Number 85 - To see a tree asmiling.

Interesting in that it is so common. Going to click now.

Great clickkkkkkking!!!

Diversity Takes Time

Andrew M. Sugden


CREDIT: DAN MOEN
Like many groups of organisms in the Amazonian tropical rainforest, hylid tree frogs show very high diversity. Moreover, there is strong variation in local diversity, with some localities and regions having much higher density of species than others. Wiens et al. take a phylogenetic approach to the question of the cause of this local variation. Their analysis indicates that there is little or no relationship between variation in local species richness and climate variables such as temperature and precipitation. Nor are the rates of diversification or morphological variation correlated with local richness. Instead, diversity is related to the length of time that hylids have occupied a region. Even though diversification rates slow down when multiple clades occupy a region, species nonetheless continue to accumulate with the length of time that the region has been occupied: The highest diversity occurs where the largest number of clades have coexisted for longest.
Ecol. Lett. 14, 10.1111/j.1461-0248.2011.01625.x (2011

That must mean that the hylids have been there a very long time. Thanks.

Thanks for posting this, Stradee - this is my quarterly visit to this thread and am always glad to see you all, esp. on this day Danon and any other vets who may be reading this. It doesn't detract from their dues to mention the military doggies, less glory there perhaps but just as much bravery; this is Susie >

http://abcnews.go.com/US/slideshow/military-dog-adoptions-soar-osama-bin-laden-mission-13535860
> the dog, with her human, Cpl. Hunter Woolf, in Afghanistan earlier this month. Susie knows where the camera is, the human was otherwise engaged

High Seas, Stradee and sumac. Hope your weekend was grand.

Our company pet dog in Vietnam was named Susie. Had been a guard dog and was wounded so we took her in and she became the entire companies pet.

Thanks for the clicks - another tree asmiling today for sure.

Eons ago - seems that way in human years, not dog years - you had mentioned your Susie somewhere, and I remembered. Wishing you a grand weekend too!

Still clicking.

Haven't been by for a while.

Had to come today to give my props to Danon.

Thanks HS -- wow, what a memory. Mine's going south fast these days. I didn't dare tell my Patti, but two days ago I went to the pharmacy to get her meds and when asked her name --- I couldn't remember. That's bad.

EBETH!!!! I thought you had melted from the heat or been washed away by a flood. Thanks for still clicking. We Wildclickers actually do save a tree per day. And they are asmiling.!!!

There's no way you could have forgotten Patti's name and still been able to remember how to get to the pharmacy, so this sudden blank in your mind can't be memory loss - stress can cause that too and probably did in this case. Sometimes I wish I didn't have perfect recall, some things are best forgotten

HS, You may be correct. I recently diagnosed myself with having depression. Went to my Dr. - told him - and he simply said he had seen this coming for the last five years. So, I now am on antidepressant meds. I've found depression in males is a very dangerous thing.

Thanks for clicking..

Your doctor sounds like a good guy - I also had the same idea about you ever since you stopped renewing your licence (can you still pass the physical? you know you'll have to stop the pills, but flying may cure the depression - plus Texas is full of airports, I'm sure you can cut a deal with someone who has a plane now) but I didn't want to say anything since nobody asked for my opinion (not that this usually stops me from giving it, but you're a friend). If Patti can manage on her own for a few hours a week, she'll be glad to send you off to the nearest airfield. Well, hope that idea works out; please come here and post updates, you know you have many interested readers, even though some of us don't write a whole lot, or not very often

HS - the license is permanent - the physical is not. I know I can't pass one these days - I can barely hear with my right ear and the left is operating at about 2/3ds. Don't need glasses yet but the blood pressure goes off the scale if I don't take the meds. I'm pushing 70 now and have many thousands of hours in the air so don't miss it all that much. I soloed right here in Atlanta, TX and still have my shirt-tail signed by the man who took me under his wing (in a 1946 Taylor Craft). When younger - in my 50's - I thought of building a replica of a Deperdussin - the first airplane in the world to exceed 100 mph. But that went by the wayside. It would have been fun to do that. I have an Airframe and Powerplant mechanics license so it would have been safe. Ahh, well.
Thanks for thinking of us and clicking.

Checking in.

Easing my way back into my seat in the niche in the corner in the dark in the back.

Your seat here was always saved, ehBeth. I almost lost it one day when a little old lady tried to take it - I had to arm wrestle her. Lost the arm wrestle, but sat and convinced her that there was a better seat up front. She took the up front seat. Whew!!!

Great to see you ehBeth, and Stradee and High Seas. Will go click now. Have something interesting to post.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/02/business/global/02fracking.html?_r=1&nl=afternoonupdate&emc=aua22&pagewanted=print

June 1, 2011

U.K. Company Suspends Controversial Drilling Procedure

By DAVID JOLLY
PARIS — A British company said Wednesday that it would temporarily halt the use of a controversial gas exploration technology after indications that it might have set off two small earthquakes near a test well in Lancashire, England.

The company, Cuadrilla Resources, which is exploring for gas in shale formations deep underground, said it would postpone hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, operations at the Preese Hall site near Weeton.

“We take our responsibilities very seriously,” Mark Miller, the chief executive of Cuadrilla, said in a statement, “and that is why we have stopped fracking operations, to share information and consult with the relevant authorities and other experts.”

Fracking is a procedure in which water, chemicals and sand are injected deep underground to free oil or gas trapped in dense shale formations.

The technology is widely used in the United States, where it has contributed to a boom in natural gas production. It has been criticized because the fracking chemicals are believed to have the potential to contaminate groundwater.

“We have discussed this with Cuadrilla and agreed that a pause in operations is appropriate so that a better understanding can be gained of the cause of the seismic events,” the British Department of Energy and Climate Change said in a statement.

Experts from the British Geological Survey, the government and Keele University are examining the data, “and we will need to consider the findings into the cause of the event,” the department said.

The halt was called after the British Geological Survey recorded an earthquake early on May 27 at a de

Fascinating, utterly fascinating.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/02/world/asia/02water.html?nl=todaysheadlines&emc=tha22

June 1, 2011
Plan for China’s Water Crisis Spurs Concern
By EDWARD WONG
DANJIANGKOU, China — North China is dying.

A chronic drought is ravaging farmland. The Gobi Desert is inching south. The Yellow River, the so-called birthplace of Chinese civilization, is so polluted it can no longer supply drinking water. The rapid growth of megacities — 22 million people in Beijing and 12 million in Tianjin alone — has drained underground aquifers that took millenniums to fill.

Not atypically, the Chinese government has a grand and expensive solution: Divert at least six trillion gallons of water each year hundreds of miles from the other great Chinese river, the Yangtze, to slake the thirst of the north China plain and its 440 million people.

The engineering feat, called the South-North Water Diversion Project, is China’s most ambitious attempt to subjugate nature. It would be like channeling water from the Mississippi River to meet the drinking needs of Boston, New York and Washington. Its $62 billion price tag is twice that of the Three Gorges Dam, which is the world’s largest hydroelectric project. And not unlike that project, which Chinese officials last month admitted had “urgent problems,” the water diversion scheme is increasingly mired in concerns about its cost, its environmental impact and the sacrifices poor people in the provinces are told to make for those in richer cities.

Three artificial channels from the Yangtze would transport precious water from the south, which itself is increasingly afflicted by droughts; the region is suffering its worst one in 50 years. The project’s human cost is staggering — along the middle route, which starts here in Hubei Province at a gigantic reservoir and snakes 800 miles to Beijing, about 350,000 villagers are being relocated to make way for the canal. Many are being resettled far from their homes and given low-grade farmland; in Hubei, thousands of people have been moved to the grounds of a former prison.

“Look at this dead yellow earth,” said Li Jiaying, 67, a hunched woman hobbling to her new concrete home clutching a sickle and a bundle of dry st

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/02/science/earth/02jellyfish.html?nl=todaysheadlines&emc=tha23

June 1, 2011
Small but Innumerable, Jellyfish Storm a Beach
By LIZETTE ALVAREZ
COCOA BEACH, Fla. — They swarmed the beach, taking control of prime holiday sand and surf like a group of marauding spring breakers. Then, just like that, they vanished, leaving behind the damage: spoiled vacations, red welts, heaps of annoyance, discarded containers of vinegar and Benadryl and a crew of exhausted lifeguards.

A flotilla of mauve stingers, a kind of jellyfish that summers mostly in the Mediterranean, staked a claim on 10 miles of beach here and stayed through Memorial Day weekend, finally pulling out of town on Wednesday. The stingers — reddish and small, some no bigger than a golf ball — coated just about every inch of these beaches, sending a steady stream of screeching beachgoers to the lifeguard stations, despite warnings to steer clear. Lifeguards treated 1,800 people for jellyfish stings last week. A few were sent to hospitals after suffering allergic reactions.

“It was by far the most jellyfish we have ever seen; you couldn’t even walk down the beach without being stung,” said Jeff Scabarozi, 30, the ocean rescue chief here. “People came out screaming and hollering that they had been stung. We haven’t seen these jellyfish ever. We had to Google it.”

Suddenly, surfers were donning full wetsuits in 79 degree surf. Tourists struggled to build sand castles with dry sand because the jellyfish had taken control of the wet sand. Convenience stories and pharmacies ran full out of Benadryl cream, which is used to neutralize the sting, along with vinegar.

Lifeguards warned people to stay out of the water and avoid the wet sand where the jellyfish, which are plastered with stingers and have long tentacles, stood guard; a vast majority of beachgoers, including many who were in town waiting to leave on cruises, heeded the advice. But, with the sweltering weather and the cool surf beckoning only steps away, a few vacationers were intent on getting their money’s worth.

“We can’t tell people not to go in the water,” Mr. Scabarozi said regretfully. “So