Islands have a history of providing profound ecological insight---just ask Charles Darwin who observed island creatures and uncovered evolution that controls all of biology. Islands continue to provide amazing surprises as a new study by Stanford ecologists shows.

Published in Nature Science Reports, the article From Wing to Wing documents a long chain of connections on a remote Pacific atoll where native trees and their roosting birds are ecologically linked all the way into the surrounding ocean supporting populations of winged manta rays.

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While attention may be focused on events elsewhere, it’s worth noting that today is Endangered Species Day.

Stopping extinctions should be something worth sharing with “friends” as Facebook becomes public on this day. From tigers to tuna, populations of rare species have declined 30% during the last forty years as the World Wildlife Fund has just reminded us in their discouraging Living Planet Report on biodiversity. The WWF director general discussed this situation in a video on their new report:

";" alt=""> WWF Living Planet Report, 2012 (credit: World Wildlife Fund)

The situation can be depressing but there is multiple good news on the US endangered species...

Riled Up previously posted about the efforts of alpinist Kenton Cool to carry an Olympic gold medal to the summit of Mount Everest in commemoration of the 1922 British Mount Everest expedition. The team that included George Mallory didn’t reach the summit but became a symbol for many mountaineers who followed. The medal is packed in a red handkerchief while Cool is making final preparations for his Everest summit bid. The status of his efforts were updated here: Returning the Ring to Mount Doom



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Several years back, I attended a lecture by His Holiness the dalai lama at a local university. During the course of his inspiring conversation, the famously humorous Buddhist monk mentioned he enjoyed wearing a wrist watch. It wasn’t an expression of vanity he advised. His Holiness said it was perfectly OK if you like wearing a personal accessory like a gold ring on your hand. The issue was that nobody needed to wear rings on all 10 fingers. Moderation was the key metaphor. Graham Hill, the interior designer and founder of Treehugger, must have been in the same audience listening to what the dalai lama had to say about living rightly and lightly in the world.

Hill presented a TED talk recently on being mindful of the clutter in all our lives, on living efficiently, designing smartly, saving money, and enjoying less stress. His concept of an ‘edited life’ would also reduce waste and help us to move towards living a more environmentally sustainable lifestyle.

Check out his TED comments about stuff and start editing:

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Here at Riled Up we like trees, particularly if they make music. A new artificial tree in the UK does just that.

The arboreal structure was constructed on a high hill in Lancashire and is visible from any direction. It appears and disappears as mists roll across the landscape. The “tree” is constructed of stacked pipes in varying lengths with the spiraling layers turned 15 degrees to respond to the shifting winds. As breezes blow through the tree tubes, it begins to sing and play different chords. See if you can catch the melody:



The Singing Tree (credit: Vimeo)

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The Russian Space Agency has released a time-lapse animation developed using photos captured by their Electro-L satellite. Electro-L is positioned 25000 miles above the Earth and creates a 121 megapixel image every 30 minutes with sampling visible and infrared light wavelengths. Vegetation appears orange in the infrared.

Too bad we don’t see the entire planet from this geostationary satellite. It’s impressive.



";" alt=""> Earth’s Northern Hemisphere as seen by Electro-L (Russian Space Agency)

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Vesta is a massive asteroid now considered a “proto-planet”. The jumbled space rock didn’t receive enough mass from early collisions in the asteroid belt to become a full planet orbiting between Mars and Jupiter. Animators took photographic images from NASA's Dawn mission now visiting Vesta to produce a virtual movie. The raw images were digitally harmonized to create a clear impression of the asteroid’s  mooth plains, valleys, and a huge mountain over 3 miles high. The resulting animation is impressive:





";" alt=""> Proto-planet Vesta (credit: JPL)

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As a technology with myriad forms, photography can document reality from the micro to the macro. The uses are only limited by the imagination. The results can be very artistic as well.

Here are several recent examples of the art and science from the photographers eye:



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Most people who go to Hawaii spend their time lounging on a beach sipping a tall, cold drink. While those pursuits are pleasurable, a great alternative has been suggested by the Hawaiian conservation and restoration organization, Friends of Haleakala. Named after the famous Haleakala National Park, the Adopt-a-Nene Program allows individuals to protect endangered species and important island habitats from destruction by feral animals and alien plants.



Nene Goose

(credit:...

Recently, bees have been dying in huge numbers from unknown causes. This is super-serious as these beneficial pollinators are one of the lynch-pins for ecosystem stability and essential to agricultural, horticultural, and virtually all plant production worldwide. The culprit has finally been identified. It turns out to be a new class of pesticides that act systemically when applied to fields and is absorbed up into tissues throughout a plant. The active agent then becomes present in the flowers and pollen but not at an immediately lethal level. Bees gather up the pollen, become contaminated by the insecticide, and take it back to their hives, and transmit the pesticide to other bees. Entire beehive populations can collapse.

Known as neonicotinoids, the pesticides are chemically related to nicotine. They now comprise one of most widely used agricultural chemicals in the world. The neonicotinoids act on a bees neural receptors, binding to and activating them, causing paralysis and death in honeybees (Apis...