will stand up high and proud, with a 
contact angle of ninety degrees or 
more. In theory, on a surface it just 
couldn’t bear to touch, a water 
droplet would make so little contact 
that its angle with the surface would 
be just shy of 180 degrees. Lotus 
leaves actually approach such sublime 
levels of water hatred with contact 
angles of about 140 degrees. 

When a drop of water falls on your 
skin, clothes, or any other surface, it 
flattens out from the impact, jostling 
and lifting dirt as it splats. On a wet- 
table surface the drop stays flat, and 
the dirt simply settles back onto the 
surface. In contrast, when a drop hits 
an unwettable surface, the cohesive 
forces between the water molecules 
in the drop are much greater than the 
forces between the water molecules 
and the surface. So, almost immedi- 
ately after the drop flattens from the 
impact, it rebounds into a more near- 
ly spherical shape. Any dirt touching 
the drop as it flattens becomes sus- 
pended in the drop or attached to it 


as it rebounds; either way, the dirt 
doesn’t settle back on the surface. 
Best of all, since the droplet is round, 
it readily rolls down any slight incline, 
carrying the dirt away. 

The connection between hydro- 
phobicity and cleanliness is old 
news—it’s why people wax their cars. 
No matter what the ads would have 
you believe, wax is not scuff resistant; 
instead, wax makes it harder for dirt 
to stick and easier to wash dirt away. 

But the secret of the superhydro- 
phobic lotus leaf is more than just a 
smooth coating of wax. With a scan- 


ishingly small. Without these down- 
ward pulls, the cohesive forces be- 
tween the droplet’s water molecules 
are able to hold the droplet in a near- 
ly spherical shape as it rolls off the leaf 
[see illustrations below]. 


arthlott patented the pattern of 

bumps on the hydrophobic sur- 
face and dubbed it “the Lotus effect.” 
A German paint company then li- 
censed the patent and developed a 
paint with emulsified waxes that dries 
into a microscopically rough surface. 
Introduced in Europe in 1999, the 


Water droplet hits the surface of a lotus leaf and dislodges resident dirt particles 
(above left). The droplet then rebounds into a nearly spherical form, because it 
“hates” to make contact with the waxy, bumpy surface of the leaf (above right). 
The dirt has no strong affinity for the leaf, either, and sticks with the droplet, 
which can roll down the slightest incline, picking up more dirt as it goes. 


ning electron microscope, Barthlott 
and his colleagues discovered that lo- 
tus leaves (and the leaves of many oth- 
er plants) are not smooth at all. 
Rather, their surfaces are covered with 
microscopic bumps and ridges, ar- 
ranged in a complex pattern. The 
bumps, each just ten microns or so 
across, keep a water droplet up and 
moving along the contoured surface. 
When a drop falls on such a sur- 
face, it deforms as it fills in the gul- 
lies. But the cohesive forces between 
the water molecules quickly haul the 
drop out of the microvalleys, along 
with any resident dirt. Once the drop 


rebounds, it touches only the peaks of 


the little wax mountains, leaving such 
a tiny area in contact with the surface 
that the adhesive forces between the 
drop and the leaf’s contours are van- 


paint arrived in North America this 
past fall. A house painted with Lotus- 
effect paint can stay clean as long as 
the surface is regularly washed with 
water. No scrubbing allowed, 
though: that would disturb the 
microscopic pattern of the surface 
and thus weaken the self-cleaning 
properties of the paint. 

At this writing, the product is suit- 
able for exterior use only, because of 
the need for regular dousings. So until 
my office interior can be hosed off, I 
may have to take refuge in the idea 
that the rougher you are around the 
edges, the cleaner you are likely to be. 


ADAM SUMMERS (asummers@uci.edu) is 
an assistant professor of bioengineering and of 
ecology and evolutionary biology at the 
University of California, Irvine. 


April 2006 NATURAL HISTORY 


41 


APRIL 2006 


The Biggest Fish LES 


; Unraveling the mysteries of the whale shark 


By Steven G. Wilson 


ne hot, windless May morning, five of my 

colleagues and I boarded our small research 

boat and motored out into the waters of 
Western Australia’s Ningaloo Reef. We were search- 
ing for whale sharks—the world’s largest fish—hop- 
ing to attach electronic tags to several animals to study 
their migration patterns and diving behavior. Waiting 
for our spotter plane to locate a shark, we passed the 
morning in casual conversation. 

Finally the radio crackled to life. “ve got two 
sharks, about a mile off Tantabiddi Passage!” The 
vessel suddenly transformed as everyone scrambled 
to gather and don masks and fins. As we skimmed 
over the water, I struggled to attach a dart and tag 
to my Hawaiian-sling polespear—a sport-fishing 
spear powered by a thick rubber band. Five minutes 
later, two large, dark shadows were looming beneath 
the ocean’s surface, about a hundred feet off the bow. 


NATURAL HISTORY April 2006 


I plunged in, but once in the water I had to ask 
the boat crew for directions to the unseen giants. I 
swam toward where they signaled. A cobia came in- 
to view, a game fish that often accompanies whale 
sharks, and I knew I was close. Then, slowly, the 
outline of a gaping oval mouth and, behind it, an 
upright tail fin resolved from the featureless blue 
background. As I swam closer, the shark’s tapered 
body and distinctive checkerboard markings also 
came into focus. 

My attention, though, was drawn to the first of its 
two dorsal fins. The base of the fin was the target for 
the dart and tag. My colleagues in the water measured 
the animal (fifteen feet long) and determined its sex 
(female), while I positioned myself along its side. 
When they were finished, I cocked the polespear and 
released it. The dart penetrated the whale shark’s tough 
hide, but not as deeply as I had hoped. Unless adjust- 


Twenty-five-foot whale shark swims just below the surface at 
Ningaloo Reef, off Australia’s west coast. 


ed, it would pull out in a matter of days. With a quick 
shove of the polespear, I pushed the dart deeper. The 
shark reacted with a flick of its tail, then dove. 

I watched with satisfaction as the tagged shark sank 
slowly into the depths. I felt a jolt to my lower back, 
and suddenly found myself being propelled through 
the water. All I could see was a whirl of spots. It took 
me a moment to comprehend that another, much 
larger whale shark had struck me with its dorsal fin 
and was pushing me forward. With all the excite- 
ment, I had completely forgotten about the second 
shark! Stunned but unhurt, I dislodged myself and 
swam back to the boat to reload my polespear. By 
the time I returned, the second whale shark was about 
twenty-five feet beneath the sea surface. I filled my 
lungs with air, then dove after the thirty-five-foot 
leviathan. This time the dart penetrated with ease, 
and the shark showed no reaction. My job complet- 


ed, I swam back to the vessel and learned that the 
plane had located more sharks. In spite of my little 
fright, there would be no time to dwell on it that day. 
Whale sharks were popping up everywhere. 


FE ortunately, accidental clobbering is the only dan- 
ger whale sharks (Rhincodon typus) present to 
people. Unlike their toothier, more aggressive rela- 
tives, whale sharks have such gentle dispositions that 
the chance to swim with them has spawned lucrative 
ecotourism industries in several places where they 
gather. Ningaloo Reef, the Philippines, Belize, and 
the Baja Peninsula of Mexico have all benefited from 
whale shark tourism. But the same lumbering slow- 
ness and tendency to swim near the surface that make 
whale sharks a favorite with snorkelers also make them 
easy targets for fishermen, and frequent victims of col- 
lisions with ships. Before the mid-1980s, only a few 


April 2006 NATURAL HISTORY 


44 


hundred whale shark sightings had been reported 
worldwide; in the past two decades, human interac- 
tion with them has grown substantially. 

Yet despite the increasingly frequent contact 
between people and whale sharks, and despite their 
presence throughout the world’s tropical and tem- 
perate seas, including the waters of some 125 nations, 
surprisingly little is known about them. Marine bi- 
ologists don’t know much, for instance, about how 
whale sharks reproduce: no one has ever observed 
their courtship, mating, or birth. How they interact 


Whale shark feeds passively on small prey by swimming with 
its mouth open. A snorkeler watches from above. 


NATURAL 


socially is anyone’s guess. What they do on the pro- 
longed, deep dives they make is yet another mystery. 
No one knows how many there are, or whether their 
populations are rising, stable, or declining. Given their 
largely unregulated harvest and vulnerability to cap- 
ture, however, decline seems most likely. 

To a small troop of biologists—myself included— 
those gaps in knowledge present a challenge. Our re- 
cent research into the whale shark’s feeding habits, 
diving behavior, and migrations is slowly giving us a 
better understanding of its role in the marine envi- 
ronment. Our hope 1s that we will be able to use this 


HISTORY April 2006 


knowledge to help ensure the species’ survival, before 
it becomes another casualty of the changing world. 


t least some facts about whale sharks are clear. 

First, the name “whale shark” is somewhat 
misleading: the animals are indeed sharks, but they 
are “whales” only by virtue of their size. They grow 
more than forty feet long (the length of a luxury 
motor home), and there are unsubstantiated reports 
of a sixty-five-footer that weighed thirty-seven tons. 
Unlike most sharks, though, whale sharks are filter 
feeders. They share that behavior, fittingly, with the 
world’s biggest animal, the blue whale. Whale sharks 
suck dense concentrations of minute prey, such as 
krill and other zooplankton, fish spawn, and small 
fishes, into their enormous mouths. To collect the 
prey, they filter out the accompanying water 
through sievelike gill plates, and then expel it 
through their gill slits. 

Whale sharks often feed passively by swimming 
slowly with their mouths agape. They can also as- 
sume a head-up, tail-down feeding posture, some- 
times bobbing up and down near the surface to 
pump prey-filled water over their gills [see illustra- 
tion on opposite page|. Oddly, they are not closely re- 
lated to the other two filter-feeding sharks, the bask- 
ing shark and the megamouth shark. Instead, their 
closest relative is the nurse shark, a bottom-dwelling 
predator. In spite of their filter-feeding ways, whale 
sharks possess some 27,000 minute teeth, similar to 
teeth in the fossil record that date to about 55 mil- 
lion years ago. Little else is known of their evolu- 
tionary history. 

Scientific knowledge of whale shark reproduc- 
tion is based on a single female, harpooned off Tai- 
wan in 1995, that carried 301 embryos in various 
stages of development. Biologists know from that 
catch that the pups are born alive when they are 
about two feet long. (The eggs hatch inside the 
mother.) Studies of growth rings in vertebrae sug- 
gest that whale sharks reach sexual maturity when 
they are between twenty and thirty years old, and 
may live for several decades more. Young whale 
sharks less than ten feet long are rarely seen, lead- 
ing some investigators to speculate that they occu- 
py deep, offshore habitats during that most vulner- 
able stage in their lives. Newborns have been re- 
covered from the stomachs ofa blue shark and a blue 
marlin. The adults likely have few natural predators, 
except perhaps great white sharks and killer whales. 

The whale shark’s most prominent feature— 
other than its sheer magnitude—is its distinctive 
markings. Pale spots speckle a grid of bars and 
stripes atop the shark’s blue, gray, or brownish back 
and flanks (its belly is white). The markings prob- 


ably act as camouflage, mimicking wave-dappled 
sunlight in the water or perhaps a school of small 
fish. If so, an important function of the markings 
may be to conceal juvenile sharks from predators. 

Individual sharks have unique markings. Recent- 
ly a team led by Bradley M. Norman, a marine bi- 
ologist with the marine conservation group Ecocean 
in Perth, Western Australia, adapted a computer al- 
gorithm, originally devised for mapping stars, to 
identify individual whale sharks from photographs 
of their spots. The group is building a database of 
identifiable whale shark photographs (available at 
www.whaleshark.org), which should help biologists 
track the animals and learn more about their travels 
and behavior. 


INES Reef lies along a lonely 160-mile 
stretch of outback coast and is Western Aus- 
tralia’s answer to the Great Barrier Reef. Although 
smaller and less well known than its east-coast coun- 
terpart, Ningaloo 1s famed for the large marine an- 
imals—humpback whales, manta rays, whale sharks, 
and others—that gather seasonally in its waters. I first 
visited the reef in 1997 and spent nearly every day 
of my two-week stay snorkeling with whale sharks 
and photographing them. By the time I left, I'd be- 

@ come curious to know much more 

Peas about these gentle giants, and sur- 


Channels 


Gill slits 


Gill filaments 


prised by how little science could tell me. Nine 
months later, I enrolled in a Ph.D. program at the 
University of Western Australia in Perth to study the 
species at Ningaloo. I wanted to know why the whale 
sharks gather on the reef each year, and why more 
sharks come 1n some years than they do in others. 
Whale sharks, like many other shark species, seg- 
regate themselves by sex. At Ningaloo Reef most 
whale sharks are immature males, suggesting that 
they come to feed, not to mate. The region’s 
oceanography may explain why they—and perhaps 
some of the other large creatures—visit the reef. 
Flowing southward along the continental shelf, the 
Leeuwin Current dominates the area. But a smaller 
countercurrent called the Ningaloo Current flows 
northward between the Leeuwin Current and the 
reef. Each fall, the two currents join to form a gyre, 
which may keep nutrients and prey in the area rather 
than flush them out. It hardly seems coincidental that 
that’s when the whale sharks arrive on the reef. 
Still, whale shark abundance varies widely from 
year to year. Some years, as many as a few hundred 
sharks come to Ningaloo Reef; in other years, the 
numbers are much lower, To determine why, I be- 
gan by looking at patterns in whale shark abundance 
derived from records of shark interactions that com- 
mercial tour-boat operators must keep as part of 
their permit requirements. Many years of such 


Gill plates 


Vestigial teeth 


Whale shark is a "suction filter-feeder" on dense congregations of minute prey such as krill. It strains 
mouthfuls of food-filled seawater (brownish-blue arrows) through porous gill plates and consumes the 
prey that remains in its mouth. Channels behind its gill plates direct the filtered water over its gill fila- 
ments, which extract oxygen for respiration. The filtered water (blue arrows) is then released through 
the whale shark’s gill slits. The animal can generate suction to draw in its meals, perhaps by expanding 
its oral cavity and depressing its basihyal, a tonguelike structure on the floor of its mouth. 


April 2006 NATURAL HISTORY 


45 


46 


data show that fewer sharks are present in El Nino 
years than during La Nina years. 

In La Nina years, ocean temperatures and sea lev- 
els in the western tropical Pacific are relatively high; 
during El Nino episodes, water temperatures and 
sea levels are lower. Both patterns have long-range 


Signs of overfishing have begun to appear: 


catches have declined, and fish have gotten smaller. 


NATURAL 


HIS 


effects on climate and currents from Australia to 
South America, as well as in many other parts of the 
world. I began to suspect that the El Nino phe- 
nomenon somehow negatively affects the whale 
sharks’ food supply at Ningaloo Reef. 

To confirm my suspicions, I first had to deter- 
mine what the whale sharks eat along the reef. They 
were already known to feed on schools of a tropi- 
cal species of krill, Pseudeuphausia latifrons, but no 
one could say whether it 1s their primary food. To 
answer that question, I examined fecal samples from 
whale sharks, which divers had collected at the reef 
over several years. All the samples included crus- 
tacean remains that resembled krill, and a genetic 
analysis later confirmed that the species was indeed 
P latifrons. Surveys using sonar to look for krill while 
whale sharks were congregating on the reef also 
turned up plenty of krill, forming schools about the 
size of a football field and some ninety feet deep. 
Most tellingly, when my colleagues and I came 
across schools of krill, we almost always found whale 
sharks feeding on them. 


° krill populations fluctuate with El Nino, 
too? As part of a study on fish larvae, biolo- 
gists from the Australian Institute of Marine Science 
in Townsville set traps each month for two con- 
secutive summers. I was able to study the krill and 
other zooplankton they caught. As luck would have 
it, the first year had strong El Nino conditions and 
the following year strong La Nina conditions. In line 
with my hypothesis, krill abundance proved to be 
much higher during the La Nina year. Two years of 
data 1s not proof, but it does offer a good lead. 
How does El] Nino influence the production of 
krill? The Leeuwin Current that dominates the reef 
is stronger in La Nina years than it is in El Nino 
years. Paradoxically, however, the stronger current 
suppresses nutrient upwelling, and that leads to low- 
er chlorophyll concentrations and a diminished sup- 
ply of most kinds of zooplankton in La Nina years. 
So what accounts for the high krill abundance we 


April 2006 


discovered in a La Nina year? For now, at least, that 
remains a mystery. 

Although I finished my doctoral studies in 2001, 
I still return to Ningaloo Reef each whale shark sea- 
son. In 2002 I collected tissue samples for a genetics 
study by a graduate student at the University of South 
Florida in Tampa, comparing DNA from 

whale sharks in the Atlantic, Indian, and 
Pacific oceans. Once finished, the study 
will show how much genetic mixing takes 
place between whale sharks in the three 
ocean basins. That should shed some light 
on how much impact regional fisheries 
may have on the global abundance of whale sharks, 
and thus guide efforts to manage and conserve them. 

My surprise encounter with the dorsal fin of a 
whale shark resulted from an effort to answer an- 
other basic question: Where do the Ningaloo Reef 
whale sharks go in the winter, spring, and summer? 
In 2003 and 2004, I joined three fellow marine biol- 
ogists—Brent S. Stewart of Hubbs—SeaWorld Re- 
search Institute in San Diego, Jeff J. Polovina of the 
US. National Marine Fisheries Service in Honolulu, 
and Mark G. Meekan of the Australian Institute of 
Marine Science in Darwin—in attaching pop-up 
archival tags to nineteen sharks. The tags record data 
about the light level, depth, and temperature of the 
tagged fish’s environment until a preprogrammed 
date. Then the tags detach, float to the surface, and 
transmit their archived information to satellites. 
From those data, the sharks’ movements can be re- 
constructed to within about a hundred miles. 

We recovered several months’ worth of data from 
each of six tags. All six sharks had moved northeast 
after leaving Ningaloo Reef, and several individuals 
had approached the Indonesian coast, where, we 
feared, they risked becoming fishermen’s quarry. 
Our depth and temperature data also showed that 
whale sharks inhabit a more extensive niche than 
anyone had suspected. The animals spent most of 
their time in surface waters, but they also dove oc- 
casionally to depths of more than 3,200 feet, where 
temperatures drop as low as forty degrees Fahren- 
heit—a big change from the balmy eighty-four- 
degree waters at the surface. Why do they dive? Per- 
haps the sharks need to cool off, or perhaps they are 
feeding on some unknown, deepwater prey. 


me they spend so much time near the surface, 
though, we realized we might track them much 
more precisely with a different kind of tag: a satel- 
lite-linked radio transmitter. With such a transmit- 
ter, an animal’s position can be determined to with- 
in a mile anytime the transmitter’s antenna is above 
the sea surface. In 2005, with the help of John D. 


Stevens, a shark biologist, and Matthew G. Horsham, 
a mechanical engineer, both at Australia’s Com- 
monwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Or- 
ganisation in Hobart, we attached these instruments 
to several whale sharks at Ningaloo Reef. Some 
tagged sharks moved northeast toward Indonesia, and 
some moved northwest. 

Tags of various kinds have been attached to whale 
sharks in the waters of several other countries as well, 
including Belize, Honduras, Japan, Mexico, the Sey- 
chelles, and Taiwan. Most of those tagging studies 
are not yet published, but preliminary data suggest 
that whale sharks migrate long distances. One shark 
traveled from Mexico’s Sea of Cortez across the Pa- 
cific, a distance of more than 8,000 miles. 


hale sharks have long been hunted at many of 
their seasonal gathering sites, typically by ar- 
tisanal fishermen using harpoons. In some places the 
catches have been quite high: fishermen in Gujarat, 
India, for instance, took 591 whale sharks in 1999 and 
2000, before whale shark hunting was banned na- 
tionally in 2001. Whale sharks often wind up in Asian 
markets, particularly in Tarwan, where they are known 
as “tofu sharks,” for their soft, white flesh. There, the 
meat and fins fetch the highest price of any fish. 
Signs of overfishing have already begun to appear. 
Whale shark catches have declined in several places 
that have been fished intensively. Meekan recently 
suggested that the Ningaloo Reef whale sharks are 
smaller by about six feet, on average, than they were 
a decade ago. Because they grow so slowly, reproduce 


so late, and congregate in small, migratory popula- 
tions, whale sharks are particularly vulnerable to over- 
fishing. Indeed, the World Conservation Union, a 
Switzerland-based environmental group, has listed 
them since 2000 as vulnerable to extinction. 

Yet there are some hopeful signs, too. In the past 
decade several nations have banned whale shark hunt- 
ing—though opportunistic capture appears to con- 
tinue in some of those nations and elsewhere. Tai- 
wan’ fishery, perhaps the largest, persists with an of- 
ficial quota of sixty-five whale sharks per year. Still, 
it seems likely that the whale shark catch is lower than 
it was in the unregulated past, and several countries, 
such as the Philippines, have converted whale shark 
fishing centers into tourism destinations. Beginning 
in 2003, the Convention on International Trade in 
Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (also 
known as CITES) imposed permit requirements on 
trade in whale shark products. 

Just as encouraging has been the recent surge in 
scientific attention. Western Australia hosted the 
first International Whale Shark Conference in May 
2005, bringing together scientists, resource man- 
agers, and conservationists from more than twenty 
nations. Perhaps the most valuable outcome of the 
meeting 1s still being played out, in the relationships 
and collaborations it nurtured among interested par- 
ties from around the world. If science can improve 
human understanding of the whale shark, future 
generations will be able to indulge the simple pleas- 
ure I have enjoyed—the chance to swim with the 
biggest fish in the sea. O 


Life-size whale shark figures, made of bamboo and rice-sack cloth, are transported to a festival 
held each year in the Philippine fishing village of Donsol. The festival celebrates the arrival of whale 
sharks, or butanding, as they are known locally. Swimming with the protected whale sharks has 
become a popular tourist activity since 1998, when the animals were first discovered in the area. 


April 2006 NATUR 


Al 


HISTORY 


47 


By Stephen Christopher Quinn 


tao vie 
eae 
PHA at t 


rom their very first appearance 1n science mu- 
seums in the late 1800s. dioramas have been 
designed to nurture a reverence for nature. 
The best ones duplicate the wonder of an intimate, 
personal encounter with a real creature in its habi- 
tat. Many visitors come away transformed by the 
simulated wilderness world: A silverback mountain 


; gorilla pounds its chest in a threatening display of 
: dominance. An immense bull walrus rears up to sur- 
: vey its refuge on an Arctic ice floe. A giant brown 
( bear stands in alarm before a panorama of spectacu- 

lar Alaskan mountain peaks. Birds soar in suspend- 
ed animation. Clouds hover motionless in azure blue 
skies. Behind the glass, time stops, and all of nature 
is locked in an instant for the viewer to examine. 

Dioramas were born in an era when film and wild- 
life photography were in their infancy. In a sense, 
though, they leap ahead of those technologies to 
combine two- and three-dimensional elements in- 
to a form of “virtual reality.’ The classic habitat dio- 
rama 1s encased 1n an alcove with a windowlike frame 
or theaterlike proscenium that limits sight lines and 
conceals peripheral vanishing points. The scene it- 
self is made up of three artistic components: taxi- 
dermy specimens; a foreground that encompasses all 
of the three-dimensional elements of the diorama 
other than the taxidermy; and the curved back- 
ground painting, which 1s critical to the overall illu- 
sion of space, distance, and environment. 


he American Museum of Natural History 
(AMNH) in New York City played a leading 
role in the development of the habitat diorama as a 
tool for science education. In its earliest years the 
museum’ exhibition halls on zoology were made 
up of vast displays of its collections, with a focus on 
taxidermy specimens. But in time, the museum's 
visitors, curators, and scientists became dissatisfied 
with displays of specimens only. The view that noth- 
ing 1n nature originates in isolation, but comes 1n- 
stead out of complex interrelationships, also spurred 
the development of the habitat diorama. 
The earliest dioramas at AMNH did not feature 
large, charismatic mammals, but rather depicted a 


Libyan Desert diorama (left), at the American Museum of 
Natural History (AMNH), features three addaxes (far left), 
a scimitar-horned oryx (middle left), and a dama gazelle 
(near left). The “tie-in” between the foreground scene and 
the background painting has been cleverly disguised by 
the detailing of the shadows. 


This article is adapted from Stephen Christopher Quinn’s forthcor 
book, Windows on Nature: The Great Habitat Dioramas of the 
American Museum of Natural History, wich is being pu 

this month by Abrams, New York, in association with the Am 
Viuseum of Natural Histor) 


50 


more humble group of vertebrates: birds. In 1885, 
Morris K. Jesup, then president of the museum, 
was entranced by a British Museum exhibit of 
local birds, perched on botanical models of local 
plants. Jesup invited the artists responsible to come 
to New York to create a similar exhibit at AMNH. 
The result was a lifelike display of a pair of Ameri- 
can robins nesting in the bough of a flowering 
apple tree. 

The robin exhibit proved so popular that it easi- 
ly generated funding for more. The early exhibits, 
known at the time as “habitat groups,” were simple 
glass cases containing taxidermy specimens and 
botanical models. Frank M. Chapman, a young or- 
nithologist, improved their design by including a 
painted background of the birds’ habitat. In still 
later exhibits, the painted background was rendered 
on a curved surface. 


ward to deflect reflections downward and away from 
visitors’ eyes—an ingenious innovation for the time. 
Inside the cases the “ground” is below the level of 
the visitor, enhancing the illusion that the scene 
drops off dramatically into an infinite space beyond. 

Each scene 1s startlingly realistic, featuring one or 
more large African mammals. All around are the soil, 
plants, trees, and birds that share the animal’s native 
habitat. A landscape mural curves behind the mount- 
ed specimens and the three-dimensional foreground, 
creating the impression of a limitless vista. 


INS all of the dioramas in the hall presented 
their creators with artistic challenges related 
to the “tie-in”—the edge along which the fore- 
ground scene had to merge into the background 
painting to create the illusion of a seamless image. 
That hurdle was particularly demanding for the 


On the mezzanine level, the viewer sees the reef as it appears above the water surface; on the 
lower level, the viewer sees the underwater habitat. When scientists and artists collected refer- 
ence materials for the diorama, in 1924, scuba equipment had not been developed, so workers 
relied on an underwater diving apparatus (above left). Chris E. Olsen, a background artist for 
the diorama, made field sketches for the exhibit on location underwater (above right). 


It wasn’t until the naturalist and taxidermist Carl 
Akeley embraced Chapman’s approach of traveling 
to document each specific diorama that the diorama 
realized its most magnificent expression at the mu- 
seum: a gallery dedicated to African wildlife. When 
the Akeley Hall of African Mammals finally opened 
in 1936, ten years after Akeley’s death, the exhibition 
showcased the groundbreaking sculptural techniques 
he created for taxidermy, which are still in use today. 

Crossing the threshold of the Akeley Hall, one 
enters a hushed, darkened theater that portrays the 
vanishing natural Eden of Africa. Twenty-eight lu- 
minous “windows” depict the natural world of the 
continent. The dioramas have eighteen-foot ceil- 
ings, and some are as deep as twenty-three feet. The 
windowpanes, thirteen feet high, are angled down- 


scene of the Libyan Desert [see photograph on preced- 
ing two pages]. Unlike other dioramas, in which dense 
vegetation conceals the point where foreground 
meets background, the desert scene depicts an open, 
flat vista with little to conceal the tie-in. So when 
the artist James Perry Wilson painted the back- 
ground mural for the desert diorama, he depicted 
the scene at sunrise. With the sun low on the hori- 
zon, long horizontal shadows are cast across the 
landscape in the painted scene. Wilson also added a 
rock outcrop to his landscape on the far left [not seen 
in the photograph|, which casts a long, prominent 
shadow across the scene, just above the tie-in. The 
shadow draws the viewer's eye away from the point 
where the foreground sand meets the painted back- 
ground, thereby effectively disguising it. 


Most dioramas in the museum depict a real place, 
somewhere in the natural world. Hence the pro- 
duction required a costly—and often intrepid—ex- 
pedition to the site, where extensive collections and 
field references were gathered. In 1923 the museum 
sent curator Roy Waldo Miner to scout a site for a 
diorama that would depict the diversity of life 
around a tropical coral reef. He chose the Andros 
reef in the Bahamas for its spectacular stands of 
elkhorn and staghorn coral and its rich abundance 
of tropical fish. The collecting team brought back 
forty tons of coral—including a single specimen 
weighing two tons—and reassembled it in its orig- 
inal configuration. 

The era predated scuba diving, and so the artists 
and curators on the collecting expedition could not 
swim about freely. Instead, they descended to the 
seafloor in heavy diving helmets, weighted suits, and 
boots designed to keep them from floating to the 
surface. Air was pumped to their helmets through 
long hoses from a boat above. Chris E. Olsen, for 


Alaska brown bear diorama (left), on display in the AMNH Hall of 
North American Mammals, beckons museum visitors with its heroic 
proportions. Robert Rockwell (above) first sculpted a life-size clay 
replica of the standing bear, then encased it in plaster. The plaster 
shell, once dried, was the mold for a papier-maché mannequin on 
which the tanned skin of the bear was pasted and sewn into place. 


instance, the artist who painted the background of 
the diorama, carried oil paints and a waterproof can- 
vas stretched over a glass panel on a weighted easel, 
to capture the dappling and shimmering effects of 
light as it passed through the deep water [see photo- 


graph at right on page 50}. 


The Andros coral reef itself was a vibrant ecosys- 
tem when the diorama that depicts it was complet- 
ed in 1935. Today, of course, with the many threats 
to coral reefs around the world, museum curators 
would never consider removing any of its coral for 
an educational display. Outbreaks of coral disease, 
sedimentation, overfishing, coral bleaching, and al- 
gal blooms have all contributed to the reefs’ decline. 


B y the late 1950s, the popularity of the diorama 
as an exhibit medium was on the wane. Tele- 
vision and film competed with the diorama as ways 
to “experience” nature. In the ensuing decades, in- 
teractive exhibits made possible by advances in com- 
puter technology pushed the diorama off the draw- 
ing board at many museums. 

But the species was only dormant, not ex- 
tinct. In recent years, the diorama has made 
something of a comeback, as exhibit design- 
ers have realized its power to give visitors an 
experience unattainable through any other 
medium: a compelling illusion of a place in 
nature, at life size and in real time. 

In 1996 AMNH sent a team of artists and 
scientists to the Central African Republic to 
collect the reference material for its largest 
diorama, a replica of a tropical African rain 
forest. For the 2003 renovation of the Mil- 
stein Hall of Ocean Life, some of the mu- 
seum’s earliest dioramas were meticulously re- 
stored, such as the one showing the Andros 
coral reef. Other dioramas, such as the har- 
bor seal, the elephant seal, and the stellar sea 
lion, were newly fabricated, from archival 
specimens collected long ago. 

Although many people sometimes feel dis- 
tanced from the natural world by civilization, 
museum dioramas remind us all that we still 
belong to it. They are an illusion created not 
to deceive, but—like all great art—to tug at 
our hearts and open our minds as they draw 
us in. They are the best way yet invented to 
accurately reflect, with art, the awe and won- 
der we feel before nature and the creatures 
with which we share the earth. Will we trea- 
sure the planet as we do the dioramas, or will 
they one day become museum pieces in the 
more pejorative sense, a record of a lost 
world, as it was before we defiled it? L) 


54 


Alaska’s Underground 


Frontier 


An observatory that looks 
down—not up—at the planet’s 
microbial diversity 


By Christine Mlot 


he workboat I’m riding whips down the 

Tanana Raver in the interior of Alaska, 

just west of Fairbanks. Rains in the past 
two weeks have made the Tanana high and swift 
in its rush to meet the Yukon River, on its way to 
the Bering Sea. Today is bright, with a ceaseless 
boreal sun and a breeze that keeps the mosquitoes 
at bay—a good day for summer fieldwork. 

The boat stops along one of many side channels 
that make up this labyrinth of a river, and we un- 
load on a small, thickly wooded island. Our gear 
is not high-tech: a couple of T-shaped soil corers, 
boxes of zippered plastic bags and latex gloves, a jar 
of ethanol. We hike into the brush and begin. 

Most people come to Alaska for the big things: 


big mountains, big game, big fish. We have come 
for the little things. We are here to collect and 
study the bacteria that live 1n the cold, thin soil 
beds. Ecologists have been studying the succes- 
sion of boreal forest at this site, the Bonanza Creek 
Experimental Forest [see map on opposite page), 
since the 1960s. (More recently the National Sci- 
ence Foundation, or NSE has been funding the 
study as part of its Long-Term Ecological Re- 
search Network, which was established in 1980.) 
In the past few years the study has gone under- 
ground, literally, to explore the microbial com- 
munities on which the forest depends. 

The small island—our first sampling site—is 
thick with balsam poplar. The trees represent an 
early stage in the centuries-long successional 
cycle of the forest. Heather K. Allen, a doctoral 
student who is writing her dissertation on the 
bacteria living here, clears the leafy duff and stabs 
a soil corer through a knot of roots and into the 
forest floor. Out comes the first of some eighty 
samples we'll collect today. 

Collecting bacteria in the wild hasn’t changed 
much since the days of the early microbe hunters, 
such as Louis Pasteur, 150 years ago. Preventing 


Aerial view of the Tanana River, looking roughly south, shows some of its mean- 
dering course near Fairbanks, Alaska; the peak of Denali is visible on the horizon 
at the upper right. The braided river regularly creates new islands out of silt that 
can support forest life, with a little help from microorganisms. 


4) 


fee Pua 
yp Bee ka sil 
wee, 4 v 


ior 


Fairbanks 


af 
Bonanza'Creek . 


a Z t 
Experimental ae®™ -.<° 
Forest pF 


7) ii a i 
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. miles 


contamination remains the main challenge: keeping 
the bacteria you want from mixing with all the oth- 
er microorganisms in the environment and on your- 
self. What has changed dramatically in recent times 
is how the collected microorganisms are studied. Typ- 
ically only a small fraction of the full microbial com- 
munity grows in standard laboratory conditions. 
Look at a diluted speck of our Alaskan soil sample 
under a microscope, and you see a teeming world of 
rod- and sphere-shaped cells. Yet less than 1 percent 
of those cells take to life in a Petri dish. It could be 
compared to throwing a party, inviting a thousand 
people, and having only one person show his face. 
Microbiologists refer to the bacteria that don’t show 
up in laboratories as “the uncultured majority.” 

The breakthrough in the study of this major slice 
of life came in the early 1980s, when microbiologists 
realized that microbial DNA could be extracted and 
read without culturing the organisms first. New mol- 
ecular techniques for manipulating DNA have 
launched another age of exploration and discovery of 
the microbial world, with staggering results. It has be- 
come routine to find novel genes and exotic strains of 
microorganisms even 1n samples from rather ordinary 
habitats. Entirely new phyla are still being 
unearthed. In 1987 microbiologists 
recognized about a dozen 
bacterial phyla, all of which 
could be grown in a lab- 
oratory dish. Today at 


Frankia bacteria form nodules on the roots of an alder 
plant (upper right) and supply the alder with usable nitro- 
gen in exchange for sugar. At the microscopic level (above) 
Frankia often grow in filaments that extend and branch out 
at the tips; they also develop vesicles, or round structures, 
where they process nitrogen from the air. The micrograph 


is magnified 1,100. 


56 | NATURAL HISTORY April 2006 


least fifty-three phyla are known, twenty-seven only 
through their DNA. 

In other words, like pandas that won't breed in a 
zoo, the wild bacteria from those twenty-seven phy- 
la have yet to be cultured in the laboratory. Perhaps 
they need biochemical compounds produced by 
other members of their microbial community, mak- 
ing it impossible for them to reproduce and multi- 
ply in pure cultures. Or perhaps the conditions in a 
Petri dish are too rich, compared with conditions in 
their natural habitats: A group of investigators at Ore- 
gon State University in Corvallis recently cultured a 
newly discovered, yet widespread, marine bacteri- 
um by growing it in little more than seawater. 

The excavation of the enormous diversity in the 
microbial world is redesigning the tree of life. At the 
genetic level, plants and animals turn out to be mere 
twigs among a dense thicket of bacteria, archaea (the 
recently recognized third domain of life), and other 
kinds of microscopic organisms. The genetic studies 
are also changing the scientific understanding of the 
basic flow of elements through the environment. 
Microorganisms, after all, are the main gateway be- 
tween the animate and inanimate—they can subsist 
on sludge, rock, or even toxic waste, and thereby 
open up a food chain. 

To explore the hidden world, microbiologists 
have set up a network of some fifty “microbial 
observatories,’ such as the Bonanza Creek 
observatory in Alaska, to take a cen- 
sus of microorganisms living there. 

Scattered around the globe in a 
range of environments, the observa- 
tories have discovered thousands of 
novel microbial types, and even new 
biochemical pathways. 

The Bonanza Creek observatory 1s dis- 
tinguished by the unusual way in which local 
bacteria obtain the element phosphorus, which in 
turn enables the rest of the forest to grow. Work at the 
observatory is also turning up unusual antibiotics and 
other biochemicals produced in the cold. And this be- 
ing Alaska, in the early years of the twenty-first cen- 
tury, the boreal site and its samples are becoming grist 
for the study of global-warming effects as well. 


i the language of the native people of this land, 
the Athabascans, tanana suggests “mountain riv- 
er.’ Run-off from glaciers in the Alaska Range—the 
mountains that include North America’s highest 
peak, Denali—converges into streams that eventual- 
ly form the Tanana. The river also carries debris from 
the glacier-scraped mountain range: a fine silt, which 
colors the water a concrete-dun. Word around Fair- 
banks is that if you fall into the Tanana, you must get 


out of your clothes fast, before they fill with the silt 
and drag you under. 

But mountain silt brings life as well. Deposited 
onto sandbars along the river, the silt creates fresh 
real estate for water-loving willows and thin-leaf 
alder. Old and new islands in the river channel hold 
patches of the boreal forest at 
all stages of succession. Hop- 
ping from one island to the 
next, you can trace the evolu- 
tion of forest life from the first 
colonizing plants to the oldest 
trees in the forest [see illustra- 
tion on next two pages}. 

Growing a forest on islands 
of bare silt takes unusual 
chemistry and unique bacte- 
ria. Plants get carbon in the 
form of carbon dioxide from 
the air, but the rest of the 
nutrients they need come 
through their roots. The river 
washes some of these nutrients 
onto the sandbars and fertil- 
izes the seedlings that blow in, 
wash in, or hitchhike ashore. 
But not all nutrients are avail- 
able or present in a chemical 
form the plants can use directly. That’s where bac- 
teria, along with root-associated fungi, come in. In 
the soil, on or near the plants’ roots, microorganisms 
retrieve and transform certain elements, thus en- 
abling growth in nutrient-poor places. 

Like many a backyard garden, the sandbars along 
the Tanana are poor in nitrogen—an element all 
plants need to build protein. Nitrogen is abundant 
in air, of course, but its atmospheric form (the mol- 
ecule N,) is useless to plants. Certain bacteria in the 
genus Frankia, however, make enzymes that enable 
the bacteria to retrieve molecular nitrogen in the air. 
Those bacteria are symbiotic with alder, living in 
nodules on the plants’ roots [see images on opposite 
page|. The bacteria provide the alder—and ultimately 
the forest—with usable nitrogen in exchange for sug- 
ar synthesized by the plant. As our guide and col- 
laborator, Roger Ruess, an ecologist at the Univer- 
sity of Alaska in Fairbanks, puts it: “The plant has to 
support the drug habits of Frankia.” 


B oth the alder plant and Frankia seek another el- 
ement that 1s in short supply: phosphorus. The 
element is needed to make DNA, among other mol- 
ecules, and limits how much nitrogen the Frankia 
can fix, or change into a form usable by the plant. 
When phosphate—a molecule in which one phos- 


Cankers pepper the trunk of an alder. The cankers 
are the result of a fungal infection that eventually 
kills plants by inhibiting nitrogen fixation. 


phorus atom is bound to four oxygen atoms—1s ex- 
perimentally added to a site, the rate of nitrogen fix- 
ation shoots up, along with the plant’s growth. Phos- 
phorus is naturally present in the soil, but, like at- 
mospheric nitrogen, it is locked up in chemical forms 
plants cannot use. 


Yet the bacteria living along 
the Tanana manage to obtain 
some of the otherwise un- 
available phosphorus. William 
W. Metcalf, a microbiologist at 
the University of Illinois in 
Urbana, and his students have 
assessed Tanana soil bacteria 
for certain DNA sequences 
and discovered that a high pro- 
portion of them possess en- 
zymes—only recently discov- 
ered—that can metabolize the 
locked-up forms of phospho- 
rus. Most organisms must get 
their phosphorus from phos- 
phate, its most common state, 
but some bacteria we collect- 
ed on the Tanana can convert 
“reduced” forms of phospho- 
rus, suchas the phosphite mol- 
ecule (one phosphorous atom 
bound to three oxygen atoms), into phosphate. Fed 
only those reduced forms of phosphorus in the lab- 
oratory, bacteria from the river site grow Just fine. 

By growing with the captured phosphorus, the 
collaborating alder plants, bacteria, and fungi help 
open the way for other forest denizens. Investiga- 
tors find that alder improves the nutrition of neigh- 
boring plants and soon attracts wildlife. Hare and 
moose have obviously browsed the willow bushes 
on the riverbank where we pause for our lunch. 

Animals rarely like to eat alder, but lately it’s be- 
come lunch for something else. Last year investiga- 
tors noticed that cankers, caused by a fungal patho- 
gen, were appearing on the alders [see photograph 
above|. Now they are watching intently to see how 
the lesions may affect the forest at this pivotal, early 
stage of its development. The fungal infection de- 
creases the rate of nitrogen fixation and eventually 
kills the alder. Will enough of the population suc- 
cumb to alter the normal succession of the forest? No 
one knows, but at some sites along the Tanana, 
cankers have appeared on as many as 80 percent 
of the alders. 

We see pimply bark, signs of the canker disease, 


at our first sampling site and elsewhere as we motor 
up and down the river to the various islands. The 
responsible pathogen may be the same fungus that 


April 2006 NATURAL 


HISTORY 


a7 


biologists have discovered attacking alder in Col- 
orado, Valsa melanodiscus. 


| n spite of the alder canker, it’s still possible to trace 
the normal forest succession along the Tanana. 
We pass by young sandbars thick with knee-high 
willow, and only an occasional shoot of alder. If the 
alder remains canker-free, it will grow like lilac 
bushes and crowd out the willow, dominating the 
small, sandy islands. Eventually, if the forest grows 
unimpeded, balsam poplar—also known as cotton- 
wood in the Lower 48—shades over the alder and 
replaces it. Balsam poplar sheds its seeds in fluffy 
blossoms that litter the forest floor; our sampling 
sites are full of them, along with thickets of prick- 
ly rose and sprigs of pyrola, or wintergreen. 

At another island upstream, we enter a fragrant 
cathedral of 200-year-old white spruce: the next 
stage of the forest succession. The brushy ground- 
cover of the balsam sites has given way to green 
lichens, cushiony mosses, and more legroom. The 
recent rain has prompted a show of mushrooms, too. 
We find the wild relative of the common white but- 
ton mushroom (Lycoperdon) and a burnt-marshmal- 
low look-alike (Sarcodon imbricatum). 

Up and across the river we sample the bacteria that 


Forest succession (left to right) along the Tanana River 
begins as the first colonizers, willow and then alder bushes, 
get nitrogen with the help of Frankia bacteria that live 
among the alders’ roots. Balsam poplar moves in over time, 
and after about 200 years white spruce follows. A few cen- 
turies later, black spruce dominates. Individual islands have 
their own soil chemistry and microbial communities, which 
are just beginning to be studied in detail. 


ae 


live in the final stage of forest succession. It is the 
coolest stage, both literally and figuratively. Black 
spruce trees jut like pipe cleaners amid an aromatic 
groundcover of Labrador tea, low-bush cranberry, 
and more mosses. The accumulation of feathery moss 
has by now insulated the ground, preventing it from 
warming during summer, and so a permafrost layer 
begins as little as a foot beneath the surface. We pull 
samples of fibrous soil the color of chocolate cake out 
of the ground, as cold to the touch as if it came out 
of a cooler, rich with the complex smells of soil. The 
smells themselves are signals of bacteria: the vapors 
of volatile compounds released by Streptomyces bac- 
teria, the source of streptomycin and other antibi- 
otics. A billion bacterial cells, representing thousands 
of different strains, can live in a teaspoon of the soil, 
along with perhaps dozens of fungal strains. 


tored in coolers, the soil samples get shipped to 

Jo Handelsman’s microbiology laboratory at the 
University of Wisconsin—Madison. There, a small 
crew of investigators starts in on the work. Most of 
the soil ends up being processed into “libraries” of 
DNA, the better to explore and analyze the vast 
world of yet-uncultured microbial diversity. 

To create the libraries, pinches of soil are tucked 
into inch-deep tubes. Minute synthetic beads are 
added to break open the bacterial cells as the 
tubes spin in a centrifuge. Solutions are used to 
wash the burst DNA and separate it from the rest 
of the compounds in the 
soil. What's left is 
a clear solu- 


tion containing the bacterial DNA—a proxy for 
the original community. 

One particular gene, or stretch of the DNA, serves 
as a universal bar code that identifies each of the 
bacterial strains present in the soil. Fishing out and 
sequencing the many versions of this bar-code gene 
and comparing them with similar, yet known, se- 
quences in gene databases reveals the identities and 
relative abundances of the various microorganisms. 
It also shows where the microorganisms from the 
Tanana River site belong in the bacterial family tree. 

The identity of a microorganism is largely a mat- 
ter of what it can do, and those functions are, in 
turn, a matter of the kinds of proteins the microor- 
ganism produces. To find out what proteins the 
Tanana soil bacteria produce, the DNA extracted in 
the laboratory 1s converted, in a controlled way, in- 
to the proteins it codes for, and the proteins are as- 
sessed for various functions. Typically, the extract- 
ed DNA is mixed with enzymes that cut it into 
pieces. The pieces are then inserted into other bac- 
teria, such as the laboratory workhorse Escherichia 
coli. Once inside E. coli, they are processed into pro- 
tein just as if they were part of E. coli’s own DNA. 
Functionally analyzing the new protein is then just 
a matter of testing the genetically altered E. coli. For 
example, if the genetically altered E. coli can grow 
on an antibiotic that would kill ordinary 
E. coli, the inserted 
DNA must have 


carried a gene for a protein that somehow disables 
the antibiotic. 


\ X J ¢ also study the Tanana soil microorganisms 


ina more traditional way: cultured on a Petri 
plate. When we compare what can be grown using 
different nutrient sources and growing conditions 
with what we know is present from the soil DNA, 
the cultural divide is stark. Bacteria from nineteen 
different phyla live in the Tanana samples, yet we can 
grow representatives from only four. 

Microbiologists are sometimes fond of saying, 
“Everything is everywhere.” In other words, bacteria 
are distributed globally. But as the bacterial census- 
taking continues, the exceptions, such as our “moun- 
tain river’ microorganisms, keep surfacing. 

The Tanana soils seem to be something of a mi- 
crobial backwater. We have to look hard to find any 
Bacillus, one of the most common soil bacteria any- 
where. Even soil samples from distinct sites on the 
same Tanana island, or from the same site but just a 
few inches apart in depth, have different characters— 
like Scottish villages dominat- 
ed by one clan or another. 

Although all the sam- 
pling sites in balsam- 
poplar forest look sim- 


but 


Newfound strains of Janthinobacterium 
from soil in Alaska’s boreal forest form 
nondescript colonies at warm tempera- 
tures (above), but start to produce red 
and purple pigments, along with antibi- 
otics, at cold temperatures (below right). 


purple pigments they produce 


ilar to our eyes, one of them 
turns out to be a hotbed of a 
particular kind of antibiotic- 
producing bacteria (Janthi- 
nobacterium). They've become 
a laboratory favorite because of 
the bloody crimson and inky 


only at cool temperatures [see 


photographs on this page|. Whatever the 
function of 


the pigments turns out to be, 
it seems likely that the 
Alaskan bacteria have devel- 
oped storage compounds, 
communication signals, and 
other specialized biochemi- 
cals adapted to their high- 


latitude life. 

The emphasis of the microbial observatories 1s on 
understanding microbial diversity, but they are also 
on the lookout for new drugs or other useful chem- 
icals that the microorganisms might produce. The 
Tanana soil bacteria, for instance, thrive in cold and 
phosphorus-limited conditions. Perhaps they make 
proteins that could be useful in agriculture, medi- 
cine, or even laundry—a bacterial enzyme that can 
operate in cold, boreal soil might be able to improve 
the stain-removing power of cold-water detergents. 


B ut are conditions still cold? It’s hard to escape 
what many read as signs of unusual warming at 
these latitudes. We sniff smoke in the air, blown in 
from a forest fire in the Yukon. By the end of sum- 
mer 2005, the fire season has become Alaska’s third 
worst. And the all-time worst was just the year be- 
fore that: in 2004, fires consumed 6.5 million acres 
of Alaska, an area bigger than Vermont. On aver- 
age, the state 1s two degrees Celsius warmer than it 
was at the beginning of the twentieth century. The 
average surface temperature of the Earth has 
warmed by one-fourth that amount (a half degree 
Celsius) in roughly the same period. 

Making a direct, causal link between the warm- 
ing trend and changes on the ground 1s hard to do, 
but investigators in Alaska have tallied a compelling 
list of consistent phenomena. In addition to the 
record fires, the growing season has lengthened, 
while, paradoxically, the oil-drilling season has 
shortened by about half (the tundra in the far north 
must be frozen deep enough to support the heavy 
rigs and traffic). Sea ice is also dramatically dimin- 
ished; it reached a record low of 2 million square 
about 


miles in 2005. The melting of sea ice 
400,000 square miles in the past decade or so—am- 
plifies climate warming and its myriad effects, as 


HISTORY April 2006 


open water absorbs heat that the ice would other- 
wise reflect back into space. 

Insects such as spruce bark beetles, which histor- 
ically have taken two summers to mature, now come 
of age in one, creating explosive populations that 
have chewed up temperature-stressed trees. Could 
the alder canker be another effect of the stress on 
plants? It’s possible. This is clearly uncharted terri- 
tory in the life of the boreal forest. 

Atthe Bonanza Creek Experimental Forest and mi- 
crobial observatory, soil temperatures have ratcheted 
up to such an extent in the past twenty years that the 
mean annual temperature half a foot below the sur- 
face 1s now above freezing. The warmer soil affects 
the forest community and its microbial underpinnings 
in yet-uncharted ways, and it affects the global car- 
bon cycle as well. As permafrost thaws, the prediction 
goes, microbial decomposers gain a huge new source 
of organic material to consume. But how well the 
little-known microbial communities will hew to the 
prediction, and how much carbon could be released 
from this historical carbon sink, remain to be seen. 

What microbiologists do know 1s that the changes 
both above and below the ground will alter the mi- 
crobial community in subtle ways. Inevitably, one 
strain or another will outgrow the rest. If the “win- 
ner” happens to be a microorganism with a knack 
for virulent infection, more 
pathogens such as the alder 
canker could emerge. By 
taking yearly soil sam- 
ples, microbiologists 
are accumulating a 
DNA record of the 
microbial commu- 
nities that might 
come to reflect the 
changing tempera- 
ture and vegetation 
of the sites. 


orth of the Tanana 

Raver, gentle bluffs border 
the floodplain. To the south, the wall of the Alas- 
ka Range lies obscured in haze. In between, the 
braided river takes the path of least resistance 
through the valley, creating the many rivulets and 
side channels in its seaward push. In spite of the 
seemingly timeless majesty of the place, everything 
in this panorama is moving: the river, the moun- 
tains, and the forest in all its stages. The lives of the 
cells in the soil are shifting, too. Too little is known 
of this complex and unseen world to begin to pre- 
dict what will become of it—too little, that is, ex- 
cept that it will bring surprises. XO 


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62 | JATURAL HISTORY 


THIS LAND 


—~y 


Green 
Fingers 


¢ 
Cc 


A woodland revives among the glacier- 
carved lakes of central New York. 


By Robert H. Mohlenbrock 


n 1891 President Benjamin Har- 

rison signed legislation authoriz- 

ing the establishment of national 
forests in the United States. Since 
that time, 155 national forests have 
been designated, scattered within 
the boundaries of forty-four states, 
Puerto Rico, and the Virgin Islands. 
Some of the forests preserve areas in 
conditions so pristine they compare 
well with the state of the lands in the 
national parks. Others encompass 
land degraded by earlier human oc- 
cupation, which was then restored 
through reforestation and good forest 
management. The most recent mem- 
ber of the group, added in 1985, 1s 
Finger Lakes National Forest, situat- 
ed on a ridge known as Hector 
Backbone. The ridge lies between 
the southern ends of Seneca and 


Cayuga lakes, the two largest of the 


April 2006 


Finger Lakes in west- 
central New York. 

The scenic Finger 
Lakes are named for 
eleven long, narrow 
lakes that run roughly 
north-south along 
nearly parallel lines. 
The lakebeds were 
formed during the past 
two million years by 
southward-moving 
glaciers, some more 
than two miles thick, 
which carved deep 
crevasses into the old 
valleys of northward- 
flowing rivers. After 
the last glaciers began 
their retreat, about 
19,000 years ago, they left behind the 
lakes and the elongated ridges, known 
as drumlins, that separate them (Hec- 
tor Backbone 1s one of those drum- 
lins). The glaciers also left gravel de- 
posits called moraines at the southern 
ends of the lakes. 

The region was home to Indians 
of the Iroquois Confederacy until 
1779, when they were evicted under 
orders of General George Washing- 
ton because four of the six nations in 
the league had allied themselves with 
the British. The land that was seized 
was then allotted to soldiers and vet- 
erans of the Revolutionary War, as 
payment for their service. The set- 


Mayapples rouse themselves in early spring 
beneath young sugar maple trees. 


tlers on Hector Backbone produced 
hay and small grains, such as buck- 
wheat, for sale in New York City. 
But the combination of a poor 
post—Civil War economy, westward 
expansion, changing access to mar- 
kets, and hard-to-work soils led to 
the abandonment of most farming 
there in the 1890s and the early 
decades of the twentieth century. 


n 1934 the federal government 

began to acquire land on Hector 
Backbone and started a program of 
reforestation and the creation of arti- 
ficial ponds. Because the owners 
were under no obligation to sell, the 


area became the patchwork of federal 
and private lands that characterizes it 
to this day. 

Covering twenty-five square miles, 
Finger Lakes National Forest includes 
pastoral woodlands brightened in the 
spring by numerous wildflowers and 
azaleas and, in the fall, by the au- 
tumn foliage of American beeches, 
birches, red maples, and sugar 
maples. County roads form the west- 
ern and northern boundaries of the 


Spotted salamander 


Habitats 


Woods The tallest trees include Ameri- 
can beech, basswood, black gum, 
black walnut, northern red oak, red 
maple, shagbark hickory, slippery elm, 
sugar maple, white ash, white oak, 
white pine, and yellow birch. Shorter 
trees scattered throughout the woods 
are arrowwood, common elder, hop 
hornbeam, maple-leaved viburnum, 
musclewood, and witch hazel. River- 
bank grape, a vine, climbs high up 
many of the tree trunks and branches. 
Among the more common ferns in 
the understory are Christmas fern, lady 
fern, New York fern, and spinulose 
wood fern; sensitive fern occupies the 
wetter areas. Spring wildflowers in- 
clude false Solomon’s-seal, hooked 
crowfoot, jack-in-the-pulpit, lady’s slip- 
per, mayapple, red columbine, 
starflower, tall white beardtongue, 
white avens, white trillium, and wild 
geranium. During late summer and au- 
tumn, flowering species include com- 


forest, and New York State routes 79 
and 227 lie along its southeastern 
side. Trails for hiking and horseback 
riding, as well as several black-top 
and gravel town roads, crisscross it as 
well, offering easy access. The Blue- 
berry Patch Campground provides 
facilities for camping and picnicking. 
Groups can use the Potomac Group 
Campground; the Backbone Camp- 
ground 1s open to equestrians. One 
parcel of the forest even offers 
Seneca Lake frontage on what 1s 
called Caywood Point. 

My favorite trail, which gives a 
good cross section of the natural fea- 
tures, is one of the shorter ones: 
Gorge Trail. Not far from the park- 
ing area where it begins, the trail 
passes Gorge Pond on the left. A 
marshy habitat with a diverse array of 
wetland plant species extends from 
the pond to the edge of the trail. To 
the right 1s a dry woodland. Farther 
along, the trail gradually descends in- 


mon enchanter’s nightshade, downy 
pagoda plant, hog peanut, roadside 
agrimony, wrinkle-leaved goldenrod, 
and two kinds of little white asters. In 
wet areas are scattered attractive 
white turtlehead plants. 


Pond Submerged aquatic plants such 
as brittle water nymph, coontail, sago 
pondweed, and waterweed grow in 
most ponds. The muddy shorelines 
support strawstem beggar-ticks, 
bristly sedge, bur reed, common 
spike rush, gray dogwood, narrow- 
leaved cattail, needle spike rush, 
pussy willow, soft rush, wool grass, 
and many other species. 


Marsh Among the marsh plants are 
bluntleaf bedstraw, common flat- 
topped goldenrod, fowl manna grass, 
purple-stem aster, sensitive fern, 
smooth goldenrod, spotted joe-pye 
weed, rice cut-grass, rough-leaved 


ee 
Area of Detail 


VISITOR INFORMATION 


Finger Lakes National Forest 
5218 State Route 414 

Hector, NY 14841 

607-546-4470 
www.fs.fed.us/r9/gmfl/fingerlakes 


to a narrow valley—the gorge—and 


the woods become more moist. 


ROBERT H. MOHLENBROCK is a distin- 
guished professor emeritus of plant biology at 
Southern Illinois University Carbondale. 


goldenrod, and tall flat-topped white 
aster. Scrambling over the vegetation 
is bittersweet nightshade, a nonnative 
species that pioneers planted for its 
pretty purple flowers, bright red 
berries, and intriguing leaves (they 
have one large lobe in the middle and 
two small lobes near the base). 


Open areas Fields that are no longer 
cultivated, roadsides, and trails provide 
open habitats. Many of the plants that 
grow here are invasive species from 
Europe and Asia, such as bouncing 
Bet, common yarrow, garlic mustard, 
hairy woodland brome, Japanese hon- 
eysuckle, multiflora rose, musk mallow, 
ox-eye daisy, and self-heal. Among the 
native species are bitter dock, com- 
mon blackberry, common cinquefoil, 
common goldenrod, common yellow 
wood sorrel, hairy white oldfield aster, 
hemp dogbane, path rush, and 
staghorn sumac. 


April 2006 NATURAL HIS 


BOOKSHELF 
eer eee eet) 


Chasing Spring: An American 
Journey Through a Changing Season 


by Bruce Stutz 
Scribner, 2006; $24.00 


A tthe beginning of this spring-chas- 
ing journey, set in 2004, neither 
Bruce Stutz nor his automobile is a good 
bet to finish a three-month odyssey 
across the continent and up to Alaska. 
Stutz, a former editor-in-chief of this 
magazine, has recovered recently from 
surgery for a faulty heart valve. Dick 
(named after Moby), a 1984 white 
Chevy Impala, still has its 
original valves, but 
twenty years of gathering 
dust in the garage of a 
friend’s mother have not 
been kind. Both man and 
car need to get on the road 
again and get their fluids 
running. And what bet- 
ter way to revive than to 
follow spring, the season 
of rebirth, as it sweeps 
across North America? 
Stutz’s journey is a 
long one, though hardly 
epochal. It begins on the 
vernal equinox, north of 
New York City, and ends when the Sun 
touches the horizon at midnight, at 
summer solstice, on the Arctic Circle. 
Along the way he stops to witness how 
the environment is changing, and to 
chat with scientists who study it. 
There are plenty of changes to pon- 
der. While still close to his home in 
Brooklyn, he accompanies a biologist 
to a seasonal vernal pool, helping to sur- 
vey frogs and salamanders. The experi- 
ence gives him ground truth about the 
threat suburban development poses to 
the creatures’ woodland habitats. Pass- 
ing through North Carolina, he visits 
an experimental forest where PVC 
pipes, sixty feet high, circle seven large 
stands of trees. To measure the effects of 
greenhouse gases on forest growth, 
holes drilled in the pipes blow varying 
amounts of carbon dioxide or plain air 
over each stand, while fieldworkers as- 


NATURAL HISTORY April 2006 


siduously plot the effects on the trees. 
Two weeks later, in Oracle, Arizona, 
Stutz visits Biosphere 2, a giant glass ter- 
rarium. Completed in 1991, it houses a 
700,000-gallon artificial ocean, a coral 
reef, a rainforest, amangrove swamp, and 
a desert. Nowadays the place has fallen 
on hard times. All the delicate elements 
designed to balance its enclosed ecosys- 
tem are limping along and beginning to 
fail. Stutz suspects that Biosphere 2 may 
unintentionally, in its decline, have be- 
come the accurate microcosm for the 
larger ecosystem it was intended to 
model—Biosphere 1, planet Earth. 


Country lane leads the traveler through a field 
of poppies in California. 


nd so it goes. Passing through 
Tornado Alley in Oklahoma, 
Stutz continues on to the Colorado 
Rockies, to join a group of environ- 
mental scientists who gauge climate 
warming by monitoring the depths of 
spring snow. Then, in Oregon, he 
meets a group of peripatetic hunter- 
gatherers who make their living col- 
lecting mushrooms for sale. They seem 
to keep at it, im an uncertain market, 
just because they like the outdoor life. 
By early June, Stutz and Dick have 
reached Glacier National Park, where 
the largest of the huge ice rivers that 
gave the place its name covers only 10 
percent of what it covered in 1850. 
With Dick resting safely in a parking 
lot at the Seattle airport, Stutz ends his 
journey in the Arctic. National Wild- 
life Refuge. That’s about as far north as 
one can get in the United States. Glad 


By Laurence A. Marschall 


to be there as the last rays of vernal sun 
kiss the thawing permafrost, Stutz re- 
alizes that he’s come through a season 
of change, in life as well as on Earth, 
and that many of the places he’s visited 
he will probably not see again. 

Armchair travelers who join Stutz 
through this pleasant journal will be glad 
they came along, but they, like the au- 
thor, may also share his unease with the 
changes that are not merely seasonal, but 
long-term. Too many changes seem 
wrought, in part, by inattentive stew- 
ardship. “What will your and my chil- 
dren’s and grandchildren’s springs be 
like?” he asks at the end. “Will [our chil- 
dren] be able to head out in spring to 
recover their hearts?” 


Parenting for Primates 
by Harriet J. Smith 


Harvard University Press, 2006; 
$29.95 


Dear Harriet: 
My son Carl, who is eight, just can’t seem 
to sleep alone. It’s gotten worse since Cindy, 
my youngest, was born. Needless to say, I 
have to keep Cindy close, since she’s suck- 
ling, but Carl keeps interfering, snuggling 
up to us every night when we need time to 
ourselves. What should I do to get him to 
grow up and let us rest in peace? 

[Signed] Cara {her mark] 
Dear Cara: 
Carl is just feeling a natural anxiety at be- 
ing weaned from co-sleeping. Build your- 
self another nest. When it’s done, bed down 
in that old nest, and once Carl’: asleep, 
move with Cindy to the new nest. Carl 
may be upset, but after you've repeatedly 
left him alone in the old nest, he’ll get the 
idea. He may even decide to build his own 
nest. It’s worked for other orangutans, in 
my experience, and it will be good prepa- 
ration for his adolescence, when you in- 
evitably kick him out! 

Yours groomingly, Harriet 


f all the primates, people have by 
far the most complex and most 
enduring relations with their offspring. 
Yet we humans share more than just a 


Primate parent and offspring 


common ancestry with apes, monkeys, 
and lemurs. All primates have a rich so- 
cial life and face similar problems in 
raising their offspring. All primate par- 
ents must provide food, protection, and 
education to their young. All face ques- 
tions of how and when to wean babies 
from the breast, how to get youngsters 
to take care of themselves and relate to 
others, how to let them know it’s time 
to go off on their own. Just as people 
must ensure that Johnny can read, 
chimpanzees must teach their young- 
sters to find the best-tasting termites. 

Harriet J. Smith brings impressive 
credentials to the writing of this fasci- 
nating book on comparative parenting. 
A clinical psychologist in family prac- 
tice and the mother of two human fe- 
males, she also holds a Ph.D. in com- 
parative psychology and has raised sev- 
eral generations of cottontop tamarin 
monkeys in her backyard. Although the 
book includes a few examples from 
Smith’s therapeutic files (with the 
names changed, of course), she draws 
mostly from an impressive variety of an- 
thropological and zoological studies of 
groups ranging from hunter-gatherers 
in the Philippines to gorillas in Africa 
and red howler monkeys in the jungles 
of Venezuela. 


A: one might imagine, parenting 
styles among primates vary as 
widely as they do among human cul- 
tures. Marmoset dads in Central and 
South America, for instance, are loving 
fathers and share in infant care. Silver- 
back gorillas, though affectionate and 
concerned, keep pretty much to them- 
selves, offering protection to their fam- 
ilies but little parental help or guidance. 


And female orang- 
utans in the forests of 
Borneo are paradig- 
matically doting single 
mothers: they raise an 
average of three off- 
spring during their 
lifetime, devoting years 
to each one without 
the slightest help. 

Smith’s thought- 
provoking book, despite its partial gen- 
esis in her family practice, is not in- 
tended as a guide to effective child rear- 
ing. But I'd recommend it to any parent 
or prospective parent, with this caveat: 
What’s good for a tarsier or a lemur 
may be dysfunctional for a gibbon, a 
macaque—or a human. 


The Electric Life of Michael Faraday 
by Alan Hirshfeld 
Walker and Company 2006; $24.00 


5 ieee twenty-first century would 
not exist as we know it were it 
not for a nineteenth-century English 
experimenter named Michael Faraday. 
Lest that assessment seem hyperbolic, 
consider that until the 1820s, when 
Faraday devised a way to make elec- 
tricity rotate a metal rod, all the world’s 
work had been done by steam, water, 
animal, or human power. Faraday’s ro- 
tating rod led to the modern electric 
motor, the cornerstone of our modern 
electrified world. 

His demonstration, a decade later, 
that a varying magnetic field could in- 
duce an electric current ina coil of wire 
is the principle behind the electric gen- 
erator, which provided the power to run 
those electric motors. In time, Faraday’s 
inventions and their direct descendants 
found their way into every electric 
power plant, every automobile alterna- 
tor, every air conditioner, garbage dis- 
posal unit, and DVD player 
into virtually every aspect of modern 


in short, 


technological society. 
That is quite a legacy from a man 
whose meager formal education was 


supplemented by only a few years ap- 
prenticed to a bookbinder. Even when 
Faraday was an honored figure at Eng- 
land’s Royal Institution of Great Britain 
in London, his salary never exceeded a 
few hundred pounds a year. As Alan 
Hirshfeld’s sparkling new biography 
makes clear, Faraday’s influence 
stemmed not from learning or wealth, 
but froma rich imagination, a brilliance 
at experimentation, and an openness of 
character that won friends instantly and 
made him one of the outstanding sci- 
entific teachers of his century. 


hen the English chemist Sir 
Humphry Davy summoned 
Faraday (who had attended some of 
Davy’s lectures) to join Davy at the 
Royal Institution in 1813, Davy must 
have sensed some of those qualities. 
The young Faraday quickly rose from 
glorified bottle-washer to full collabo- 
rator in the most difficult of distillations 
and preparations. Within a few years he 
was publishing his own papers and giv- 
ing his own lectures to learned soci- 
eties. By 1824 he had been voted into 
the prestigious Royal Society. 
Beginning in 1826, partly to raise 


i 


{jj/|! 


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April 2006 NATURAL HISTORY 


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money for the laboratory of the Royal 
Institution, Faraday began giving a se- 
ries of public lectures. The so-called 
Friday Discourses (which continue to 
this day) featured many of the notable 
scientists of the era: John Dalton, Lord 
Kelvin, Charles Lyell. But Faraday set 
the standard for clarity and showman- 
ship. “It waked the young from their 
visions and the old from their dreams,’ 
gushed an admirer. Part of his success 
with the public stemmed from his 
memorable demonstrations of the lat- 
est discoveries. He detonated a hydro- 
gen-filled balloon with an electric 
spark. He made his hair stand on end 
with a static-electricity generator. His 
favorite appearances, though, were the 
annual Christmas lectures he gave to 
children. No less a figure than Charles 
Dickens found them so impressive that 
he implored Faraday to turn them into 
an instructional book for children. 

Yet for all of Faraday’s brilliance in 
the laboratory and the lecture hall, 
many of his colleagues didn’t know 
what to make of him. Untutored in 
mathematics, he could not express his 
results in the abstract notation expected 
by scholars. In his later years he devel- 
oped an elaborate theory of electricity 
and magnetism based on invisible “lines 
of force” emanating from charged 
atoms. The theory was so visual, so 
based on imagery, that he was widely 
viewed as loony, or at least past his 
prime. Ultimately James Clerk Max- 
well cast Faraday’s geometrical ideas 
about lines of force into the mathe- 
matical framework now known as field 
theory—one of the underpinnings of 
electromagnetism, gravitation, and 
quantum mechanics. Faraday’s theory 
turned out to be as self-descriptive as it 
was precocious: his own field of influ- 
ence, like that of an electrically charged 
body, extended outward, effectively 
without limit. 


LAURENCE A. MARSCHALL, author of The 
Supernova Story, is WK.T: Sahm Professor 
of Physics at Gettysburg College in Pennsylva- 
nia, and director of Project CLEA, which pro- 
duces widely used simulation software for edu- 
cation in astronomy. 


66 | NATURAL HISTORY April 2006 


nature.net 
« aes) 


New Moon 


By Robert Anderson 


he Moon reveals just one side to 

its admirers on Earth, yet our 
satellite seems an object with a thou- 
sand faces. It smiles with romantic light 
and winks at armchair space travelers. 
For me, most ofall, itis the place where 
the Apollo 11 astronauts set foot in 
1969, when I was eight. Butas an adult, 
[also see it as our planet’s dynamic part- 
ner, without which life on Earth would 
never have flourished. Isaac Asimov's 
“Triumph of the Moon” (at mountain 
man.com.au/i_asimov.html), written 
shortly after he watched the launch of 
Apollo 17, sets forth his reasons for 
thinking we would not have evolved 
without the Moon, and how the Moon 
was crucial to the development of 
mathematics, science, and space travel. 

The Moon, as the leading theory 
goes, was born in the aftermath of a 
titanic collision between a Mars-size 
planet named Theia and the early 
Earth. A Web page at the Planetary 
Science Institute introduces the “‘gi- 
ant impact” hypothesis with paintings 
by William K. Hartmann, one of the 
astronomers who originated the idea 
in 1975 (psi.edu/projects/moon/moon. 
html). Alistair G.W. Cameron, another 
pioneer in the study of giant impacts, 
has a site at xtec.es/recursos/astronom/ 
moon/camerone.htm with a number of 
his early computer simulations of 
the collision. 

Collision theories also enliven Web 
pages by G. Jeffrey Taylor of the Hawai'i 
Institute of Geophysics and Planetol- 
ogy (www.psrd.hawaii.edu/Dec98/Origin 
EarthMoon.html) and H. Jay Melosh of 
the University of Arizona in Tucson 
(www. |pl.arizona.edu/outreach/origin). 
Their simulations show lighter mantle 
rock from both bodies blasted into 
orbit, while Theia’s dense iron core 
merges with that of the proto-Earth 
to form our planet’s present massive 
core. That core was key to life’s over- 


whelming success: a smaller core could 
not have generated a magnetic field 
strong enough to shield us from lethal 
cosmic rays. Furthermore, the internal 
heat of our planet’s enlarged core has 
been the driving force of plate tecton- 
ics, another likely prerequisite for com- 
plex life to evolve. 

At the Internet encyclopedia 
Wikipedia (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giant_ 
impact theory), an animation at the bot- 
tom of the Web page shows how Theia 
may have formed in the same orbit as 
Earth, at what is called a Lagrange 
point, before it drifted into us at a suit- 
ably low speed. Edward Belbruno and 
J. Rachard Gott III calculated that this 
mechanism increases the likelihood of 
such planet-size impacts. While look- 
ing for more about Lagrange points, I 
came across a Web page on the topic 
by John C. Baez, a mathematical 
physicist at the University of Califor- 
nia, Riverside (math.ucr.edu/home/ 
baez/lagrange.html). In his section ti- 
tled “Mars Trojans, Neptune Trojans, 
and Earth’s strange companions,’ I was 
surprised to learn that Earth has sev- 
eral other “moons” tagging along. 
Relative to our planet, asteroid 3753 
Cruithne, for instance, moves in a 
complicated spiraling orbit whose ex- 
tremities resemble horseshoes. 

On the Internet you can find many 
new faces of the Moon, but I still en- 
joy the images the astronauts brought 
back almost four decades ago. At the 
Lunar and Planetary Institute Web 
site (www.|pi.usra.edu/resources/apollo), 
click on “70 mm Hasselblad” to view 
a complete collection of the ultimate 
tourist snapshots. Who 1s not still 
amazed by the images of Earth, rising 
moonlike over that barren surface? 
In the next few years, new lunar mis- 
sions may be added to the old. Go to 
the lunar exploration page of the 
Goddard Space Flight Center (nssdc. 
gsfc.nasa.gov/planetary/lunar/apollo_25 
th.html) for a chronology of lunar ex- 
ploration past, present, and future. 


ROBERT ANDERSON is a freelance science 
writer living in Los Angeles. 


April 2006 NATURAL HISTORY | 67 


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OUT SEH ERE 


Crash! 


A close encounter of the cometary kind 


By Charles Liu 


he term “astrogeology” (from 
the Greek for 
“earth’’) is either an overgen- 


“star” and 
eralization or an oxymoron. If youre 
an astrogeologist, do you study Earth, 
or the universe beyond Earth, or both? 
And if you study both, what else is left? 
So, let’s avoid the paradox by defining 
astrogeology as the study of cosmic ob- 


jects with the methods and tools de- 


veloped for studying our own planet. 

It’s easy to see the attraction of this 
rapidly growing subfield of astronomy. 
What rock hound wouldn’t love to 
chisel into a Martian mountain or crack 
open a geode on Ganymede? And tru- 
ly dedicated astrogeologists aren’t about 
to be deterred by something so mun- 
dane as, say, a multimillion-mile com- 
mute. With scientific ingenuity, no 
stone 1s too far out in the solar system 
to stay unturned. 

Maybe the most explosive example 
of astrogeological research so far is the 
Deep Impact mission, led by Michael 
F A’Hearn, an astronomer at the Uni- 
versity of Maryland in College Park. 
On July 3, 2005, the Deep Impact space 
probe released an 800-pound, battery- 
powered “smart impactor” the size of 
a washing machine into the path of 
Comet 9P/Tempel 1, then some 80 
million miles from Earth. Twenty-four 
hours later, cameras on probe and pro- 


jectile, as well as elsewhere in space and 


on Earth, snapped away as comet and 
impactor barreled toward each other at 
more than 20,000 miles an hour. Then, 
caught on images that will be analyzed 
for years to come, came the ultimate 
Independence Day fireworks. 

The energy of the crash, which pul- 
verized the impactor into a fine cop- 
pery must, was like detonating nearly 


five tons of TNT or— 
for those of us who 
enjoy more visually en- 
gaging comparisons— 
like dropping 800,000 
baby grand pianos out 
of a very large third- 
story picture window. 
But aside from the 
visceral joy of watching, 
what's the point of causing such a crash? 
First of all, the collision gouged a hole 
in the side of a comet the size of a foot- 
ball field and an estimated hundred feet 
deep. That gave astronomers the first- 
ever view beneath the surface of one of 
those mysterious wanderers. Maybe just 
as important, knowing a bit more about 
what’ inside a comet might help hu- 
manity avoid extinction if we ever dis- 
cover a comet streaking toward Earth. 


CG omet Tempel 1 is, by all mea- 
sures, an ordinary comet, orbit- 
ing the Sun in the region between 
Mars and Jupiter. That was just fine 
with A’Hearn and his collaborators: 
studying a typical example from a 
group of objects gives more insight 
about the group than the extreme 
cases do. But examine anything close- 
ly enough, and it becomes interesting. 
Intensive studies of Tempel 1, done 
well before the impact, showed that 
even such an undistinguished comet 1s 
an intriguing object. Shaped like a fist, 
and less than five miles across at its 
widest, Temple 1 is covered with pits 
and pockmarks left by more than 4 bil- 
lion years of cosmic collisions. 
Comets are thought to have formed 
early in the solar system’s history and to 
have undergone little geologic change 
since that time. Hence their internal 


Comet 9P/Tempel 1 is pictured sixty-seven seconds after Deep 
Impact’s impactor was intentionally crashed into it at 20,000 
miles per hour. The collision created a bright burst of light at 
the point of impact. The photograph was made by the main 
Deep Impact spacecraft. 


composition should hold fossilized clues 
about the chemical origins of the plan- 
ets. From thousands of spectroscopic ob- 
servations made before and after the col- 
lision, the Deep Impact team was able 
to determine the relative proportions of 
the elements and compounds that orig- 
inally made up the comet and the ma- 
terial ejected by the impact. 

The data showed that, in the two- 
tenths of a second following the im- 
pact, the temperature of the impact site 
flashed above 2,000 degrees Fahren- 
heit. More than a thousand tons of ma- 
terial were thrown into space: comet- 
stuff containing water vapor, carbon 
dioxide, cyanide gas, and an unex- 
pectedly large amount of organic mat- 
ter rich in carbon and hydrogen atoms. 

But the water vapor, surprisingly, 
made up only a small fraction of the 
ejected material—not what you'd ex- 
pect if, according to conventional wis- 
dom, comets are made mostly of ice. 
Deep Impact’s preliminary results thus 
seem to confirm a more recent propos- 
al: that comets are made mostly of rock, 
not ice. In short, they may be “snowy 
dirtballs” instead of “dirty snowballs.” 


if n one sense, Deep Impact did its job 

too well. The collision kicked up so 

much cometary material, which in 
(Continued on page 74) 


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74 


OUT THERE 


(Continued from page 70) 


turn reflected so much sunlight, that 
the cloud of comet dust obscured the 
impact crater from view. By the time 
the cloud cleared, the Deep Impact 
mother ship had already flown too far 
away from the comet to get a clear look 
at the crater bottom. So A’Hearn and 
his collaborators still cannot give an ex- 
act measure of the crater’s depth. 

But the gigantic plume from the 1m- 
pact has led to another important pre- 
liminary conclusion. The internal struc- 
ture of Tempel 1 1s downright flimsy. 
The projectile from Deep Impact didn’t 
hit a rock or an ice cube or even some- 
thing in between. Instead 1t whacked in- 
to a loosely packed ball, assembled slow- 
ly out of sand and snowflakes over bil- 
lions of years. The particles did not get 
cemented together by melting and reso- 
lidification, and apparently are barely 
held together by gravity. 

So what? Consider this: If a killer 
comet bound for Earth were equally 
flimsy, we earthlings probably couldn’t 
use a single powerful rocket to push or 
pull it off its collision course. Instead, 
the comet would break apart, leaving 
most of its deadly mass still hurtling to- 
ward our hapless home. 


A days after the historic colli- 
sion, the Deep Impact mother ship 
was still fully operational. So a big ques- 
tion loomed: Should the trajectory of 
the spacecraft be adjusted to fly by 
Comet Tempel 1 again, in 2011, to get 
a fresh look at the crater after the dust 
has settled? After weighing the options, 
A’Hearn’s team decided instead to aim 
the space probe toward another comet, 
85P/Boethin, for a rendezvous in 2008. 
If all goes as planned, a little more than 
two years from now astronomers will 
once more get a close-up view of an icy 
cosmic dirtball. Since the Deep Impact 
impactor 1s nothing but interplanetary 
vapor now, though, we’ll all have to do 
without the Fourth of July fireworks. 


CHARLES LIU is a professor of astrophysics at the 
City University of New York and an associate 
with the American Museum of Natural History. 


NATURAL HISTORY April 2006 


THE SKY IN APRIL 


On April 8, one day after passing aphe- 
lion (its farthest point from the Sun), 
Mercury reaches its greatest western 
elongation. One might hope for good 
viewing, since the planet attains its 
greatest possible angular separation 
from the Sun—twenty-eight degrees. 
But for observers at mid-northern lat- 
itudes, that morning's apparition 1s the 
poorest of the year, because Mercury 
is well to the south of the Sun and hugs 
the eastern horizon for much of the 
month. On the 8th, Mercury shines 
at magnitude 0.3. Because the planet 
rises less than fifty-five minutes before 
the Sun, however, it is soon lost in the 
glare of sunrise. 


Venus is the brightest morning “star” 
this month, but it blazes low in the 
east-southeast during the first light of 
dawn. As the sky brightens and Venus 
rises, the planet appears to fade and 
shrink. This month, it gets a little low- 
er and less brilliant each week. On the 
morning of the 18th Venus has a close 
encounter with Uranus, the seventh 
planet from the Sun. With Venus as a 
guide, use binoculars to find a small, 
greenish-blue “star” just 0.3 degree 
below and slightly to the right of 
Venus. That “star” is Uranus. On the 
24th Venus and the waning crescent 
Moon pair up in dawn’s early light. 


As evening twilight ends, Mars is in 
the western sky, nearly halfway be- 
tween the horizon and zenith (the 
point directly overhead). This month 
the Red Planet continues to fade and 
shrink as it speeds eastward from the 
constellation Taurus, the bull, and in- 
to the constellation Gemini, the 
twins, by the 14th. Two evenings lat- 
er it is midway between the orange 
star Aldebaran, in Taurus, and the yel- 
low star Pollux, in Gemini. A fat cres- 
cent Moon hovers well above Mars 
on the evening of the 3rd. 


As April begins, Jupiter rises in the east- 
southeast about an hour and a quarter 
after evening twilight. The planet is 


By Joe Rao 


about two and a half degrees east of the 
star Alpha Librae. Each night, Jupiter 
moves a bit farther to the west; on the 
night of the 24th and 25th it passes one 
degree north of the star, the second of 
three conjunctions the pair has in 2006. 


Saturn, in the constellation Cancer, the 
crab, rides high in the south-south- 
west as darkness falls and doesn’t set 
until well past midnight all month. In 
a telescope the rings are tilted twenty 
degrees toward Earth. After this 
month, you won't see the rings tipped 
this far again until 2014! In fact, in 
three years the rings will be edge-on 
to our line of sight. On the evening of 
the 6th, Saturn is situated below a 
waxing gibbous Moon. 


The Moon waxes to first quarter on 
the 5th at 8:01 A.M. and to full on the 
13th at 12:40 pM. It wanes to last 
quarter on the 20th at 11:28 pM. and 
to new on the 27th at 3:44 PM. 


On the 1st, observers across much of 
eastern North America can watch as 
a waxing crescent Moon occults, or 
crosses in front of, the main body of 
the Pleiades star cluster, in Taurus. 
With binoculars or a low-power tele- 
scope, watch between about 7:20 and 
9:40 P.M. as each jewel-like star in the 
Pleiades abruptly winks out behind 
the Moon’s dark side and, later, sud- 
denly reappears from behind the sun- 
lit crescent. The Moon’s dark portion 
will likely be dimly lit by earthshine, 
giving it a mottled blue-gray and yel- 
low-white cast. For observers in the 
central and western states, the Moon 
edges just to the east of the cluster as 
darkness falls. 


Daylight saving time returns for much 
of Canada and the United States on 
Sunday, the 2nd. Remember to 
“spring ahead,” and set clocks for- 
ward one hour. 


Unless otherwise noted, all times are giv- 
en in eastern daylight time. 


PETTERS 


(Continued from page 12) 


tant varieties of cotton that could 
minimize losses to weevils. 
Starting Life 
Thank you, Antonio Lazcano, for 
your summary of the most up-to-date 
information on how life began [““The 
Origins of Life,’ 2/06]. Since the sev- 
enth grade I have been curious about 
how life got started, and I’ve won- 
dered what great advances in such 
knowledge would occur in my life- 
time (I’m now sixty-four). I have been 
well satisfied with the progress so far! 
Joanne R. Polner 

Franklin Lakes, New Jersey 


Antonio Lazcano has drawn together 
an excellent comprehensive summary 
of the many plausible physical phe- 
nomena that may have led to the be- 
ginning of life: heterotrophic theory, 
hydrothermal vents, Miller-Urey re- 
actions on Earth’s soupy surface, a 


pre-RNA world, an RNA world, 
and seeding from meteorites or other 
planets. It would be wrong, however, 
to conclude that, because the list is 
long, scientists are conflicted and that 
therefore life began by means of su- 
pernatural processes. The fact that 
there are so many plausible ways to 
create life from inanimate material 
makes it even more likely that life 
originated by natural means. 

Fred Haag 

Burnt Hills, New York 


deGrasse Tyson’s statements in “Fire 
and Ice” [12/05-1/06]: If the fastest 


known speed is that of light and other 


electromagnetic waves—186,000 
mules per second—how could the 
universe expand to “about a thousand 
times the size of our solar system” 
one second after the big bang? 

John Stiles 

Johnston, Towa 


4 Edward O. Wilson 


Nature 
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THE JOHNS Hopkins UNIVERSITY PRESS ¢ 1-800-537-5487 * www.press.jhu.edu 


NEIL TYSON REPLIES: John Stiles was 
not the only one who wrote a letter 
asking this question. The cosmic 
speed limits imposed by relativity 
are specific to movement within a 
pre-existing space, such as what 

was described in Einstein’s special 
theory of relativity. The speed of 
light caps the rate at which informa- 
tion can be communicated from one 
place to another. 

In Einstein’s general theory of rela- 
tivity, the modern theory of gravity, 
space itself can stretch—at any speed 
whatsoever. Meanwhile, the speed 
of ordinary light and matter remains 
bounded by the speed of light in 
a vacuum. 


Natural History welcomes correspondence 


from readers. Letters should be sent via 


e-mail to nhmag@naturalhistorymag. 
com or by fax to 646-356-6511. All 
letters should include a daytime telephone 
number, and all letters may be edited for 
length and clarity. 


Bonds hundreds 
of materials 
including wood, 
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& 100% waterproof! 


Extra Thick. Extra Stick. 
New Gorilla Tape sticks to things 
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At the Museum 


AMERICAN MUSEUM o NATURAL HISTORY 1) 


www.amnh.org 


Moveable Museum Fleet Expands 


inosaurs: Ancient Fossils, New 

Discoveries is the latest addi- 

tion to the Museum’s fleet of 
Moveable Museums—converted recre- 
ational vehicles outfitted as state-of- 
the-art, walk-in exhibition spaces. This 
newest Moveable complements the 
Museum’s recent special exhibition of 
the same name, focusing on the latest 
findings in paleontology, and is made 
possible through the generous corpo- 
rate support of Bloomberg. 


Inside, the vehicle will be divided into 
three primary zones. “Age of Dino- 
saurs” will let visitors examine fossil 
evidence to understand what may have 
caused the mass extinction about 65 
million years ago. “Mesozoic Mysteries’ 


7 


will consider questions about dinosaur 
diet, movement, and behavior. The final 
zone, “Bird-Dino Connection,” will 
feature a diorama re-creating a 130- 
million-year-old prehistoric forest in 
what is now Liaoning Province, China. 


Interactive activities, interpretive mod- 
els, captivating video presentations, and 
numerous fossil specimens that visitors 
can touch ensure that the Museum’s 
newest Moveable Museum will offer ex- 
citing learning opportunities for all ages. 


All four Moveable Museums—Dino- 
saurs: Ancient Fossils, New Discoveries, 
The Paleontology of Dinosaurs, Structures 
& Culture, and Discovering the Uni- 
verse—are free of charge and available 


Center for 


Biodiversity and Conservation 


Spring Symposium 


Conserving Birds in 
Human-Dominated Landscapes: 
Weaving a Common Future 


Thursday and Friday, April 27 and 28 
9:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. 


Visit www.amnh.org for details. 


= 
4 
2 
- 
. 
B 
: 
. 


year-round for school programs, sum- 
mer programs, and community events 
throughout New York City. All school 
programs include a pre-visit teacher 
workshop, in-class lessons with 
Museum Educators, and a visit to the 
Moveable Museum. 


For more information, please contact 
Kevin Orangers, Manager of the Move- 
able Museum Program, at 212-769-5138. 


The Dinosaurs: Ancient Fossils, New Discoveries Moveable 
Museum is generously supported by Bloomberg. 
Founding support for the Paleontology of Dinosaurs 
Moveable Museum was provided by the children and 
grandchildren of Irma and Paul Milstein. Additional gen- 
erous support provided by The Barker Welfare Foundation 
The Structures & Culture Moveable Museum is gener- 
ously supported by Citigroup. The Discovering the Uni- 
verse Moveable Museum is made possible through the 
generous support of the Charles Hayden Foundation. 
Additional support for the Moveable Museum program 
is provided by KeySpan Energy. 


Museum Shop Online 
www.amnh.org 


The Museum Shop is a lively marketplace of wonders that 
reflect the Museum’s exhibitions on human cultures, the 
natural world, and the universe. Now, 24 hours a day, you 
can browse and purchase a variety of merchandise from 
around the world that will satisfy the curious of all ages. 
Purchases support the education and research endeavors of 
the American Museum of Natural History. 


PEOPLE AT THE AMNH~ 


Craig Chesek 
Senior Photographer 
Department of Communications 


New Book on AMNH Dioramas: 
Windows on Nature 


and sometimes eccentric artists and 
naturalists who made the dioramas; 
eye-opening explanations of the art and 
technology of diorama illusion; and in- 
formation about the species and loca- 
tions depicted, including the role of dio- 
ramas in the conservation movement. 


he American Museum of Natural 

History in partnership with Harry 
N. Abrams, Inc., has published the first 
and definitive book on the Museum’s 
famous habitat dioramas. Titled 
Windows on Nature: The Great Habitat 
Dioramas of the American Museum of 
Natural History and authored by 
Stephen C. Quinn, the richly illustrated 
volume, available in both hardcover 
and softcover editions, showcases the 
Museum’s world- 
renowned habitat 
dioramas as superb 
examples of art 
in the service of 
science. 


Also included are background on the 
development of dioramas as an art 
form, the Museum’s preeminent role 
in the history of dio- 
ramas, the fascinat- 
ing and sometimes 
mind-boggling tech- 
niques of diorama 
making, and the 
current state of 
diorama art. 


WINDOWS ON NATURE 


hen Craig Chesek first saw an ad 

for a photographer specializing in 
shooting gems, minerals, and artifacts, 
he responded quickly. The job description 
closely fit his interests and background 
as acommercial photographer. But as 
Senior Photographer, Craig has had the 
opportunity to photograph much more 
than he signed up for. 

After a decade at the Museum, Craig 
has photographed items as varied as the 
Star of India and a newly named species 
of bird, along with prominent figures 
such as Harrison Ford, Maya Angelou, 
and the Dalai Lama. His work has been 
featured in many of the Museum’s exhibi- 
tions as well as Museum-related publica- 
tions, including Windows on Nature. Over 
the years, he has seen the Photo Studio 
shift from strictly film to almost entirely 
digital, with all the associated challenges 
and advantages this transition entails. 
He works daily to maintain “order in the 
universe” of the photo archives and to 
service all Museum departments in need 
of the Studio's assistance. 

While his work has brought him to 
several exotic and distant locales, 
Craig’s favorite assignment was a 


The book includes 
full-color pho- 
tographs of more 
than 40 featured 
dioramas, rarely 
seen historical pho- 
tographs from the Museum’s archives, 
and an informative, entertaining de- 
scription of each diorama. 


Stephen C. Quinn 
is an artist and a 
naturalist and 
Senior Project Man- 
ager in the Department of Exhibition 

at the Museum. 


Windows on Nature is available in 
Museum Shops in hardcover for 
$40.00, and in a special softcover 
edition, available exclusively at the 
Museum, for $27.95. 


Readers will encounter tales of adven- 
ture and intrigue in the development 
and creation of individual dioramas; 
stories about the brilliant, passionate, 


The Butterfly Conservatory 


The perennially popular 
Butterfly Conservatory has 
been extended and will now 


HNWV/NINNIJ “G 


be on view until June 23! 
Visitors can stroll among 
up to 500 live butterflies 
while learning about their 
life cycle and conservation 
efforts, and, with luck, one 
of the spectacular tropical 
beauties might perch on an 
outstretched finger or an 
upturned head. 

This exhibition is made possible, in 
part, through the generous support 
of JPMorgan Chase. 


location shoot in Mauritania, Africa, to 
document Museum scientists conduct- 
ing field research among 900-million- 
year-old stromatolites, a specimen of 
which is now on view in the Gottesman 
Hall of Planet Earth. 

A self-professed “two wheel junkie,” 
Craig commutes to work daily on a bicy- 
cle, or, when he can, his motorcycle. He 
has motorcycled cross-country twice, 
totaling 19,000 miles, to visit and photo- 
graph numerous national parks. 


THE CONTENTS OF THESE PAGES ARE PROVIDED TO NATURAL History BY THE AMERICAN MUSEUM OF NATURAL HISTORY 


Museum Events 


AMERICAN MUSEUM 6 NATURAL HISTORY i) 


EXHIBITIONS 

Darwin 

Through August 20, 2006 
Featuring live animals, actual 
fossil specimens collected by 
Charles Darwin, and manu- 
scripts, this magnificent exhi- 
bition offers visitors a com- 
prehensive, engaging 
exploration of the life and 
times of Darwin, whose 
discoveries launched modern 
biological science. 


The American Museum of Natural 
History gratefully acknowledges 

The Howard Phipps Foundation 

for its leadership support. 

Significant support for Darwin 

has also been provided by 

Chris and Sharon Davis, 

Bill and Leslie Miller, the Austin Hearst 
Foundation, Jack and Susan Rudin, 
and Rosalind P. Walter. 

Additional funding provided by 

the Carnegie Corporation of New York, 

Dr. Linda K. Jacobs, and the 

New York Community Trust— 

Wallace Special Projects Fund. 

Darin is organized by the American 
Museum of Natural History, New York 
(www.amnh.org), in collaboration with the 
Museum of Science, Boston; The Field 
Museum, Chicago; the Royal Ontario Mu- 
seum, Toronto, Canada; and the Natural 
History Museum, London, England. 


The Butterfly Conservatory 
Through June 23, 2006 

A return engagement of this 
popular exhibition includes up 
to 500 live, free-flying tropical 
butterflies in an enclosed 
habitat that approximates 
their natural environment. 


This exhibition is made possible, in part, 
through the generous support of 
JPMorgan Chase. 


Voices from South of the Clouds 
Through July 23, 2006 

China’s Yunnan Province is re- 
vealed through the eyes of the 
indigenous people, who use 
photography to chronicle their 
culture, environment, and 


daily life. 


The exhibition is made possible by a gener- 


ous grant from Eastman Kodak Company. 
The presentation of this exhibition at the 
American Museum of Natural History is 


made possible by the generosity of the 
Arthur Ross Foundation. 


Vital Variety 

Ongoing 

Beautiful close-up photo- 
graphs highlight the diversity 
of invertebrates. 


LECTURES 

76th Annual James Arthur 
Lecture: Are Human Brains 
Unique? 

Monday, 4/3, 6:00 p.m. 
Michael Gazzaniga, Sage 
Center for the Study of Mind, 
University of California, 
Santa Barbara, will discuss 
his research on the mysteries 
of the human brain. 


Art/Sci Collision: 

Brandon Ballengée 

Thursday, 4/20, 7:00 p.m. 

The art projects and installa- 
tions created by Brandon 
Ballengée are scientific 
collaborations meant to 
engage the public in the 
broader discussion of envi- 
ronmental issues. 


The First Human 

Tuesday, 4/25, 7:00 p.m. 

Ann Gibbons will talk about 

the race to find the “missing 
link” and her book, The First 

Human: The Race to Discover 
Our Earliest Ancestors. 


Old women chatting 


The 2006 Mack Lipkin Man 
and Nature Lecture: 
Biodiversity and the Evolu- 
tionary Roots of Beauty 
Thursday, 4/27, 7:00 p.m. 
Renowned ecologist Gordon 
Orians delves into the intri- 
cate relationship between 
humans and nature. 


FIELD TRIPS & WORKSHOPS 
Spring Bird Walks 

in Central Park 

Four series of eight weekly 
walks begin Tuesday, April 4. 
With naturalists Stephen C. 
Quinn, Joseph DiConstanzo, 
and Harold Feinberg. 


Animal Drawing 

Eight Thursdays, 4/6-5/25 
7:00-9:00 p.m. 

Learn about the gifted artists 
who created the world-class 
dioramas as you sketch sub- 
jects in their “natural” environ- 
ments with Stephen C. Quinn. 


FAMILY AND 
CHILDREN’S PROGRAMS 
Science in the Galapagos: 
Bird Adaptations 

Sunday, 4/2, 11:00 a.m.— 

12:00 noon and 1:00-2:00 p.m. 
(Ages 5-7, each child with 

one adult) 

Join science educator Amy 
O'Donnell for an introduction 


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www.amnh.org 


to some of the plants and ani- 
mals of the Galapagos. 


Observing Worms 

Sunday, 4/30, 11:00 a.m.— 
12:30 p.m. 

In this hands-on workshop 
with Museum biologist Eliza- 
beth Nichols, observe live 
worms and learn how they 
transform the soil. 


New! Cosmic Collisions 
Wednesday, 4/5, 4:00-5:30 p.m. 
See the new Space Show, 
Cosmic Collisions, and follow 
up with an in-depth work- 
shop exploring the science 
behind the show. 


New! Cosmic Splat! 


Sunday, 4/9, 11:00 a.m.— 

12:30 p.m. (Ages 4-5, each child 
with one adult) and 1:30- 

3:00 p.m. (Ages 6-7, each child 
with one adult) 

In this hands-on workshop, ex- 
plore the forces that drive the 
universe. 


Space Explorers: Behind the 
Scenes of Cosmic Collisions 
Tuesday, 4/11, 4:30-5:30 p.m. 
(Ages 10 and up) 


STARRY NIGHTS 
Live Jazz 


ROSE CENTER FOR EARTH 
AND SPACE 
6:00 and 7:30 p.m. 
Friday, April 7 
HoJos 


The 7:30 p.m. set will be broadcast 
live on WBGO Jazz 88.3 FM. 


Starry Nights is made possible, in part, 
by Constellation NewEnergy 
and Fidelity Investments. 


HNWYV 


Artist’s conception of the formation of our Moon 
from the new Space Show Cosmic Collisions 


On the second Tuesday of 
each month, kids (and their 
parents) can learn under 
the stars of the Hayden 
Planetarium. 


Dr. Nebula’s Laboratory: 
Wind and Water 

Sunday, 4/23, 2:00-3:00 p.m. 
A storm is brewing in Dr. 
Nebula’s lab! Join Scooter 
for a whirlwind adventure as 
she dodges tornadoes and 
other forces of nature. 


AMNH SPRING CAMPS 
Monday-Friday, 4/17-4/21 
9:00 a.M.—4:00 p.m. 


New! Meet the Beetles: 
Darwin Adventures 
(For 2nd and 3rd graders) 


Destination Space: 
Stars and Light 
(For 4th and 5th graders) 


HAYDEN PLANETARIUM 
PROGRAMS 

TUESDAYS IN THE DOME 
Virtual Universe 

Out of This Galaxy 

Tuesday, 4/4, 6:30-7:30 p.m. 


This Just In... 
April’s Hot Topics 
Tuesday, 4/18, 6:30-7:30 p.m. 


Become a Member of the 
American Museum of Natural History 


As a Museum Member, you will be among the first to 
embark on new journeys to explore the natural world 
and the cultures of humanity. You'll enjoy: 


* Unlimited free general 


admission to the Museum 


and special exhibitions, 
and discounts on Space 
Shows and IMAX films 


e Discounts in the Museum 
Shops and restaurants and 


on program tickets 


¢ Free subscription 
to Natural History 
magazine and to Rotunda, 
our newsletter 


¢ Invitations to Members- 
only special events, 
parties, and exhibition 
previews 


For further information, call 212-769-5606 
or visit www.amnh.org/join. 


Celestial Highlights 
Of Myths and Maps 
Tuesday, 4/25, 6:30-7:30 p.m. 


HAYDEN PLANETARIUM 
SHOWS 

Cosmic Collisions 

Journey into deep space— 
well beyond the calm face 
of the night sky—to explore 
cosmic collisions, hyper- 
sonic impacts that drive 
the dynamic formation of 
our universe. Narrated by 
Robert Redford. 


Cosmic Collisions was developed in col- 
laboration with the Denver Museum of 
Nature & Science; GOTO, Inc., Tokyo, 
Japan; and the Shanghai Science and 
Technology Museum. 

Made possible through the generous 
support of CIT. 

Cosmic Collisions was created by the 


INFORMATION 


American Museum of Natural History 
with the major support and partnership 
of the National Aeronautics and Space 
Administration’s Science Mission Direc- 
torate, Heliophysics Division 


Sonic Vision 

Fridays and Saturdays, 

7:30 and 8:30 p.m. 

Hypnotic visuals and rhythms 
take viewers on a ride through 
fantastical dreamspace. 


SonicVision is made possible by generous 
sponsorship and technology support from 
Sun Microsystems, Inc 


LARGE-FORMAT FILMS 
LeFrak IMAX Theater 
Galapagos explores the 
unique fauna of the islands 
and the surrounding sea. 


IMAX films at the Museum are made 
possible by Con Edison. 


Call 212-769-5100 or visit www.amnh.org. 


TICKETS AND REGISTRATION 

Call 212-769-5200, Monday-Friday, 9:00 a.m.—5:00 p.m., 
or visit www.amnh.org. A service charge may apply. 

All programs are subject to change. 


AMNH eNotes delivers the latest information on Museum 
programs and events to you monthly via email. Visit 
www.amnh.org to sign up today! 


Darwin’s Voyage of Discovery 


This intricately detailed model of 
the HMS Beagle, the ship on which 
Charles Darwin made his famous 
voyage to the Galapagos Islands, 
is made from a variety of exotic 
woods and is displayed with a 
handsome brass nameplate. 
Captains Line 32" 


THE MUSEUM 


SHOPS 


80 


Wild Przewalski’s horses graze in the exclusion zone around Chernobyl. 


wenty years ago, on April 26, 

1986, a reactor at the Cher- 

nobyl nuclear power station 
exploded and burned, spewing radia- 
tion around the globe and blanketing 
large swaths of what was then the 
Soviet Union with heavy contami- 
nation. Ever since that day, the word 
“Chernobyl” has become a synonym 
for “horrific disaster,’ conjuring the 
lifeless radioactive deserts of Atomic 
Age sci fi. 

Whenever I thought about the 
irradiated land fifty miles north of 
Kiev, it always seemed the last place 
on Earth to go for the study of nat- 
ural history. Natural history is about 
life—what plants and animals do. But 
wouldn’t a search for life in such a 
dead zone be, at best, oxymoronic? 
Surely, one would do better studying 
the natural history of a parking lot. 

What I found at Chernoby] instead 
was an astonishing new ecosystem 
that defied my gloomy imaginings. 
The evacuation of more than 300,000 
people from an “exclusion zone” 
surrounding the reactor was a trau- 
matic interruption of their lives. But 
the ban on human habitation and 
activities has enabled an area of 1,800 
square miles—almost double the size 
of Rhode Island, or half a Yellowstone 
Park—to come back to life. Today 
Chernobyl] is Europe’s largest nature 
sanctuary, with rebounding popula- 
tions of deer, moose, and wild boar. 

During more than twenty visits to 
the zone, I’ve seen wolves in broad 
daylight, heard the call of an endan- 
gered lynx at nightfall, and spent 
hours communing with a herd of 
rare Przewalski’s horses that were 
experimentally released into the wild 


NATURAL HISTORY April 2006 


ENDPAPER 
eee 


Chernobyl 


Paradox 


By Mary Mycio 


there. Like their habitat, they are 
radioactive—cesium-137 packs into 
their muscles and strontium-90 into 
their bones. But to nearly everyone’s 
surprise, they are also thriving. 


he international border between 

Belarus and Ukraine cuts the ex- 
clusion zone into two roughly equal 
regions, but the border is meaningless 
to wildlife. When a lone brown bear 
(one of the few species not to have 
made a Chernobyl comeback) wan- 
dered from one region to another, the 
Ukrainians thought it came from 
Belarus, and the Belarusians thought 
it came from Ukraine. As for the bear, 
it disappeared, with no hint of its ori- 
gins or clue to its destination. 

Of course, birds, too, are indiffer- 
ent to borders. In February migrating 
swans infected with avian flu virus 
arrived in western Europe from an 
unusually frigid Ukraine and Russia. 
But birds are not indifferent when it 
comes to choosing between places 
where people live and places where 
they don’t. As many as 280 species of 
birds have appeared around Cherno- 
byl, including such rare species as 
black storks and aquatic warblers. 

Birds that nest in places highly 
contaminated with strontium-90 can 
suffer. The isotope mimics calcium 
and accumulates in eggshells, bom- 


barding embryos with beta particles. 
Some species, such as barn swallows, 
have depressed fertility. But for now, 
at least, the benefits of the human- 
free habitat seem to outweigh the 
untoward effects of radiation. 

My most memorable encounter 
with Chernobyl birds was in Belarus, 
which is restoring some peat mires 
that the Soviet Union drained for 
farming. The area is one of the most 
contaminated places in the country— 
and on the planet. But the contami- 
nation is mostly cesium-137, which 
doesn’t accumulate in eggshells, rather 
than strontium-90, which does. 

When my guide and I arrived, 
dozens of black storks pierced the air 
above our van with their red beaks. 
Thousands of ducks took off in a 
tornadolike cloud. A blur of mute 
swans, grey herons, and great white 
egrets flew deep into the reflooded 
peat mires. 

“Tt’s so beautiful,” I murmured. 

“And radioactive,’ said my guide. 

“Tf it weren't radioactive,’ I 
replied, “it would be a farm, and 
there would be no birds.” 

It is Chernobyl’s most profound 
paradox. The worst nuclear disaster 
in history wreaked havoc with 
people’s lives and rendered a vast 
territory uninhabitable. 

But in the absence of humans, 
Chernobyl’s wildlife is not just doing 
fine. It is flourishing, beautiful—and 
radioactive. 


Mary Mycrio is an American writer living 
and working in Ukraine. She is the author of 
Wormwood Forest: A Natural History of 
Chernobyl (Joseph Henry Press, 2005). Visit 
www.chernobyl.in.ua to view a gallery of 
photographs and read excerpts from her book. 


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