Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[RedKing]

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/05/science/mutant-crayfish-clones-europe.html

This is actually an amazing read. Some home aquarium owner in Germany noticed a pet crayfish he bought overbreeding, they ended up having way too many of them and were soon giving them away to all their friends. It turns out that a mutant crayfish was born with 3 sets of chromosomes instead of two (e.g. the parents sperm or ova didn't divide properly), e.g. the kind of thing that normally happens with plants. But somehow the extra chromosomes didn't kill it, they made them grow larger than normal and pump out absolutely massive loads of eggs, which happened to also self-fertilize, due to the extra chromosome.

So the things just pump out clones like proverbial Tribbles without needing to mate, they ended up in every pet store, and of course, some idiots eventually dumped their excess crayfish into the wild, and these oversized mutant baby-pumping crayfish are now spreading across Eurasia, even to Madagascar and Japan. Technically, they're a completely new species (since they can no longer breed with the parent species), that came into existence instantly due to a copying error in one sperm or ova cell back in the 1990s. A whole new species coming into existence in a flash is something that's not uncommon in plants (e.g. some plant hybrids can breed with the same hybrid, but not the parent species), but I haven't heard of that in animals before.

Please tell me someone is going to name it the Horatio crayfish.

[TD1]

I don't follow? Shakespearean Horatio?

[RedKing]

I don't follow? Shakespearean Horatio?

Endless Space reference. The Horatio were a civilization of clones of one single individual.

[Sheb]

Nah, it's known as the Marble Crayfish, and its scientific name is a unsubtle dig at its lacklustre sexlife, Procambarus virginalis (BTW, am I the only one that is annoyed when newspaper don't print species name in italics? At least they capitalized it properly.)

[wierd]

Better watch it, they will italicize it the other direction just to spite you.

[Greiger]

Italicizing every letter of a book, magazine, or newspaper would be a good argument for burning every copy on sight while forcing the author to watch.

[ChairmanPoo]

No!. Its a little mermaid reference.  Sebastian the crab's real name was Horatio

[Reelya]

http://www.news.com.au/travel/travel-updates/underworld-that-kills-all-who-go-near/news-story/4c0a4127cb8cbdadbc3653137a03bde1

Hey this is pretty cool. A cave where they built an ancient temple dedicated to god's of the underworld was said to be a portal to hell that killed anyone who goes near it, including animals, this goes back to the Greek and Roman era. Now, scientists have measured deadly CO₂ emissions of up to 91% purity seeping out of the cave.

[Teneb]

http://www.news.com.au/travel/travel-updates/underworld-that-kills-all-who-go-near/news-story/4c0a4127cb8cbdadbc3653137a03bde1

Hey this is pretty cool. A cave where they built an ancient temple dedicated to god's of the underworld was said to be a portal to hell that killed anyone who goes near it, including animals, this goes back to the Greek and Roman era. Now, scientists have measured deadly CO₂ emissions of up to 91% purity seeping out of the cave.

I wonder if anyone'll send in an expedition (be it with a drone or just air tanks) to see where the source of the CO₂ is.

[ChairmanPoo]

http://www.news.com.au/travel/travel-updates/underworld-that-kills-all-who-go-near/news-story/4c0a4127cb8cbdadbc3653137a03bde1

Hey this is pretty cool. A cave where they built an ancient temple dedicated to god's of the underworld was said to be a portal to hell that killed anyone who goes near it, including animals, this goes back to the Greek and Roman era. Now, scientists have measured deadly CO₂ emissions of up to 91% purity seeping out of the cave.

I wonder if anyone'll send in an expedition (be it with a drone or just air tanks) to see where the source of the CO₂ is.

HOW CO2 GETS INTO CAVES.
It is a proven fact that CO2 enters caves by several methods. Each method has a bearing on the gas ratio composition of the cave atmosphere and its variation to that of the above-ground atmosphere. The two main methods in which CO2 gets into caves are:-

1. CO2 is absorbed by the ground water as it passes through surface soil containing high concentrations of the gas, due to the decay of vegetation. This water percolates through the rock strata and enters the cave system, usually taking part in the calcite deposition cycle. In this instance the addition of extra CO2 to the cave atmosphere displaces O2 and nitrogen (N2).

2. Secondly, CO2 may be a by-product of organic and micro-organism metabolism or respiration by fauna such as bats or humans. Simply the oxygen concentration is reduced in proportion to the increase in CO2. The N2 concentration stays constant.

3. The other factor which one has to consider is that in deep caves where air movement is minimal, CO2 will build up in the lower part of the cave. So, even though the CO2 may have entered the cave by one of the two above mentioned methods, a very still cave atmosphere may allow CO2 to sink to the deepest part of the cave and displace O2 and N2. Thus building up the concentration of CO2 to a higher concentration, at the lowest point in the cave.

Even though CO2 is 1.57 times heavier than nitrogen and 1.38 times heavier than O2, it will have a tendency to disperse in an isolated volume of air, due to molecular diffusion. In other words a mixture of gasses will not separate into layers of various density gases if they are left for a long time in a still chamber. A possible explanation of the high concentration of CO2 in deep caves (with a relatively still atmosphere), is that CO2 is being produced metabolically or entering the cave via ground water at a greater rate than the gas can diffuse into the cave atmosphere, thus settling at the bottom of the cave because it is a dense gas.

[Teneb]

Thanks for writing this up so don't got to click on the link.

[ChairmanPoo]

what link?

[Teneb]

what link?

the news one provided by Reelya? I am now very confused

[Madman198237]

what link?

what link?

the news one provided by Reelya? I am now very confused

He wasn't writing out anything from that link, he was (presumably) quoting a DIFFERENT article that explains how gas gets into caves, since how the CO2 got into the cave isn't explained in the news article.

[ChairmanPoo]

Yes. TBH I found it an intriguing question when Teneb brought it up (though I found unlikely that just following the cave to the end would provide an answer)  so I looked it up.

Before reading that I was guessing on some volcanic leakage...