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Aug 21, 2018 4 tweets 1 min read Read on X
It is with a heavy heart that we announce that one of our colleagues, Vazrick Nazari, has been arrested for possession of child pornography.

We cannot tolerate exposing our followers to this sort of person, and have blocked him from our feed.

ottawacitizen.com/news/local-new…
We did consult him for help with moth IDs here on Twitter, and although there's no way we could have known he was doing this, we still feel the need to apologize for exposing our readers to-and let's just put it as bluntly as possible-an alleged child predator.
We try to be careful about who we consult, and let into our conversations.

Unfortunately, it's not always possible to know what's going on behind the scenes.

Needless to say, we will not be requesting any more assistance from this person.
Also, if anyone has had any noteworthy interactions with this person, please don't hesitate to contact @OttawaPolice to assist with their investigation.

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More from @BugQuestions

Aug 22, 2021
Why are people poisoning themselves with horse dewormer to treat COVID-19?

Let's explore ivermectin in this week's #DeepDive
Ivermectin is a medication which is perscribed to combat parasites.

It jams itself into chloride channels, permanently turning the nerves off.

It can't do that to people, so it has a pretty good safety profile if you stick to the correct doses.
Okay, but viruses don't have nerves.

So why would an insecticide work on a virus?

It does something else, too. It blocks the import of proteins into the nucleus.

Kind of.

dicyt.uto.edu.bo/observatorio/w…
Read 10 tweets
May 6, 2021
In 1875, a series of locust swarms the size of California ripped through the Western frontier

Blotting out the sun and causing the modern equivalent of $4 billion in damages, major famines followed in their wake

In 1902, just 25 years later, the species went extinct

#DeepDive
The grasshopper, the Rocky Mountian locust, was once the most numerous animal on the planet.

So numerous, that entomologists didn't bother to collect them.

The only specimens came from a glacier in Montana, which has since melted b/c global warming

formontana.net/grasshopper.ht…
The Rocky Mountain Locust, Melanoplus spreta, once had a range which covered almost the entirety of the US.

It was a highly mobile species which had been collected from Nevada all the way to St. Louis.

It bred mostly in the Rocky Mountain river basin.
Read 20 tweets
May 5, 2021
So, I've been thinking about how to properly respond to this...and there's really no way to do that because we will never be able to take our ecosystems from Earth to other planets.

What Musk proposes here is (as @Myrmecos pointed out) simply impossible.
Let's say, for funsies, that we're able to build some kind of ark.

Well, that ark will only hold the critters humans know about. Maybe the occasional weirdo hanging out on someone else, but heavy bias.
On any practical level, we cannot create an ecosystem.

Yes, ecospheres are a thing. However, it's an ecosystem which supports a handful of species.

No real food webs.
Read 11 tweets
Jun 9, 2020
When the first white settlers arrived in Montana, the native Salish people warned them to not settle the West side of the Bitterroot River.

Ignoring these warnings, a small group of people colonized that side of the river.

Three quarters-75%-died of a mysterious disease. Image
The Bitterroot river carves out a 75 mile canyon in Western Montana.

It's not deep at all, averaging only about 3 feet. Animals and humans cross it very easily, and it's not really a barrier to any kind of travel.

The Salish believed evil spirits lived in the area.
Saint Mary's mission, founded in 1841, was the first permanent European settlement in Montana.

The European settlers weren't very nice to the natives, and the poor relationship caused the mission to close.
Read 17 tweets
Dec 31, 2018
For our last #DeepDive of 2018, let's talk about a mosquito that you'll be hearing a lot about in 2019.

Aedes aegypti is one of the most important disease vectors in the world.

So...what makes it a good vector, and why is it found worldwide?
Ae. aegypti is a mosquito that's originally from sub-Saharan Africa, adapted to living in the holes in trees.

This genus has a unique egg laying behavior. They lay their eggs on surfaces above water, and those eggs are dormant until the hole fills up.

flic.kr/p/8gXkQf
In it's home range, there are two color forms.

One color form is dark, and doesn't hang out around people.

The second is lighter colored, and pretty much specifically feeds on people.

It's that second one which more or less took over the world.
Read 12 tweets
Dec 30, 2018
This question, inspired by our cricket packaging thread, is another excellent question.

Even if we're not releasing mosquitoes, why do we need to breed them in captivity?

There's a few reasons...
The most important is a reference strain. Lots of mosquitoes were being bred in labs before pesticides were introduced, so we *know* they're not resistant to them.

If we're curious about a modern population, we can compare and use them as a standard.
Besides reference strains for pesticides, we know that the lab reference strains can transmit most of the 'normal' diseases that Ae. aegypti spread.

However, not all populations of Ae. aegypti spread every disease.

Why is that?

Scientists need to know!

journals.plos.org/plosntds/artic…
Read 5 tweets

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