“Bullets, Bombs and Butterflies,” article in Wildlife in North Carolina

Last summer, I followed around a North Carolina State University PhD student in the woods of Fort Bragg as he monitored amphibians at ephemeral ponds. That adventure turned into this story about imperiled Carlona gopher frogs. But another story was waiting in the wings, as it were. His advisor, Nick Haddad of NC State, was working on helping other small creatures on the base. It turns out that Fort Bragg is home to the only known populations of St. Francis’ satyrs in the world. They are a sub-species of the Mitchell’s satyr, and were once thought to be extinct in the wild.

Soldiers at Fort Bragg practice exploding munitions in artillery impact zones within the base. Smalls-arms fire practice takes place in firing ranges that ring the larger artillery impact zones. Native wildlife love these zones, and this is where populations of St. Francis’ satyr was found. Haddad and Brian Ball, an endangered species biologist at Fort Bragg, believe that fires sparked in these zones mimic the native fire regimes of old, and maintain small populations of once-widespread native species.

You can read the full story on this butterfly here. (Best read in “two-pages continuous” mode in your PDF viewer.)

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Saving Ethiopia’s “Church Forests”

Aerial view of a church forest, also called coptic forest, in Ethiopia. (Google Earth)

An article I researched and wrote for the PLoS Blogs network about Ethiopia’s coptic forests published a few days ago. It starts like this:

In America, some fundamental Christians believe that man has a God-given right to use the earth and all its resources to meet their needs. After all, Genesis says so. But across the Atlantic, a different attitude prevails among followers in Ethiopia, which has the longest continuous tradition of Christianity of any African country. Followers of the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahido Churches believe they should maintain a home for all of God’s creatures around their places of worship. The result? Forests ringing churches.

Read the whole piece here.

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“Doctor Bugs” visits the Triangle

{NOTE: This post was written for Science in the Triangle, a regional science blog that I occasionally contribute to.}

Cover of the Adventures Among Ants, by Dr. Mark W. Moffett.

Not many scientists beg perfect strangers to eat the species they study. But that’s just what “Doctor Bugs” did when visiting tourist-magnet ruins in Cambodia. Dr. Mark W. Moffett proffered a dish of scrumptious crackers topped with herbs and, um, plump ant larvae to passersby — at times literally pleading with them to try it. It’s just one of the ways the world-famed ant researcher gets people to stop and notice the trillions of ants that share our world.

Moffett’s comedic showman personality was on display in full force on Tuesday night as he entertained an auditorium full of people at the N.C. Museum of Natural Sciences with stories about ants. And boy does he have stories. There’s the time he snaked a small camera attached to a long cable into a nest of weaver ants, capturing engaging footage of the ants at work… the camera pushed farther and farther past hundreds of ants, until ants swarmed the other end of the cable and overran him. The footage ended abruptly with audio of Moffett yelping in pain. Then there’s the time he stepped barefoot on a pair of ant forceps in his camp and spent the day worrying he’d been bitten by a poisonous snake, a fair concern considering there was a nest within a foot of his hammock. And let’s not forget the time he actually did sit on the world’s most poisonous snake in South America, too engrossed with photographing ants to notice.”If you must sit on a poisonous snake, sit closest to their head,” Moffett deadpanned to the crowd. “It’s the best way. It’s the only way.” 

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