The End is Near

It’s Actually Here Right Now!

I used to start my Introductory Biology Course with the following question:  I asked the students to tell me what they thought was characteristic or typical  of “Life” and, of course, there were answers like “movement and sensitivity”, “reproductive capacity”, “growth”, “feeding and metabolism”, but almost never did I get to hear “senescence and death”.  And yet, they too are part of Life.

Although a series of essays (or ‘blogs’) like those of my “BIOFORTHEBIOBUFF” cannot be compared with living organisms, it does, however, have to come to an end  – eventually. And the end for this series, which has been appearing week after week for more than six years and which covered a variety of topics, aspects and subjects (and often touched upon events in my life), is now here.

The topics that I had chosen, to a very large extent reflected my activities and interactions as a university teacher with students from a huge number of countries and regions, but also the experience I had gathered on expeditions and research trips to diverse and often remote places on Earth as well as during the times I had lived and taught in many different parts of the world. 

My aim had been to deal with specific topics (that I felt were worth tackling) on an A4 page using font size 11 or 12 in as fully and understandably a way as was possible given that space. Quite often the topics, as already mentioned, came from my own research in a variety of disciplines and the courses that I had taught; some, however, were related to questions I had received from students, my own children and other people and some arose from news and discussions I had followed in the media.

What I certainly will not forget and must mention, is the contribution that my trusted friend Florian Nock has made over the years. Not once in over six years has he forgotten to put the texts on the web and to monitor and administer our ‘Wordpress’ webpage. For that and his support, I thank him wholeheartedly.

Finally, I should also not forget the readers of the “BIOFORTHEBIOBUFF”, because the feedback we received from some of them was one hundred percent positive and encouraging.  We can only assume that the ‘silent majority’ also enjoyed the series and got something out of it, be it reliable and accurate information or simply “food for thought”. If the blogs have shown our readers how fantastically wonderful it is to observe, learn and understand Nature and all its living manifestations, and not everything needs to be “applied” or “useful”,  then we have achieved a great deal of what we set out to achieve.

I am ending this series now, because I feel I have covered a sufficiently wide range of topics and I do not wish to repeat or update any of them. Too much of anything can be counter-productive.  I now have plans to embark on a different project and sign off:  it’s been a great journey! 

If, however, someone has an idea how the series (or perhaps a selected number of the blogs) could be published in book form and can suggest possible publishers, we’d be most grateful.

Without much further ado: Cheerio and keep appreciating Nature and never stop learning from it !

PS: You might enjoy reading some of the older blogs (they started on October 17th, 2015) !

© Dr V.B. Meyer-Rochow and http://www.bioforthebiobuff.wordpress.com, 2022. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this site’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to V.B Meyer-Rochow and http://www.bioforthebiobuff.wordpress.com with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.

As Tears Go By

A look at animal and human tears

Children cry easily and even after a minor bump or hurt will shed tears. Adults may feel pain, cry and scream when hurt, but unlike children will not shed tears. An adult’s tears are associated with emotions or may be caused by some disorder, an eye infection or irritation, but not pain. And animals? They, too, have lacrimal (= tear) glands and can have watery eyes as the result of an infection or as part of a physiological control to remove excess salt from the body, but apparently not in connection with an injury. Sea turtles and a few other reptiles remove excess salt not only via their kidneys but with the help of their orbital eye glands as “white tears of saline” that drip out of their eyes.

Although human tears are not white, but watery, transparent and very slightly sticky because of mucins in them, they too contain salt  – as do, in fact, the tears of all land vertebrates that may not ‘shed tears’ but use the lacrimal fluid to lubricate their eyes and keep the cornea moist. Chemically tears are mostly water (ca. 98%); and apart from salts the lacrimal fluid contains a cocktail of amino acids and proteins, antibacterial enzymes and minute quantities of stress hormones. A tear’s chemical composition depends on the cause of its shedding and varies on whether the tear’s function is to wash out dust from the eye, to fight off irritants such as fumes (smoke or onions come to mind), to lubricate the eye’s surface, and as a response to physical pain and emotional upheaval. The autonomic nervous system through its parasympathetic branch governs the production and release of tears from the lacrimal glands, which are located in the upper region of the eye’s orbit. The tears are stored in the lacrimal sac near the nasal corner of the eye; from there the fluid via lacrimal canaliculi is released into the eye upon a signal from the parasympathetic nerve’s acetylcholine transmitter. In healthy individuals, there is a constant release of minute quantities that are distributed with each eye blink across the cornea, but of greater amounts if required. Excessive fluid is drained through the nasolacrimal duct and causes the ‘sniffle’ during weeping.

Basal tears are continually-produced via the 5^th cranial nerve’s innervation to keep the eye’s cornea moist and to prevent bacterial infections. In humans, about 0.75-1.1 ml of the liquid is produced each day. Reflex tears are produced when the eye is irritated, and through their copious amount and high water content function to remove the irritation from the eye. Psychic, also known as ‘emotional’  tears, occur in response to strong feelings, which could be sadness, but also joy, stress and  physical pain. Because these tears contain such natural painkillers like leucine-enkephalin and prolactin, it may explain the role of the parasympathetic nervous system and that “a good cry can feel relieving”.  But it does not explain why men shed tears less often than women, a fact that is often explained with the traditional roles men and women are expected to play in life (the advice “boys don’t cry” is a case in point).

The fourth reason for tears is related to diseases and the release of tears accompanying other activities (e.g. yawning). Although elephants have been described as shedding emotional tears, crocodile tears are not an expression of emotional distress, but the result of compression of a nerve that controls the jaw muscles during feeding. In humans suffering from Bogorad syndrome “crocodile tears” also accompany swallowing. Reference to tears can generate resolve (Churchill’s famous “Blood, Sweat and Tears” comes to mind); tears evoke empathy: children know that (and actors train to shed tears at will) and tears appear in poems and songs (the record “Tears on my Pillow” is in my collection) and who wouldn’t remember Marianne Faithful’s beautiful song “As Tears Go By” or Eric Clapton’s touching “Tears in Heaven” (which I heard it for the first time in Chile in 1993). I actually heard of people who shed tears when listening to it.

© Dr V.B. Meyer-Rochow and http://www.bioforthebiobuff.wordpress.com, 2022. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this site’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to V.B Meyer-Rochow and http://www.bioforthebiobuff.wordpress.com with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.

Bumble Bees Near the North Pole

Is that a fact?

It depends, of course, what you mean by “near”: England seems quite near for birds that fly from France across the Channel (la Manche) to reach the English coast, but for insects it sure is a long, long way. The distance from the southernmost edge of Greenland to its northernmost coastline is over 2,600 km, which is (when I heard that bumble bees live in North Greenland) ‘only’ about 800 km away from the North Pole, corresponding to the distance between San Francisco – San Diego or Le Havre in the north and Marseille in the south of France). I was pretty amazed. How can these insects survive there?

It was at the South Korean Ecology Conference that I saw a poster that a scientist by the name of Dr Won Young Lee had put up to report on his research in Greenland as well as in Antarctica. I was curious to meet that person, as there simply aren’t many researchers who have been active in both Arctic and Antarctic environments. When I explained to him where in Greenland I had been and that I had also visited Antarctica nine times, he told me about his research and then happened to mention how surprised he was when in North Greenland at a latitude of nearly 83° N, he had seen bumble bees. I had come across two species of bumble bee (Bombus polaris and B. hyperboreus) in southern Greenland, but had not been aware of the fact that these cold-hardy insects would be distributed to the furthest north of the island. It hadn’t been an interest of my Polar research till then (despite an electrophysiological study of mine in 1981 of the functional properties of the eye of the North Finnish species B.hortorum). 

But now I wanted to know more and requested to join the next expedition to North Greenland (which, however, did not happen as it ‘fell victim’ to the Corona pandemic) to catch some of these bees. Luckily, though, Dr Lee had preserved a Bombus polaris queen bee from North Greenland and with the help of my Iranian colleague Dr Saeed M. Namin (a skillful molecular entomologist) and the support of our Department’s Head (Prof Chuleui Jung), we embarked on a study to investigate the phylogenetic relationships between all known “High Arctic” bumble bee species and to speculate how B. polaris  got to North Greenland and how global warming could possibly affect its distribution and survival there.

We concluded that the female specimen we analysed was most closely related to Canadian populations of B. polaris. Geographic proximity, occurrence of B. polaris on Ellesmere Island 500 km to the west and wind direction were thought likely factors that aided B. polaris to establish itself in North Greenland. A moderately high level of genetic diversity of B. polaris in Greenland was determined reflecting the successful adaptation of the species. However, bumble bees need food and shelter and only the queen overwinters. But where and how in North Greenland’s permafrost-hard soil is there sufficient shelter? And how about pollen and nectar for food? In the broader context of entomological life in the high Arctic, our results on B. polaris allow us to conclude that the survival of pollinating species in the high Arctic under the changing climate scenario depends not only on the weather but also on an individual’s opportunity to continue to locate suitable food sources, which in North Greenland are provided by flowers of the abundant Pedicularis spp., Salix arctica and Ericaceae of the region. Other plants with a northern distribution like Stylophorum sp. and crowberries can be considered pollen and nectar providers, respectively, and are likely to be also visited by B. polaris. Will climate change affect them?

According to one of the foremost Arctic bumble bee researchers (Dr Grigory Potapov), some High Arctic species used to occur much more widely in the past. Will it help us predict the fate of B.polaris? More research may be needed and I’d love to be part of it. My next destination? I hope it’s North Greenland!

© Dr V.B. Meyer-Rochow and http://www.bioforthebiobuff.wordpress.com, 2021. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this site’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to V.B Meyer-Rochow and http://www.bioforthebiobuff.wordpress.com with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.