posted by
fallon_ash at 12:47pm on 04/06/2010 under qotd
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Little wordings that made me smile while I was reading my Ecology textbook.
"Malaria parasites, for example, infect mosquitoes during one life stage as a means of getting from one human to another. Or, perhaps, they use humans to get from one mosquito to the next." p. 10
Because it's too easy to think it's always about us...
"Whether a rabbit runs fast or not is irrelevant to evolution. All that matters is whether fast rabbits leave more offspring, perhaps because they are more likely to escape foxes. One presumes that foxes would prefer to chase slow rabbits, but, alas, by catching the slow ones, they end up favoring the reproduction by faster ones." p. 119
"Kettlewell recaptured moths by attracting them to a mercury vapor lamp in the center of the woods or to caged virgin females at the edge of the woods. (Only males could be used in the study because females are attracted neither to lights nor to virgin females.)" p. 122
"So 1018 g is a trillion (1012) metric tons, a quantity called a teraton (TT). Numbers on the order of 1018 are generally reserved for astronomy and the federal budget, but we'll use teraton here as a unit of measure to keep the number of zeros to a minimum." p. 486-487
~The Economy of Nature, 6th edition, Robert E. Ricklefs
"Malaria parasites, for example, infect mosquitoes during one life stage as a means of getting from one human to another. Or, perhaps, they use humans to get from one mosquito to the next." p. 10
Because it's too easy to think it's always about us...
"Whether a rabbit runs fast or not is irrelevant to evolution. All that matters is whether fast rabbits leave more offspring, perhaps because they are more likely to escape foxes. One presumes that foxes would prefer to chase slow rabbits, but, alas, by catching the slow ones, they end up favoring the reproduction by faster ones." p. 119
"Kettlewell recaptured moths by attracting them to a mercury vapor lamp in the center of the woods or to caged virgin females at the edge of the woods. (Only males could be used in the study because females are attracted neither to lights nor to virgin females.)" p. 122
"So 1018 g is a trillion (1012) metric tons, a quantity called a teraton (TT). Numbers on the order of 1018 are generally reserved for astronomy and the federal budget, but we'll use teraton here as a unit of measure to keep the number of zeros to a minimum." p. 486-487
~The Economy of Nature, 6th edition, Robert E. Ricklefs
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