Gleanings of the Week Ending April 23, 2022

The items below were ‘the cream’ of the articles and websites I found this past week. Click on the light green text to look at the article.

Virologists Identify More Than 5,000 New Viruses in the Ocean – Another indication that we still have a lot to learn about life on our planet.

Top 25 birds of the week: Bird Habitats! – Beautiful birds! I always enjoy seeing photographs…seeing birds I know and some I don’t!

The Jumping Slugs of the Pacific Northwest – A little different than the slugs I’ve seen. These have a vestigial shell on the top of their ‘hump.’ There was a new-to-me skeletal name in the article: slugs have a hydrostatic skeleton!

Aging clocks aim to predict how long you’ll live – Really? The value of the various aging clocks is still TBD.

Wildflower Fungi – This post was from the Master Naturalist group in Springfield MO. I am paying more attention now that I am moving to the area.

Deforestation drives climate change that harms remaining forest – Deforestation causes changes in a regions air temperature and precipitation…instigating changes in the whole region rather than just the part where the forest was removed.

Scientists Identify 50,000th Spider Species on Earth—but Thousands More Are Waiting to Be Discovered – It’s humbling to realize that there is so much about our world that we don’t know….have not discovered.

Amid Hopes and Fears, a plastic boom in Appalachia is on hold – Another sad trend in Appalachia…still hitching their future to fossil fuels. The jobs look good but the long-term jobs are few and the market for their products is not a positive one. Everyone wants to reduce single use plastics as much as possible.

Study suggests tree-filled spaces are more favorable to child development than paved or grassy surfaces – Playgrounds need more trees!

Germany’s Nature Society Crowns the 2022 Nature Photographer of the Year – The first picture is of a male kestrel. That caught my attention…and then I browsed the rest of the photos.