Math and Reality

An interesting take courtesy of Bill Benzon.

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A Primer on Ohio Millipedes

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Millipede - Abacion sp. I've been doing some research lately on a few millipede genera and have found myself lamenting the lack of well-written and accessible resources for millipedes. I have a good enough knowledge base to navigate through the published literature, but it's too inaccessible for general audiences. BugGuide's millipede page is probably the best online resource, but it still lacks good introductory resources for people wanting to learn more about the many-legged critters. You're able to submit a picture, and if you're lucky, someone will help you get it down to genus and maybe tell you how they identified it. Concise keys for the millipedes don't really exist like they do for other arthropods, due to the characteristics used to identify millipedes. It's not like identifying a moth or a beetle, where coloration, pattern, and overall look can go a long way. You can get to Order from a photograph relatively easily with millipedes, ...
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It has now been a year since my journey to Costa Rica as part of a semester study abroad experience focusing on Biology and Spanish. I returned last May, and one of the things I was most looking forward to was fall: I needed to see some explosive leaf colors. Don't get me wrong, the plants I saw in Costa Rica were beautiful and vibrant green, but it's difficult to compare that with the leaf colors you can see during an Ohio autumn. As fall came and went, I saw some wonderful colors, and gradually came to the realization that one of my favorite trees is the American sweet gum, Liquidambar styraciflua . Even its scientific name is beautiful and rolls right off your tongue, it's fantastic. The leaves of the tree are palmate to be technical, but I would rather describe them as five-pointed stars. The colors of these leaves are astounding and range from green to purple, with yellows, reds, and oranges in between.The maples have nothing on this tree! Leaves of a young tree. Notic...
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Choosing my favorite millipede

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I was asked recently what my favorite millipede is. That's not an easy question, but I was forced to pick one, so I thought about it for a bit and then figured, why not share it with everyone? I find myself doing more tweeting than blogging lately, but Twitter is terrible for long form responses. There are about 12,000 described species of millipedes, and I've seen maybe 70 of them in life or in photos, so I'm drawing from a limited pool of millipede diversity. Even so, I know of many amazing species. Is my favorite something like the shocking pink dragon millipede, Desmotyxes purpurosea ? Desmotyxes purpurosea from Enghoff et al 2007 . Read the paper, it's really neat! Or maybe my favorite is another tropical millipede. After all, Psammodesmus bryophorus , a millipede I've blogged about before , has mosses that grow on its back! Photo from Martínez-Torres SD et al 2011. You won't be disappointed if you browse photos of millipedes from the tropics. There are ...
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