| The Magazine of the CALIFORNIA ACADEMY OF SCIENCES |
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Life on the edge The Moving Finger Readers who follow our masthead will have noted some major changes of late. Longtime Senior Editors Blake Edgar and Gordy Slack have moved on to fresh horizons and habitats, although Gordy will continue to write the Habitats column in his new role as Contributing Editor. Gordy will also continue to compile our weekly news alerts “This Week in California Wild” www.calacademy.org/thisweek. Browse. It’s informative, and funny. Blake, meanwhile, has become a science editor with the University of California Press where the manuscripts will be considerably longer. The thoroughness he exhibited while at the Academy will stand him in good stead. I’d like to thank them both for eleven years of dedication and wonderful companionship. Hard as Gordy and Blake will be to replace, we feel we have their measure. Kathleen Wong, lately science reporter with the Monterey Herald and a graduate of the University of California at Santa Cruz Science Writing Program, is our new senior editor. Assistant Editor Dave Butvill joins us from a background in writing for science, education, and social organizations. We welcome them warmly. These changes demand adaptability, an essential quality of some of the species profiled in these pages. Pamela Turner in “Wild Lives” describes frogs that withstand freezing temperatures that turn the liquid in their bodies to slush. Come spring they are ready to hop again. Sharif Taha in “A Trail Less Traveled” climbed the sheer face of Half Dome and found many animals that live in that vertical world. Most adaptable of all, perhaps, are the intersteller bacteria, or whatever they are, that Jay Withgott describes in “Panspermia.” Not only are animals found in every conceivable setting, but their behavior can also stretch the imagination. Brian Fisher, profiled in “Here At the Academy,” recently achieved international recognition after he turned over a rotting log in Madagascar and exposed a colony of primitive ants, evolutionary “missing links” with physical characteristics more typical of wasps, from which all ants have descended. But to the layperson, these strange ants have a more startling quality. Unable, like all ants, to consume solid food, these “Dracula ants” suck the blood of their own larvae! The Academy’s international research is made possible in large part by support from foundations, corporations, and individuals. Our work in Madagascar is funded by the National Science, McBean Family, and Oracle Foundations. Research in China’s Yunnan Province is largely due to a grant from the National Geographic Society and generous donations from the China National History Project, an ad hoc group of individuals in the Bay Area enthusiastic about discovering and conserving the natural resources of China. Exploring the mysteries of nature can be wonderful therapy—and life changing. As mathematician and gardener Margaret Ely lay in a hospital bed waiting for a bone marrow transplant, she took to meditating in the dark hours of the morning. With her eyes closed, she saw, one after another, California flowers appear and fade slowly away like scenes from a movie. The visions inspired her to mortgage her house, buy a camera and microscope, and follow her dream: photographing native flora from the perspective of pollinating insects. Some of her images are reproduced here in “Captivating Exposures.” Also in these pages are the photographs Michael Sewell took during the year he and writer Kenneth Brower spent recording the seasonal changes to the Viansa Wetlands north of San Francisco Bay. “The Tragedy of the Carp” takes place between late spring and summer as the water in the marsh dries up. To Brower, standing above desperate carp and able to see the inevitable outcome, their fate is clear. The fish lack that perspective. So, we read in “Horizons,” did the Maya 1,000 years ago as a slowly warming climate eroded their flourishing civilization. Are we any wiser today? Keith K. Howell is Editor of California Wild. |
Spring 2001
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