Aquatic plants buried underground for more than a century can be revived and regrown, according to a new study investigating the phenomenon of ‘ghost ponds’ – ponds that aren’t properly drained but filled in with soil and vegetation under agricultural land.
Restoring some of these buried ponds, and the habitats hidden in limbo beneath the soil, could be a valuable way of reversing habitat and biodiversity losses, say researchers, and we could even bring some plant species back from the dead.
The team from University College London in the UK has dug out three ghost ponds so far and estimates there could be as many as 600,000 similar patches spread out across the English countryside.
“We have shown that ghost ponds can be resurrected, and remarkably wetland plants lost for centuries can be brought back to life from preserved seeds,” says lead researcher Emily Alderton.
i wonder how it’d work for naturally filled wetlands – the shallower glacial ponds and lakes around here just fill themselves over time. i wonder if you could dredge down through a few centuries of dead leaves and sediment to find living roots.
I understand why people don’t know, though. I’ve been interested in bugs since I was a kid and I only learned that these guys aren’t “real” ladybugs a few years ago. At the very least, it seems they do actually eat aphids, which is why they were spread globally in the first place (unlike some other intentionally introduced species that fail at their intended purpose). Why people didn’t just use local species that do the same thing, I have no idea. Species becoming invasive after introduction for human use seems to be a recurring theme throughout history, unfortunately. Cane toads are another bad example.
melanosuchus niger, the only extant melanosuchus species, does not live in florida
This show is set in Florida. How can you be a herpetologist in Florida and NOT know an alligator tooth on sight? Answer: you can’t and this is the worst herpetologist in Florida.
what the shit dude, the last word out of your mouth was a genus
and if you can’t get the phylum from a tooth, we are going to have a problem. (hint fucking hint: only one phylum has teeth)
HOW WOULD YOU KNOW YOU CAN’T EVEN IDENTIFY THE PHYLUM IT’S FROM
THAT’S NOT HOW BLOOD WORKS
YOU ABSOLUTELY CANNOT GET THAT INFORMATION FROM BLOOD
neither alligators nor caimans have color-based sexual dimorphism
also the caiman thing turned out to be a plot point, sort of- and then this happened
if that animal is a caiman, it’s an invasive species and if you were half the biologist this show pretends you are, you’d know that.
Caiman latirostris and Melanosuchus niger aren’t synonyms. They don’t even have an overlapping range. Pick an animal this isn’t and stick with it.
NO. STOP. STOP TRYING TO GIVE US SCIENCE FACTS ABOUT ALLIGATORS.
You’re gonna laugh hedge, I’ve seen this exact episode on TV, facepalming the entire time the ‘science’ happened. Like, it was watch-a-car-crash levels of watching this.
I love how leftists are oh-so-smug about their support of scientific evidence, then they post images like this and pretend like they’re peer reviewed studies.
I’ll try my best to explain the biochemical differences between genetically altered corn and unmodified corn as well as other variables such as pesticide usage, overall costs, yield and the economic outcomes. Full disclosure, I’m better suited to explain the economic reasoning, but I consulted a biochemist over this who helped me understand the difference between modified and non-modified corn. This biochemist also promised to rip me apart if I get anything wrong, so here goes nothing.
Economically, GMO’s provide higher yields per acre. This isn’t too big of a deal for an industrialized nation like America, but in some countries like India, GMO crops are cutting losses in half.
More food, less hungry people.
So to answer the question, yes, I am smarter than a squirrel.
I wanted to add to this, because GMO’s are so misunderstood and the political controversy that surrounds them is based in scientific illiteracy.
One of the coolest GMO’s I know about is “golden rice.” Vitamin A deficiency is fairly rampant in parts of Asia. When children are deficient in vitamin A it results in blindness. Furthermore, Vitamin A deficiency contributes to 2 million childhood deaths each year (2012 Am J Clin Nutr, 96:658-64). Scientists genetically modified golden rice in order to provide vitamin A.
UNFORTUNATELY political opposition has delayed the release of golden rice for over a decade. And as @libertybill pointed out, no one dies from genetically modified food.
If you are against GMO’s because you think Monsanto is a big baddy (which I’m not going to pretend they haven’t done some asshole-ish things) or you think the GMO is going to cause cancer or some other stupid ass thing, please take time to educate yourself.
Pretty sure this is just me but I cannot stand the idea of having to work with people who believe in a magic man. In my eyes you are deemed and idiot if you believe in a god. I am strongly against the idea of a god, I think that those who believe is a god have the IQ of a grain of sand.
If you don’t believe in a god then, to me, you are automatically smarter than anyone who does.
damn, I wanna follow you because of all your male positivity posts but idk if I want to do that now that you make generalizations and basically call me an idiot.
I am not a fan of most religious people and I’m atheist myself but calling people dumb for choosing to believe in something they can’t prove is asshole-ish behavior and tbh if you believe stuff like this is okay you are way dumber than any religious person I’ve ever met
I’m not religious, but I am spiritual, and you, OP are rude and not very bright.
This is a really shitty thing to say.
Anybody ever notice that they primarily go after the Abrahamic religions? I don’t think I’ve ever seen an athiest go after Vishnu, Shiva, Buddha, ore really any of the Eastern Religions.
Huh you’re right.
Never seen many atheists (especially on here) go after Islam either
1) All atheists attack all religions, christians are just so self centered they cant realize that
2) Religion makes you less smart, it really does, because your entire world view is based on something factually incorrect, anti science, and anti logic. Therefor, you’re fundamentally wrong about almost everything (even if youve got the right answer, its usually for the wrong reasons, thus, you’re still wrong).
3) OP is right, ya’ll are butthurt/seeking validation from your religious friends.
4) Fuck Islam. fuck Christianity. fuck Buddhism, fuck all religions.
5) Religion is inherently evil and a control tactic. Religious people are generally good, if not brainwashed, people.
that’s ridiculous. whether or not a person is religious has fuck-all to do w/their intelligence. you can be anti-religion all you want but it’s not right to say someone is unintelligent just because they’re religious
thanks for missing the point and proving me right. youve always been a dumb hypocrite havent you? yeah
oh yay im suddenly anti science because i believe in God. whats next, youre gonna tell me I hate Pokémon because I’m religious.
I better go kill myself for being Wiccan since my religion whose only rule is not to hurt anyone is evil and I am evil for believing in it.
Yay, I have a reason to use this gif now:
I’m a Buddhist/Wiccan/Christian cocktail, and according to the OP I am therefore an evil human being for believing in love thy neighbor and all that stuff.
And in keeping with that, I’m going to just pray for them and move on.
What the fuck am I reading
I’m very confused right now. I’m not sure who’s being serious or what.
I’d like to use this opportunity to remind people that religious beliefs are referred to as “faith” because they are exactly that – believing in something despite the inability to prove or disprove its existence.
Are there dumb-ass religious people in the world? Hell yes there are. Stupidity doesn’t discriminate. No one is immune to stupidity. Being an atheist is not incompatible with being an idiot.
This is that same tired old argument that science and religion are inherently incompatible and religion is bullcrap because science says so. I’m always unimpressed and immediately less inclined to take someone seriously when they start talking about how religion has been “disproved” or some shit like that, because guess what? The same science you people claim has “disproven” the existence of deities and such isn’t technically able to “disprove” anything. Because that’s not how science works. You don’t “prove” things with science. You either find support for a hypothesis, or you fail to find support for a hypothesis. Failing to support something does NOT mean you’ve proven it wrong. It could be as simple as your hypothesis not approaching the problem from the right angle. Or it could mean the hypothesis is full of crap. But without more information, you don’t know. Once you get a shit-ton of evidence in support of something, as is the case with the scientific theory of evolution, it’s generally regarded as fact, but it’s still not really correct to say “Science has proven that ____”.
Science can’t touch on the supernatural. The entire reason we even consider such things “supernatural” is because we don’t currently have the means to explain or study them. Sure, there’s all kinds of fancy “ghost hunting” equipment, but there’s also all kinds of problems involved with how they’re used and controls and variables and it’s a mess and not really science. It’s not just that you can’t find tangible support for these things, either. How the hell do you go about testing for it? Like seriously, how would one even begin building a base of evidence for the existence of an incorporeal being? You can’t. Which also means you can’t find support against it. How would you conduct an experiment to find support that something doesn’t exist? There are species people had assumed extinct because evidence of their persistence hadn’t been seen for decades, only for them to be “rediscovered” years later.
You can find support for alternative explanations (ex. scientific explanations for the creation of Earth/origin of life being things like the Big Bang theory and evolution). But even those things can be woven into people’s personal religious beliefs, such as some higher existence having been the kick-start that set evolution in motion. I don’t know why that would make someone stupid, because again, you can’t prove it wasn’t.
It’s kind of silly that so many people would rather compromise their understanding of science than adapt their religious views to incorporate what we know about the world. We know certain things about the world, so I don’t know why people are often so quick to deny those things because they “go against” their faith. But just the same, it’s foolish to completely denounce a religion created in a completely different context thousands of years ago as crap just because it doesn’t explain the creation of the world in scientific accuracy to its historical audience of people who would have thought the Earth was flat.
I haven’t even gotten into the fact that someone can follow certain ideas of a religion without necessarily believing in all the fanciful stuff that religion includes. Someone could decide they really like Jesus’s ideas about how to treat other people without believing Jesus was literally the son of God. I fail to see how having morals influenced by religious ideas makes someone an idiot or a terrible person.
tl;dr –
Religion is not, and never will be, science. Faith is about believing in something despite the fact that you can’t prove it’s true.
However, that does not mean someone can’t believe both.
Ideas are not proven or disproved by science.
Hypotheses are either supported by evidence, or fail to be supported. You can’t fricking say you’ve “disproved” something with an experiment because it doesn’t fricking work like that.
You can be against the principles or teachings of a religion without thinking that everyone who follows them is an idiot.
Not every religious person is straight-by-the-book, you know.
PiraticOctopus 