The Alaka`i Swamp on the island of Kaua`i is not easy to get to. It used to be you could drive any rental car to the head of the Pihea trail and from there be quickly on your way into the swamp, but more often than not now the last mile or so of the road is closed due to potholes and persistent underfunding of the Hawai`i state parks system.

But in any case, the hike in is quicker from the Alaka`i Trail head. The 3-mile drive there, though, is not for the faint of heart these days. I was lucky; I began my research there in 1998, in the midst of a 4-5 year dry spell during which the road had just been graded; this may happen only every decade or so, probably whenever a bit of money can be freed up to do the work. By my last summer in the swamp in 2002, it was wet again, and the choice in many places was between trenching through foot-deep ruts or skating along the slick edges, while gunning the engine to get uphill, and beyond a steep drop-off to the deep canyon below.

From the trail head it is about a half mile until the beginning of the boardwalk. The boardwalk, built around 15 years ago, is a huge boon to hikers and researchers alike, and has helped protect a fragile ecosystem from constant erosion and trampling. The plants along this first part of the trail, including alien eucalyptus, fire trees, and the beginning thickets of strawberry guavas, are likely foreshadowing the future of the swamp; each time you return you notice the aliens have encroached a bit farther in. It's not just plants; it was a shock for me to discover ants in the swamp in 2002, never having before seen them in all the long days I worked there. (There are no native Hawaiian ants, but 40+ alien species have arrived on the islands, mostly via the horticulture trade.)

Finally, as you leave the edge of the boardwalk behind and march deeper into the Alaka`i Swamp, most of the alien plants melt away, and you are transported into a wonderland of island biogeography. Islands tend to have unique native flora and fauna, with many endemic species (occurring nowhere else). The farther the island from a continental land mass, from which species have naturally invaded over the millenia, the fewer the number of common ancestors that the island's species have. In taxonomic terms, this means you can end up with hundreds or even thousands of species within a single genus, as the descendents of a single common ancestor -- the seed washing up from the ocean, blown on the wind or stuck to a bird; the gravid female moth or ballooning spider blown off course for a thousand miles -- diversify rapidly (in geological time) to fill a whole new land of empty ecological niches. At the same time, whole taxonomic families of plants, insects, and birds do not exist in the islands, because serendipity did not bring them here.

This results in the unique jungle you pass through along the boardwalk, with one of the richest native plant assemblages remaining in the islands. The invaders are working their way in, though. To a local ecologist, the tangles of thorny blackberry plants and the sweet August aromas of kahili ginger blooms jar the senses, and turn the stomach. These don't belong here. They come from places distant enough that they could not have arrived by any method other than active human husbandry. But the blackberry is reaching farther and farther from the trails, its thorny branches and leaves standing out. No Hawaiian natives have thorns, including a native blackberry that supposedly occurs in the swamp, but that I have never seen in the wild. No native herbivorous mammals means no need for thorns; the imported pigs and deer here find the native plants quite succulent, and eschew the aliens with their defenses in place.

The ginger starts in a thick clump and spreads from there, quickly dominating light gaps before the slower native plants can gain a foothold. Despite the ecological damage this plant is doing, several species species of ginger are still sold as ornamentals. Apparently the profits of the horticulturists are more precious to Hawai`i's government than an ecosystem being slowly wiped forever off the face of the earth.

But these are the only two plants to gain a strong foothold in the swamp so far. Why? Is it because of the conditions here, which at times are decidedly untropical? On a winter day, the temperature can range from freezing to over seventy degrees farenheit; in summer the highs are much higher, the sun scorching at this altitude when the clouds have dissipated. The rainfall here is upwards of twenty feet a year. Rather than a true swamp, it is really a cloud forest, with most water provided in a constant dripping of condensation off the leaves, as opposed to torrential downpours.

Ohi`a, the dominant native plant, thrives under these conditions. It also thrives along the new lava flows of the kona coast of the Big Island, where barely a plant has yet gained traction, fresh water is only an occasional visitor, and the hard black lava radiates hundred-degree heat back on the trees from below. But you might suspect that a mutual transplant experiment would not work. The coastal Big Island ohi`a and the high-altitude Kaua`i ohi`a are two of dozens of subspecies of this plant classified within a mere three species, and they have clearly adapted to local conditions. But Hawaiian plants do not lend themselves easily to human-imposed Linnaean classification. The word "species" itself is completely inadequate to describe the multitudinous forms of life that occur in the world only on these islands.


To be continued...

Labels: environment, evolution, Hawaii, invasive species

Visiopoetics has a brilliant solution to the starving artist problem. If only it were set to music, it would be the quintessential Biotune.

Labels: art, brain

Apparently the internet age has been around long enough now for psychologists and neurologists to study behavior [subscription req'd] associated with our relatively recent and speedy forms of communication. This is a realm in which the part of our behavior designed to guide us through complex social interactions is being short-circuited - hence, flame wars.

Why? The explanation is at least partly contained in the review paper: J. S. Beer and K. N. Ochsner, 2006. Social cognition: A multi level analysis. BRAIN RESEARCH 1079:98-105.

Successful social interactions depend on a constant flow of information between the people interacting. My interpretation of the thoughts and emotions of a person I am talking to immediately affects not only what I say to that person, but the words I choose to say it, and my body language as well. But it is more complex than that - my interaction with the person is also dependent on a multitude of biases I bring to the conversation, including the memory of past events associated with that person, my opinion of the person based on what others have told me, and expectations based on my internal "golden rule," which basically is saying to me, "this is how I would react to what I am saying, so this person will react that way too."

There are two major reasons that the internet affects this interaction, the first of which is explained in the article. Without getting any feedback from a person about how what we are saying affects them, there is no external mechanism filtering what we say. I think it is safe to say that an average person feels reluctance to hurt another person's feelings, if these people are interacting face-to-face. We don't feel that same reluctance over the wires, because we don't have to see that person react. When we have no direct perception of the impact we make, our 'mirror neurons' are not going to be firing. These neurons connect our interpretation of another person's emotions with our own emotional center; i.e. they give us empathy, which is exactly what allows us to be successful as a social species. (More on empathy is discussed in a previous post, and look for more in future posts - the biology of sociality is one of my big interests, and in humans, empathy plays a huge role.)

The second reason the internet age has accelerated problems in social interaction is that it allows people from cultures all over the world to interact to an unprecedented degree. Interactions between people with different cultural behavioral norms will often cause problems when those interacting fail to acknowledge the conflicting cultural norms involved. Frankly, this happens all the time, I believe because humans naturally identify with a particular culture, so that we can properly navigate within that culture. Our brains seem to be designed to mimic the perceived cultural norms during development. Just watch how your kids imitate you, other adults, and other kids - which these days can be a real headache for parents because of the cultural mixing we have in many places, which is again due to accelerating technology, in this case, ease of transportation. I'm guessing that this same problem has a role in some incidents of road rage and other spontaneous acts of violence between otherwise average citizens. This is also one of many reasons there will never be an end to war, at the same time that most people honestly do seem to get along fine with people they know face-to-face. That is not wussy liberal mumbo-jumbo. It's simply biology.

The situation is not helped by every-day situations that encourage anti-social behavior. For example, most frequent flyers and users of health insurance know that the squeaky wheel gets the grease - the business model in some industries is clearly only to help people that literally scream the loudest, because the alternative would be to help everyone, and that would just be too expensive. And certainly Michelle Malkin knows exactly what she's doing when she writes her over-the-top posts: those that thwart societal norms of polite interaction are identified and vilified publicly by the group they offend, which translates into the well known marketing adage: There is no such thing as bad publicity. (Those that support the Malkins of the world of course are those that either offend to the same degree, or would if they didn't feel so hampered by polite social discourse.)

Of course, as discourse becomes ever more vitriolic (doesn't every generation say that?), you have to be that much more offensive to get attention. Praise Allah that we have the blogosphere to air our increasingly outrageous grievances with others. And people ask why the country (and the world?) has gotten more partisan and petty? Instead of cultural mixing, both physical and virtual, leading to a better understanding of others' points of view, it seems it gives us more opportunities to designate "us" vs. "them," whether one is talking about race, religion, politics, etc. It appears to be human nature to circle the wagons in order to protect the home group from "other" - the consequences of this behavior simply have become more global with time.

When will they ever learn? Never.

Labels: behavior, empathy, humans, sociality

Man, some people know how to sell books. I bet Susan Patron, author of "The Higher Power of Lucky," knew exactly what she was doing. What a bonus though, to receive the Newbery award. Gotta love it - a real slap in the face for the book burners out there.

Of course this is about biology! It is about how a minority (fortunately) of repressed, uptight, (very likely) wankers think that it is inappropriate for kids to hear the names of certain body parts. This is why the rest of the developed world views Americans as completely whacked when it comes to sex (do Americans realize that "Sex in the City" is broadcast unedited by the BBC?). On the one hand, sex is used to sell everything here from beer to cleaning products to car engine parts, and many a jihadist out there is fighting the good fight because Americans are so promiscuous; on the other, we aren't actually supposed to use any word that might be associated with sex. After all, although it is very important to God that we procreate, it seems to be more important that we aren't actually enjoying it. Because sex is evil, and we know well from experience that hiding it from kids is a foolproof method for sex prevention - a goal much more important, apparently, than unwanted-child prevention.

We have to protect our kids! So we must order the schools to hide books from them! These words almost always come out of the same mouths that demand complete parental control over everything their kids are 'exposed' to - as if that is going to happen without a sensory deprivation chamber. One of these lovely folks, Rick Jore, is currently the chair of the Montana House Education committee, and just proposed a bill to repeal all mandatory education laws.

But if we work tirelessly to ban those books by liberal scum, it just might be possible to get our kids through life without hearing the word 'scrotum.' With any luck, they will instead use a much more appropriate term, such as from this list of examples so eloquently provided by a fine writer, Eric Lubell:

...sack of Rome, the family jewels, knackers, nads, egg thieves, goolies,
dingleberries, kiwis, coconuts, fuzzy dice, Balzac, fruit stand,
wrinklies, hobgoblins, yikies, hangers, danglers, cobblers, genubies,
jumblies, doorbells, Santa's Little Helpers, berries, nadgers, scrots,
ding-dang-dongs, willy nillys, sumptuaries, Quakers, pinguids,
rutabagas, city cats, glim-jacks, whim-whams, jollies, stuffata,
shallow curiosities, northern liberties, and carnescent massives...

Which is much better than an educated understanding of actual human biology.

Labels: brain, scrotum

I decided a good weekly column would be a post about one of the cool insects I have known during my career.

My first featured bug will be a species of honeypot ant from the southwestern deserts, Myrmecocystus mexicanus.

This is a fun species to mess with because they are the most nocturnal ants I've ever seen. Some other species are nocturnal, but you sometimes see them during the day; others you find at night but they can be easily observed with a flashlight. M. mexicanus, however, is completely anti-phototaxic - the second a light is shone on workers, they run away from it. This provides a cool effect when you go out at night an locate a nest, which is very distinctive. When you shine a flashlight on the nest, you see a lot of ants hanging around on the surface that immediately go down the hole, as if they were being slowly sucked. Turn off the light a minute, then turn it back on, and you can repeat the process. Kinda mean to do over and over, I guess, but this is serious minutes of entertainment.

I got to know these ants while working as a field assistant on a grad student's project. The grad and I mused that it would be great fun to design different types of ant furniture, including an M. mexicanus lamp. The colony could be contained in a hollow lamp, which they could crawl around on but not off (there are handy materials for keeping ants contained). When you turned on the light at night, they would all quietly slip back into the lamp, which would then be ant-free in a couple seconds. Hmm, maybe not a huge money-maker, but it could definitely be marketed to entomologists...

The cool thing about honeypot ants in general (i.e., several species in the genus Myrmecocystus) is that they use some workers, called replete workers, as storage vessels. This is a great way to get through the dry season in a desert. They in turn become famine food for larger animals, including humans - the abdomens are quite sweet and tasty. Some people with captive colonies feed the ants specific foods to get a good flavor in the replete workers. Molasses is supposed to be a good one.

There are several more pictures of the M. mexicanus here.

Labels: ants, biodiversity, cool bugs, ecology, insects

A reader sent me to this website for Healing Music Enterprises, which means I can have two whole posts in a row dealing with music and biology. I decided to delve into a little light reading of the relevant scientific literature.

A search on "music AND health" in Web of Science yielded 306 hits. Most of these were not actually on this specific topic, but I did skim a few review papers:

Hilliard, 2005. Music Therapy in Hospice and Palliative Care: a Review of the Empirical Data. eCAM 2:173-178.

Daykin et al., 2006. Music and healing in cancer care: A survey of supportive care providers. The Arts in Psychotherapy 33:402-413.

Pothoulaki et al., 2006. Methodological issues in music interventions in oncology settings: A systematic literature review. The Arts in Psychotherapy 33:446-455.

I personally was amazed to find a whole journal (The Arts in Psychotherapy) devoted to this topic. But, given the proliferation of narrowly focused journals in recent years, I suppose it isn't really that surprising. What was also not surprising to me was how little these papers had to say. As I have aluded to before, the bar is set very low for medical studies, but apparently for "arts in psychotherapy" there isn't a bar at all. Most studies were apparently case studies, which have notoriously nonexistent scientific validity. Others had a lot of obvious biases. I would have been impressed by the ability of these authors to say absolutely nothing in 5-10 pages, but all the psychologists I know seem to be trained well in that skill.

The good news is that if you believe in this enough to fork it over to someone to tell you what music to listen to in order to make you feel better, you probably will feel better. It's not as if you can do a blind test, so people don't know they are receiving music therapy. This is called the placebo effect, and it also explains the multibillion-dollar supplement industry, which is delighted to take to the cleaners those of you who think there is a magic pill for perfect health and happiness. It's certainly an appealing idea. Throughout history, many a fortune has been made on patent medicines (in fact, I am a beneficiary of one myself, 4 generations removed). Most people probably don't make a connection between that and the current supplement boom, because snake oil salesmen are assumed to be a thing of the past, before we had all this science and technology to tell us the truth. But I believe the Age of Science has actually caused these industries to expand, multiply and go global, because one can always find or conduct weak or bogus but scientific-sounding 'studies' to support whatever claim one finds it convenient to promote. It is especially easy for a 'science' built on case studies - the favorite tool of shysters past.

The better news about music therapy is at least it presumably won't cause cardiac arrest, or double vision, or your innards to turn to goo (unless your music of choice is Kenny G, which I'm sure I read somewhere has been determined to cause massive brain hemorraging in rats). The same is not necessarily true of the hundreds of compounds pushed by the supplement industry.

But music seems to have more theraputic validity (perhaps because I'm a musician) than my absolute favorite "wellness" experience, Healing Touch. A club I was in while living in Hawai`i put on a health fair as a fundraiser once (several of our members were health professionals). One member got her Healing Touch crew together to give free "massages." When I got a chance I went over for my eagarly anticipated massage... and was greeted by several people humming and fluttering their hands around my body, a couple inches from the surface. It turned out there's not actually any "touch" involved, they just massage your aura or something. (If you are dying to know more, click the link above - there's a hootful of "testimonials.") I must admit now though that it did turn out to have some theraputic value to me after all, because I was ready to bust a gut laughing; the drawback was I was in serious danger of internal bleeding from holding it in. So weighing the pros and cons, it was probably too risky a procedure to undergo again. Next time I'll just try some Coltrane.

Labels: health, music

A reader has provided the poem below which encompasses the spirit of Biotunes better than I have done thus far. Music and biology do interact more often than most of us think about, and there will be more posts eventually to reflect this. For now, here are Michael Pettit's musings. Thank you, Michael.

MATINS So the seed falls when wind vibrates the stalk to just such a pitch, and it is music which reproduces these speechless grasses. This is dawn. Lola calling her cows in, frost on the fields melting as light brightens and the air warms one critical degree. Now, dew, thick over clover, alfalfa, green pastures from which rise, like bits of dreams, scattered white asters, cool blue chicory. This is dawn. Fog down in all the valleys the Kickapoo River twists through the hills, draws filled with fog, world emerging from fog. Shagbark hickories on the ridge take shape and shreds of clouds change color -- red, pink, gray. This is dawn. Lola calling her Holsteins, a lone man picking wildflowers and weeds, grasses packed with seeds waiting for the wind to rise, waiting for song to scatter them -- purple thistle, red clover, packed clusters of pink smartweed, flowering campion, tall long seedheads of sunlit timothy. Here. I've walked over the cold grass, my tracks a shadow from flower to flower, my hands full as I stand dumb in the dawn. Lola calling her cows. Old rituals at sunup, before the world goes silent and still and we wait for the wind to rise. Michael Pettit

Labels: nature, poetry

An article in today's NY Times about a Monsanto product exemplifies the shortsightedness of government policy with regard to genetically modified organisms (GMOs). Here's a snippet:

A federal judge in Washington said last week that the Agriculture Department had not done adequate assessments before approving field trials of genetically engineered grass. And last August a federal judge in Hawaii, in a case involving field trials of crops engineered to produce pharmaceuticals, ruled that the Agriculture Department had not adequately assessed the possible impact on endangered species.

No, I am not a rabid anti-GMO type at all. I'm just tired of the USDA existing to serve corporate interests. As a biologist studying ecological issues related to biological control of pests, I have a lot of experience with the U.S.D.A. and know many U.S.D.A. scientists, and so I know about a lot of stupid U.S.D.A. policy. Assuming the case was in Hawai`i because the crops were, it's a double whammy that they were introducing such an organism into a state with such a fragile environment.

U.S. government agencies have always had policies destructive to the environment, and often with questionable societal benefit - for example, until (I believe) 1979, your tax dollars were hard at work on the quest to introduce alien game animals from around the world. You'd honestly think, though, in this new century of increased environmental knowledge and general public awareness, that policies would make a little more sense. And undoubtedly the case is more complicated than presented in the article. But apparently the U.S.D.A. decided that the alfalfa in question was "harmless to people and livestock" and called it good. Huh? I'm certainly not assuming that all GMOs are harmful to the environment, and I think human health is not likely to be a problem with the great majority, but plants do commonly hybridize. To have no data on the conditions under which this plant might cross breed with un-modified alfalfa or (worse in my opinion) native legumes, and approve it anyway, is just another one of seemingly endless examples of government at least appearing to prioritize corporate interests ahead of long-term environmental stability.

Fortunately, even Monsanto seems to know when they have made a really bad decision. This article reminded me of when years ago, there was a lot of hype about Roundup-ready turfgrass being made available for use in those facilities of compelling national interest, golf courses. In the face of serious protest of their attempt to create a super weed (these grasses spread and hybridize with related species, albeit at low frequency), they actually backed off:

Superweed No Superstar
gone from hero to zero, as biotech firm Monsanto withdrew its proposal to commercially market the genetically engineered turfgrass. Turns out the product is resistant to the top-selling weedkiller Roundup, a brand also owned by Monsanto. The problem, according to the International Center for Technology, is that commercialization of the genetically engineered creeping bentgrass would be "an environmental nightmare." The CTA has petitioned the United States Department of Agriculture to federally prohibit the use of the grass and label it a "noxious weed." (Albright Seed Company, November 2002 newsletter)

Labels: environment, GMO, USDA

We have two male black and white cats (also known as tuxedo cats, or holsteins), shown here. The older one, Ippy, is well known in the neighborhood for playing with kids in the park a block away, and following people walking by our house to the grocery store across the park, waiting for them outside, and walking with them back to our house. Ippy was almost a year old when he adopted the younger, Tacaribe, without involving us in the decision (Tacaribe had two cameos on Tigerhawk soon after Ippy adopted him).

We had already discussed the interesting behavior of the black-and-white males with our vet, who told us that every single one she had run across had a very playful, mischievous and outgoing personality. She thinks it is much more pronounced in the males than the females. My husband's family had a black-and-white that was very similar to Ippy in his personality. He was people-centered rather than place-centered, which is uncommon in cats (a solitary species). For example, when they traveled and stopped in hotel for the night, they could put him out and he would come back to their room in the morning. We have come to the conclusion that the trait involved with such behavior is probably one that causes neoteny, or retention of juvenile (kitten) behavior in the adult.

This is not a particular breed of cat; Ippy and Taca have very different body types, and really only are similar in their coloring and spunky behavior. Looking in a big cat book at a book store once I noticed that many listed breeds had a black-and-white form, generally distinguished by a mostly black cat with white feet, chest/belly, and often forehead spot. For some reason, this behavior seems to be associated with this particular black-and-white coloring. Although this might seem a strange association, it is not unheard of. In Drosophila, the yellow gene, which is involved with the production of melanin (pigmentation) in the flies, also has neurological effects. Mutant males without the normal yellow gene have lower mating success than normal males, and there are apparently effects on larval foraging as well.

Behavioral neoteny in flies wouldn't really make much sense, because flies undergo complete metamorphosis - there wouldn't really be a way for an adult to act like a larva. But it is intriguing that there seems to be a similar connection between pigmentation and behavior in my cats.

Labels: behavior, cats, flies, genetics

Anyone who cared to peruse the links to the left around the Biotunes site would know that I have a particular fondness of ants. In fact, I consider them to be the pinnacle of evolution. Yep, newsflash for all you "evolution-must-mean-progress- because-look-at-humans" types out there - humans ain't at the tip.

Why are ants so ubiquitous and speciose, and probably found in more habitats on earth than any other family of organisms? (I made up that last part but it could easily be true - anyone out there know?) One good guess is eusociality. Most animal species are solitary, but some are social. There are several different levels of sociality, but the most evolutionarily derived form is eusociality, which means there is a complete division of labor among individuals in a colony. Henry Ford had it right - the most efficient way to produce something is through specialization of tasks necessary to reach the goal. In ants, the queen's only job is to lay eggs. The workers specialize on various tasks such as nest cleaning, larva rearing, foraging and protection of the nest. Many humans like to fool themselves that they are good multitaskers, but our brains say otherwise. Even we are more efficient when we focus on one task. But we aren't as efficient at producing more humans as ants are at producing more ants.


Although humans are not eusocial, we are social, and a lot of what we do is going to be affected by the basic biological need to fit in socially - no man is an island.
What is interesting to me is that we are in a current fad in which everyone wants to use gender as a construct to explain general social behavior. Probably that's because we seem to have hit a brick ceiling in terms of women's progress in various professions, and there seem to be a lot of people dying to explain it in terms of gender genetics (e.g., the infamous Larry Summers). But what if all these beloved "differences" between men and women were explained by sociality?

In every species, solitary and social, males and females obviously have different reproductive roles. But societies are more complex. In many mammal societies there are alpha (reproductive) males and females with other individuals filling other roles. Humans are even less social than that, because generally everyone has the chance to reproduce. Also in general, those that conform to cultural norms are more likely to reproduce. (Hence my argument in the last post that any genes associated with autism are likely to be spreading, because many people who do not conform to societal norms have found a way to make a pile of money, and therefore become more attractive as mates.) If you look at human cultures around the world, there are some things we have in common - music, language, stuff like that. But I think you could ask any anthropologist and find out that cultural norms are all over the place. For example, there are matriarchal societies, albeit less common than patriarchal (body size probably has an influence there - individuals are certainly limited in some ways by their biology). There are societies in which men dress up in fancy clothing, and women wear something dull. So it actually wouldn't make any sense for specific behavioral roles to be encoded in our genes.

What does make sense for social creatures such as ourselves is to absorb the rules for behavior in our culture early on in our development. I am forever astounded by the studies (or interpretations of studies) that claim that human male and female behavior is different genetically because they tested 2-year-olds. I have a 17-month-old who learns several new words a day. Every day of her life, she has heard the use of the pronouns "he" and "she" to refer to the different genders. Through the interactions of not only parents but any other adults or kids with her, she is told that she is a "she." What is a "she"? That is an idea she adds data to every day. It has something to do with clothes, something to do with speech, something to do with hair, something to do with body shape, etc. This is part of how she develops an idea of how she is supposed to fit in to her culture. I don't care how many studies are done on toddlers, I am convinced that kids from day 1 are developing an image of how someone like them fits into society. This is image is changing all the time, of course, because there is always new data to fit into their constructed idea of role and behavior.

So that's why I will always roll my eyes when some parent tells me that of course it's all genetic because their daughter loves dolls and their son loves trucks, and they never tell them what to play with, the kids just choose...

Labels: ants, brain, gender, sociality

A NY Times article summarizing current knowledge of the insula, a small interior lobe of the brain's cerebral cortex, was inspired by the recent finding of its connection to nicotine addiction, and never mentions the word "autism." But certain parts brought that word to my mind:

The frontal insula is where people sense love and hate, gratitude and resentment, self-confidence and embarrassment, trust and distrust, empathy and contempt, approval and disdain, pride and humiliation, truthfulness and deception, atonement and guilt.

People who are better at reading these sensations -- a quickened heart beat, a flushed face, slow breathing -- score higher on psychological tests of empathy, researchers have found.

Lack of empathy, of course, is one of the major symptoms of autism. The term "autism" seems generally to refer now to a continuum of conditions progressing toward lower and lower empathy with other humans, with the most extreme cases resulting in apparent complete withdrawl from the social world. There are also functioning autistics, however, with the condition known as Asperger's Syndrome. The prime example of this is Temple Grandin, a professor of Animal Sciences at Colorado State whom Oliver Sacks has profiled. Her primary symptom according to Sacks is a lack of empathy, or inability to interpret or imagine what others are thinking and feeling. There are likely plenty of people moving about in society undiagnosed with any "condition" who are better or worse at this. My belief is that it is a long continuum along which all people exist, and some (arbitrary?) point towards the lower-empathy end is considered to be on the edge of normality.

I found a couple of papers, one of which examines the relation of the insula to empathy, also without mentioning autism:

Neural mechanisms of empathy in humans: A relay from neural systems for imitation to limbic areas. Laurie Carr, Marco Iacoboni, Marie-Charlotte Dubeau, John C. Mazziotta, and Gian Luigi Lenzi, 2003. PNAS USA 100:5497-5502:

Further, fronto-temporal areas relevant to action representation, the amygdala, and the anterior insula had significant signal increase during imitation compared with observation of facial emotional expression.

A more recent paper does find a correlation between autism and reduced activity in the insula:

Understanding emotions in others: mirror neuron dysfunction in children with autism spectrum disorders. Dapretto et al, 2006. Nature Neuroscience 9:28-30

Are brain differences in "autistic" people caused by genetics or environment? Boy, is that a hot button issue. There are still plenty of people out there who blame vaccines for their children's autism, and papers saying there is no observable effect, but once again the problem understanding this might be the difficulty the medical profession has in admitting there may be such a thing as an environment-by-genetics interaction. It isn't nature or nurture, folks - it's how the two interact. If some people's brains are sensitive to a certain environmental trigger, then exposure to some compound or other could actually cause a condition in some people while not causing it in others. (Does this mean you should avoid vaccines? Of course not! The probability of your child dying of a typical childhood disease is hundreds or thousands of times higher than the probability that any serious side-effect will occur - even the known ones.) A typical large medical study that lumps all genotypes together to look for an environmental effect will never find it under these conditions. An analogous problem is with chemotherapy, which researchers are finally discovering works such a small part of the time with most cancers because a certain type of cancer might involve a dozen different mechanisms, for one or two of which chemotherapy will actually, predictably work.

Of course there are cases in which autism clearly has a large genetic component, such as in the case of a family mentioned by Sacks with two Asperger's parents, and three kids all with autism, albeit at different locations on the continuum. My own pet theory, substantiated by absolutely no evidence, is that the higher levels of autism being observed largely in California in the most recent generation are due to so many computer geeks making a ton of money in silicon valley, and thus having an opportunity to reproduce previously unrealized due to their poor social skills.

Obviously the brain is incredibly complex, and the insula appears to be just one link in a chain involving the limbic system and inferior frontal gyrus (also part of the cerebral cortex). But those fighting cigarette addiction might want to think twice about jamming an ice pick in there.

Labels: autism, brain, empathy

A post at the invasive species weblog sums up a lot of the important issues surrounding invasives. One of my favorites for class discussion in my invasive species course is number 8: What is the definition of natural? Seems easy to define on the surface, but murky waters lie beneath. And the answer to this question is so incredibly important to how we regulate, control, and even think about species assemblages.

Difficult questions: Is everything humans do unnatural? Are only some things humans do unnatural? Why? There are some purists who fiercely contend that because humans evolved on this earth as every other species did, whatever we do is an extension of natural processes. The problem is that the logical conclusion of this particular natural process is the extinction of the majority of species on this planet. Of course for us ecologists, this is a painful idea, because we have built careers on our fascination with the diversity and complexity of life. Perhaps for most laypeople that appreciation just isn't there, and so I'm simply biased. One analogy I like to imagine is that of the linguists out there witnessing the extinction of hundreds (thousands?) of the world's languages as different cultures are wiped out or assimilated. Like species, they cannot be brought back. But for me the idea of lost languages is not emotionally charged as is the idea of lost species.

So I have to justify my belief that the movement of species around the globe by humans is an unnatural process, because it results in the loss of biodiversity. But I continue to struggle with the philosophical question of whether biodiversity has inherent value, or only a value imposed by humans (in the sense that gold and diamonds have value). Because I am human, I cannot answer this question completely. Biodiversity does have value to me, because life itself is awe-inspiring. Habitat diversity, an extension of biodiversity, is similarly important - i.e., India looks different from South Africa which looks different from Antarctica. This is partly what gives us our "sense of place" as so eloquently presented by Jeff Lockwood at the University of Wyoming. Many of us are disheartened by the strips of chain stores that characterize so many American cities now. (I literally have trouble remembering what state I'm in sometimes when cruising down such a strip.) The rapid, constant movement of species around the globe is resulting in the same phenomenon on the level of habitat. Look at the plants on most tropical islands these days, and they pretty much look the same, unless you find a really remote spot.

Such is the value of biodiversity to me. That's pretty much why I fervently believe that nearly all post- (and some pre-) industrial movements of species are unnatural and destructive. Even in the best-case scenario, when native species are not destroyed, when alien species quietly integrate themselves into a habitat with no overt ecological impacts, the habitat still suffers slow death by a thousand cuts.

Unfortunately, as far as policy-makers are concerned, short-term economics trumps all. Which means we pay a lot more down the road for control of invasives than we would now for prevention of species movements. And we only bother paying for the control of those which have a current economic impact. In this country, protection of biodiversity is hardly on the radar. Even in Australia and New Zealand, which have much stricter controls than the U.S., the political force of "free trade" (I'll leave the loaded definition of that term to the economists) is becoming overwhelming, with continual pressure to roll back what regulations there are. Which brings me full circle to a previous post.

Labels: biodiversity, invasive species

The paper below is no surprise. It's basically saying that burning fireworks creates all types of nasty toxins. The human health component of this I think is fairly well known, at least to anyone who has been in China or Hawai`i during Chinese holidays. The one New Year I was in Hawaii I spent partially in Honolulu and partially back home on Kaua`i. Fireworks started going on Dec. 30, and by the time I flew home on the 31st, two apartments had already burned down and it wasn't even dark yet. I lived in a fairly rural subdivision on former pineapple fields on Kaua`i, and the air was hardly breathable that night in my house, despite the fact that I set off no fireworks of my own.

State officials were trying to rein it in by the time I left Hawai`i in 2001. There were supposedly a lot more restrictions on fireworks use, which turns out to be a good thing not only for the asthma sufferers, but for the population at large. This paper makes me wonder for the first time what the toxins released from these celebrations a couple times a year (the other biggie is Chinese New Year; July 4th in Hawai`i is not nearly such a big event) are doing to the watershed. I guess on the bright side, the fireworks are pretty much limited to low elevations where there are almost no native species left anyway, so perhaps that's why I have not heard of it referred to as a major conservation issue...

Ying Wang; Guoshun Zhuang; Chang Xu; Zhisheng An, 2007. The air pollution caused by the burning of fireworks during the lantern festival in Beijing. Atmospheric Environment 41:417-431.

The effects of the burning of fireworks on air quality in Beijing was firstly assessed from the ambient concentrations of various air pollutants (SO2, NO2, PM2.5, PM10 and chemical components in the particles) during the lantern festival in 2006. Eighteen ions, 20 elements, and black carbon were measured in PM2.5 and PM10, and the levels of organic carbon could be well estimated from the concentrations of dicarboxylic acids. Primary components of Ba, K, Sr, Cl-, Pb, Mg and secondary components of C5H6O42-, C3H2O42-, C2O42-, C4H4O42-, SO42-, NO3- were over five times higher in the lantern days than in the normal days. The firework particles were acidic and of inorganic matter mostly with less amounts of secondary components. Primary aerosols from the burning of fireworks were mainly in the fine mode, while secondary formation of acidic anions mainly took place on the coarse particles. Nitrate was mainly formed through homogeneous gas-phase reactions of NO2, while sulfate was largely from heterogeneous catalytic transformations of SO2. Fe could catalyze the formation of nitrate through the reaction of alpha-Fe2O3 with HNO3, while in the formation of sulfate, Fe is not only the catalyst, but also the oxidant. A simple method using the concentration of potassium and a modified method using the ratio of Mg/Al have been developed to quantify the source contribution of fireworks. It was found that over 90% of the total mineral aerosol and 98% of Pb, 43% of total carbon, 28% of Zn, 8% of NO3-, and 3% of SO42- in PM2.5 were from the emissions of fireworks on the lantern night.

Labels: environmental toxins