Santa Barbara NATURE

Good Morning Archives

For Members Only. Good Morning daily images are photographs from the laboratory and the field that were sent to a few friends begining February 2002. Since the first image (shown right), images have been sent to a growing number of friends, biologists, and publishers on a daily basis . . . never missing a morning for the more than 2,200 mornings since the first Good Morning was sent.

Beginning 1 January 2006, the Good Morning emails became a subscriber-only mail list in order to support scholarships to encourage students to become involved in natural history and field biology research as undergraduates. See Mission Statement.

The Santa Barbara Museum of Natural History, sharing the goal of "inspiring a passion for the natural world", agreed to sponsor these scholarships, making donations tax deductible. Subscribers receive daily Good Morning emails with a photograph and short natural history essay about the subject. Subscribe here.

Santa Barbara Nudibranch (Janolus barbarensis). 4 February 2002

Sample Good Mornings. Following are representative Good Morning emails illustrating a variety of subjects. Good Morning subjects are selected from a rapidly growing collection of more than 500,000 images from the laboratory and from field trips to Canada, Europe, Mexico, the Society Islands of Tahiti, Moorea, Raiatea and others, Borneo, Malaysia, Indonesia, Philippines, Costa Rica, Panama, and Tobago as well as much of the continental United States and Hawaii.

Desert Iguana (Dipsosaurus dorsalis). Sonoran Desert. Desert Center, California. 5 April 1980.

The favorite foods of the Desert Iguana are the new leaves, flowers and flower buds of the Creosote Bush (Larrea tridentata). These lizards are herbivorous and frequently seen climbing into the bushes to graze. Both the Desert Iguana and the Creosote Bush are extremely heat tolerant and are among the most numerous species of the driest and hottest areas of the Sonoran Desert. With an optimum body temperature of 38.5 degrees C, only 1.5 degrees higher than ours, the lizard is able to thermoregulate in the blistering heat of the desert by shuttling between the hot surfaces of rocks and sand and the cooler air in Creosote Bushes or in burrows.

Despite the shuttling behavior, the body temperature of a Desert Iguana sometimes can reach an extraordinarily high level (46 degrees C) that would be lethal to most animals, but which seems to have little effect on the lizard. At high temperatures, the mouth gapes and rapid panting occurs to cool the blood. Even so, in the heat of the day, body temperature climbs and the lizard's survival depends on having enzymes that can continue to operate at temperatures that would permanently denature our proteins, like heating the whites of eggs. Having heat-tolerant proteins allows the Desert Iguana to feed during the hottest parts of the day and avoid its mammalian predators, such as the desert Kit Fox (Vulpes macrotis), which hunt at night.

Blue Quill Mayfly (Paraleptophlebia altana). Mission Creek. Santa Barbara, California. 15 December 2007.

Various species of Blue Quill Mayflies are distributed across the United States and are grazers of detritus and periphyton. Like many aquatic herbivores and detritivores, they feed in sheltered locations during the day and in more open areas, such as the surfaces of submerged stones, at night. Distinctive features of the naiads of this genus are the large mandibles visible anterior to the eye and just posterior and lateral to the upper "lip" (labrum) and the slender, prong-like gills along the abdomen (not shown).

Unlike other insects, mayflies molt once more after attaining wings. The naiads rise to the surface for their first molt to a winged form (the subimago). The subimago flies to shore from the surface of the water and molts again to become the adult (imago). The naiads grow and develop in their aquatic habitat for a year or more. Many species have a timed, mass emergence from the water and thousands of adults perform aerial dances over the surface of ponds and lakes. The adults have vestigial mouthparts and are short-lived. Mayflies are in the order Ephemeroptera, named for the short, ephemeral life of the winged adults.

Attached in branching clusters over the surface of this naiad's body are colonial ciliates (Epistylis sp.). These are epibiotic organisms, not parasitic, which simply use the surface of various arthropods as attachment locations. The advantage of having an exoskeleton is that exoskeletons are shed periodically and fouling organisms are shed with them.

Pacific Black-tailed Deer (Odocoileus hemionus). Coastal California. Morro Bay, California. 14 September 2007.

The White-tailed Deer (Odocoileus virginianus) of the eastern US and the Pacific Black-tailed Deer (Odocoileus hemionus californicus) of California are the descendants of deer that expanded their range southward from the north during glacial periods. The expansion continued into Mexico and then back northward along the Pacific Coast. Glaciers prevented genetic exchanges between the eastern and western populations and by the time the glaciers finally retreated, the two populations had diverged into two species.

The eastern populations expanded their ranges westward and now are found as far west as Nevada and Arizona. From eastern California and western and central US, the two populations interbreed and the resultant hybrid populations are termed Mule Deer (Odocoileus hemionus hemionus). The three can be distinguished by the coloration of the tail. The Black-tailed Deer have the top of their tails black from base to tip; the Mule Deer have black only at the tip of the top of the tail; and the top of the tail of the White-tailed Deer is entirely brown.

Tundra Swan (Cygnus columbianus). Central Valley wetlands. Los Banos, California. 8 January 2008.

The lead Tundra Swan in flight is doing more work than those that follow. Flying in formation reduces the energy necessary for the birds "following the leader". One successful pattern is the common "V" formation in which the lead bird is flanked to the rear by two birds. Flying in a "V" formation allows the birds that follow to take advantage of the air currents that are produced by the wings of the birds ahead.

As each bird's wings flap, vortices are shed off the wing tips. If you could see these vortices from a rear view, they would appear as whirlpools spiralling off the wing tips--a clockwise spiral from the left wing and a counterclockwise spiral from the right wing. Using your hands to form circles in front of you (circling clockwise with your left and counterclockwise with your right), you will notice that the upward motions are on the outer portions of the circles. The outer, upward arcs of the vortices that are shed from the wing tips of the bird ahead can be used as lift by the birds behind.

A bird flying behind and to the right of "the leader" can gain lift by placing its left wing in the vortex coming of the leader's right wing, and vice versa for a bird following behind and to the left. These birds in turn have flanking birds riding their vortices, with each bird being displaced outward to the left or the right by a wing length. The inside of the "V" is turbulent and supplies no lifting current.