Miscellaneous News

1. The BAS is looking for a new webmaster. The current webmaster will train you and hand it over to you, and provide support as necessary. The website is written in simple HTML. You will need a computer and a high speed internet connection (you will need to download a 6GB backup in a reasonable amount of time). $300 is the annual payment. You may be asked to support admin of the BAS Facebook pages as well.

2. Caterpillar Rap

As they cling to leaf tips, newborn warty birch caterpillars produce vibrations that can ward off invaders approaching their millimeter-size domain.

For warty birch caterpillars, that means patrolling one of the tiniest territories on Earth: the tips of birch leaves. Scientists observed the caterpillars warding off intruders with loud vibrations that advertise they are in command of a domain that stretches a few millimeters across.

"It's like rap battles," said Jayne Yack, a professor of neuroethology at Carleton University in Ottawa and an author of the study, which was published on Tuesday in The Journal of Experimental Biology.

After staking claims, the caterpillars made vibrational signals, called drums and buzz scrapes, produced by striking and scraping their bodies against the leaf. The vibrations are like a "no vacancy" sign that rumbles across nearby stems and branches.

Rival warty birch caterpillars were introduced onto occupied leaves over the course of 18 trial encounters. When confronted by intruders, the resident caterpillars dialed up the signal rate by about four times. If the intruder breached the perimeter of the leaf tip, the defenders escalated the signal rate by about 14 times.

Faced with insistent invaders they'd never defeat, the caterpillars can rappel off the tip on a silk thread, a strategy called lifelining.

"Territorial behavior is really important to animals, including humans, and there are a lot more strategies out there than we think," Dr. Yack said.  NYT 22Ap25