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	<title>Your Wild Life</title>
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	<link>http://www.yourwildlife.org</link>
	<description>Exploring the biodiversity in us, on us and around us</description>
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		<title>Time to Meet Your Mites!</title>
		<link>http://www.yourwildlife.org/2013/05/time-to-meet-your-mites/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=time-to-meet-your-mites</link>
		<comments>http://www.yourwildlife.org/2013/05/time-to-meet-your-mites/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Fri, 17 May 2013 21:35:24 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Holly</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Events]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Mite portfolio]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Participate]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Projects]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Video]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.yourwildlife.org/?p=3277</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[May we scrape your face for SCIENCE? I imagine this is not a question one generally expects to be asked when visiting his or her friendly neighborhood natural history museum. And yet it’s one we’ve asked on a fairly regular basis during public outreach events over the last few months at the Nature Research Center at the North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences. You would be AMAZED (I know I have been) at the number of enthusiastic volunteers who have stepped right up to participate, curious to learn a something about the tiny organisms that call their pores home. In January 2013, we launched Meet Your Mites, our latest public science project to investigate the common, but poorly understood species in our daily lives. Our subject: Demodex mites, the microscopic parasites living in the hair follicles of numerous mammals, including humans. We’re interested in studying the evolution and diversification of Demodex mites – particularly the two species associated with humans, Demodex folliculorum and Demodex brevis. Specifically, we want to use the information encoded in Demodex DNA to map the mites’  “family tree” and see how closely that tracks our own human family tree. Our first task was to physically collect the critters – something we knew would be tricky. Although previous research (based on human cadavers) suggests that all adults have them, most researchers have only been able to collect mites off of 15% of the people they sampled when gently expressing sebum from pores (much like what an aesthetician ...]]></description>
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		<title>Genomics of the Ratopolis</title>
		<link>http://www.yourwildlife.org/2013/05/genomics-of-the-ratopolis/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=genomics-of-the-ratopolis</link>
		<comments>http://www.yourwildlife.org/2013/05/genomics-of-the-ratopolis/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Wed, 15 May 2013 18:30:37 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Guest Contributor</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Explainer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Indoor Evolution]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Stories of Your Wild Life]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.yourwildlife.org/?p=3231</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Today we have another in our series of guest posts by participants in the upcoming meeting on indoor evolution at the National Evolutionary Synthesis Center in June. Jason Munshi-South, currently an assistant professor of biology at Baruch College, studies the evolution and ecology of vertebrates in New York City. Every New Yorker has a rat story.  Narrative elements of these tales often include municipal garbage cans or deserted subway platforms, and in the worst cases pant legs or toilets. NYC’s rats are Rattus norvegicus, the Norway or brown rat.  With the assistance of humans and their mobile cargo, brown rats hitched rides from Mongolia and central Asia outwards to agricultural centers and cities around the world. The history of rats is inseparable from the history of NYC. Rats were introduced to Manhattan by British colonials sometime between the 1740’s and the Revolutionary War, and witnessed one of the greatest human migrations up to that point. Manhattan’s population exploded from 60,000 to over 1.8 million human residents (a 30-fold increase) during the 19th century as European immigrants arrived in huge numbers. Modern sanitation efforts did not commence until the 1890’s after decades of public health crises and official corruption at City Hall. During this period, the rat population must have vastly expanded, leading to what NYC’s premier rodentologist, Dr. Bobby Corrigan, refers to as the “Ratopolis”.  After sanitation and the introduction of effective rodenticides, the rat population may have largely stabilized in the 20thcentury. The evolutionary history of rats, their myriad ...]]></description>
		<wfw:commentRss>http://www.yourwildlife.org/2013/05/genomics-of-the-ratopolis/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
		<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
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		<item>
		<title>Tiny Tourists Invade the Big City</title>
		<link>http://www.yourwildlife.org/2013/05/tiny-tourists-invade-the-big-city/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=tiny-tourists-invade-the-big-city</link>
		<comments>http://www.yourwildlife.org/2013/05/tiny-tourists-invade-the-big-city/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Tue, 14 May 2013 19:16:01 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Guest Contributor</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Stories of Your Wild Life]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Your Wild Life Team]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.yourwildlife.org/?p=3212</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Today we have a guest post from Mary Jane Epps, post-doc and chief beetle wrangler at Your Wild Life.  Recently, Mary Jane has begun investigating the associations between beetles and humans, particularly within human dwellings, including the remains of homes in ancient Egypt. Back in March I accompanied our urban ecology team on a trip to New York City to study the effects of Superstorm Sandy on urban arthropods. Admittedly as a natural historian who feels more at home in the hills of Appalachia than in the urban jungle, I did not anticipate that New York City would be a bastion of wild nature. However, one of the wonderful things about nature is that it can be found everywhere, and after my trip I had to consider that the nature found in New York City is not only wild, but may be among the most ecologically consequential. I scooted town a few days before the rest of the crew, and lucky for me Elsa Youngsteadt and Lea Shell stopped by Chinatown and picked up a thank-you fungus for me. Not just any fungus, mind you (and certainly not an unpleasant or itchy one), but a Ganoderma lucidum, or reishi, a beautiful red ‘varnish conk’ famed—thanks to its alleged medicinal properties—for over thousands of years of Chinese history. I was thrilled to receive such a fabulous mycological souvenir and left it on my desk as a trophy of sorts. You see, I love fungi—not only are they in everything (us, plants, ...]]></description>
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		<slash:comments>1</slash:comments>
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		<item>
		<title>The Unresolved Mysteries of the Mold in Your House</title>
		<link>http://www.yourwildlife.org/2013/05/the-unresolved-mysteries-of-the-mold-in-your-house/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=the-unresolved-mysteries-of-the-mold-in-your-house</link>
		<comments>http://www.yourwildlife.org/2013/05/the-unresolved-mysteries-of-the-mold-in-your-house/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Tue, 07 May 2013 22:26:59 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Guest Contributor</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Events]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Indoor Evolution]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Stories of Your Wild Life]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.yourwildlife.org/?p=3189</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Today we have another in our series of guest posts by participants in the upcoming meeting on indoor evolution at the National Evolutionary Synthesis Center in June. Rachel Adams is a post-doctoral researcher at the University of California at Berkeley who studies the dispersal of fungal spores into homes. In the early 1940s, the promise of the drug penicillin far exceeded its production. Scientists were on a quest to find a strain of the penicillin producing fungus, Penicillium, that would produce more of the “mold juice.” In the most rotten citizen science project ever to be staged, researchers at the then-named Northern Regional Research Laboratory in Peoria, Illinois, requested moldy fruits and vegetables be mailed from around the world. Military personnel were asked to collect soil samples from far-flung locations. The scientists even tasked a lab employee named Mary Hunt with collecting spoiled foodstuffs around town, a task that earned her the nickname “Moldy Mary.” Eventually, a golden-hued mold now identified as Penicillium rubens growing on a cantaloupe in Peoria emerged as the magic strain for producing larger quantities of penicillin. Few of us can claim to have discovered a mold in our homes that saved millions of lives, but we’ve all had molds in our homes – and, in most cases, the evolution of those mold species remains mysterious. These mysteries call on scientists and citizens to scour the world for answers about environments as ordinary as countertops and basements. Some molds, such as Penicillium, are extremely common in ...]]></description>
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		<item>
		<title>Carpe Cicada!</title>
		<link>http://www.yourwildlife.org/2013/05/carpe-cicada/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=carpe-cicada</link>
		<comments>http://www.yourwildlife.org/2013/05/carpe-cicada/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Tue, 07 May 2013 20:35:41 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Holly</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Audio]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Participate]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Stories of Your Wild Life]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Your Wild Life Team]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.yourwildlife.org/?p=3172</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[As a kid, I never could sleep well on Christmas Eve. The anticipation of Santa’s visit  (and the pile of wrapped presents he would leave behind) always had me so giddy that I could only doze off for a few minutes (or maybe an hour or so) at a time. I’d awake heart racing, eyes popped open wide, and check the clock. 2:23am. 3:42am. 4:15am. 5:08am. The hands of time seemed to click forward so slowly. FINALLY. 6:30a. I roused my siblings and bounded down the steps to behold the glory under the Christmas tree. It’s with this same child-like anticipation and excitement that I keep refreshing reports on Cicada-Tracker. You see, the mass emergence of the 17-year periodical cicadas is nearly upon us. And for bug geeks like me, it’s the entomological equivalent of Christmas! I grew up in Cincinnati, Ohio, and vividly remember the emergence of the Brood X periodical cicadas when I was a third-grader. I can only surmise that even back then I was a bug geek in the making; rather than shriek and hide as so many of my classmates did on the playground, I was fascinated by the red-eyed, orange-veined beauties. I spent my recess time on the playground collecting the exoskeletons shed by the emerging cicadas and marveling at the noise they created in the treetops. When Brood X reappeared 17 years later, I was poised to marvel, appreciate, and study these little wonders. I had the great fortune of being in graduate ...]]></description>
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		<slash:comments>1</slash:comments>
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		<item>
		<title>How teaching high school prepared me for NYC</title>
		<link>http://www.yourwildlife.org/2013/05/how-teaching-high-school-prepared-me-for-nyc/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=how-teaching-high-school-prepared-me-for-nyc</link>
		<comments>http://www.yourwildlife.org/2013/05/how-teaching-high-school-prepared-me-for-nyc/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Mon, 06 May 2013 15:36:20 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Lea Shell</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Education]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Stories of Your Wild Life]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Your Wild Life Team]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.yourwildlife.org/?p=3155</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[In a former life I was a math teacher at a public high school in rural Mississippi. One day I put up a math problem about how to calculate the probability that you’d have to wait for a certain amount of time at a crosswalk. Now, there was always push-back on any new concept I introduced (math classes aren’t exactly winning the popular vote for “favorite class” in high school), but this particular problem had an interesting response: “Ma’am,” the student said as he raised his hand, “we ain’t goin’ to New York City, we never gonna use this stuff!” His exasperation was met with cheers from his classmates. All of them looking at me thinking, challenging, “What’s your next move? Tell us when we’re going to New York City and we’ll need this stuff.” Trying not to be defeated I reminded them that while their town was not NYC, it did, in fact, have crosswalks. And that if they were in NYC, a place they could conceivably visit one day as they are all going to be adults in the near future with access to transportation, they probably wouldn’t be standing there calculating the answer, they would just wait, or dodge traffic, or both. Breathe. The eye rolls have subsided at this point. But let’s try the problem anyways, shall we? Let’s figure out how long it takes to get to the other side. Fast forward a few years when that adventure in the classroom led me to Raleigh, ...]]></description>
		<wfw:commentRss>http://www.yourwildlife.org/2013/05/how-teaching-high-school-prepared-me-for-nyc/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
		<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
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		<item>
		<title>Top 10 ways an ant’s house is similar to your house</title>
		<link>http://www.yourwildlife.org/2013/05/top-10-ways-an-ants-house-is-similar-to-your-house/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=top-10-ways-an-ants-house-is-similar-to-your-house</link>
		<comments>http://www.yourwildlife.org/2013/05/top-10-ways-an-ants-house-is-similar-to-your-house/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Wed, 01 May 2013 18:20:19 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Guest Contributor</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Explainer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Indoor Evolution]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Stories of Your Wild Life]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Your Wild Life Team]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.yourwildlife.org/?p=3134</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Today, we have a guest post from ant biologist, Clint Penick. Clint joined our team back in January and has hit the ground running with research in NYC and North Carolina. He has a particular fascination with biomimicry. When the region of Cappadocia found itself divided between hostile nations, rather than flee, the people decided to dig in. The landscape was composed of soft volcanic rock carved by erosion over millions of years into odd towers and pockmarked cliffs. Taking a cue from the landscape itself, the people of Cappadocia dug fortresses into the rock to escape persecution from the early Romans, and later, hostile Arabs. In some places, these fortresses grew into underground cities that could house thousands of people. Some reached ten levels deep, and they featured kitchens, sleeping quarters, chapels, storage chambers, and vast defense networks. They had doorways that could be sealed using heavy millstones, and they had walls with strategic holes to hurl spears or pour hot oil on their enemies below. Located in what is now modern Turkey, these underground dwellings have remained largely intact, and visitors have been quick to point out what they remind them of: the nests of ants. Humans have looked to ants as parallels of our own societies since the time our ancestors first began to settle into cities. The ancient Greeks mused on the behavior of the ant and the grasshopper, and the Old Testament even gave ants a cameo (Go to the Ant, thou sluggard&#8230;Proverbs 6:6). In ...]]></description>
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		<slash:comments>1</slash:comments>
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		<title>How Wild is New York City? Reflections from ScioTeen</title>
		<link>http://www.yourwildlife.org/2013/04/how-wild-is-new-york-city-reflections-from-scioteen/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=how-wild-is-new-york-city-reflections-from-scioteen</link>
		<comments>http://www.yourwildlife.org/2013/04/how-wild-is-new-york-city-reflections-from-scioteen/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Mon, 29 Apr 2013 19:38:14 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Guest Contributor</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Education]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Events]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Projects]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.yourwildlife.org/?p=3115</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Today we have a guest post from Andrew Collins. We met Andrew while doing fieldwork on the streets of NYC and have been impressed by the innovative work he’s doing to improve student engagement in science research and conservation. Andrew recently attended ScienceOnline Teen, and shares his experience below. Enjoy! Beaver! Fox! They called out. An Owl! Looks like a Coyote! As the camera trap videos continued to play, more and more species took form. Yet while the students alertly watched on, listing one wild animal after another, we sat patiently … waiting to reveal a secret. On April 13th, scientists, journalists, artists, students and educators came together for a day of learning at the ScienceOnline Teen conference. The goal of this event was to build connections between students &#38; teachers and the online scientific community and to discuss how new media is changing the world of science. Our session at “#ScioTeen” was designed to give students a head start on a research adventure (Check out the slides from my talk here!). Those camera trap videos weren’t taken from Yosemite National Park or along the Appalachian Trail. They were taken right here in New York City, from parks and wooded areas just within the five boroughs. This revelation surprised most students in our session &#8212; Where in the world are these wild animals living and what are they doing wandering around the Big Apple? When we think New York City, we almost always think urban jungle – a land of concrete ...]]></description>
		<wfw:commentRss>http://www.yourwildlife.org/2013/04/how-wild-is-new-york-city-reflections-from-scioteen/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
		<slash:comments>1</slash:comments>
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		<item>
		<title>The secret (and ancient) lives of houseplants</title>
		<link>http://www.yourwildlife.org/2013/04/the-secret-and-ancient-lives-of-houseplants/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=the-secret-and-ancient-lives-of-houseplants</link>
		<comments>http://www.yourwildlife.org/2013/04/the-secret-and-ancient-lives-of-houseplants/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Mon, 22 Apr 2013 01:57:27 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Guest Contributor</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Events]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Feature]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Indoor Evolution]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Stories of Your Wild Life]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.yourwildlife.org/?p=3094</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Today we have a guest post by Laura Jane Martin, a participant in the upcoming meeting on indoor evolution at the National Evolutionary Synthesis Center in June. Laura is a writer and PhD candidate at Cornell University, where she researches the ecology and conservation of wetland plants. Follow her new blog: https://sedges.wordpress.com/ My local coffee shop is populated with potted plants. The four closest to my favorite table are Zanzibar gem, bamboo palm, jade, and pothos – species from eastern Africa, Madagascar, South Africa, and China. People have grown plants in pots for centuries, but it’s only recently that houseplants proliferated. The story of how plants moved indoors is a complex one that involves botanical imperialism, the horticultural explosion of the Victorian era, lighting and heating technologies of the 1900s, and changing fashions. As European countries colonized the Americas, Africa, Asia, and Oceania, they increasingly imported botanical specimens. These specimens served many purposes: food, scientific study, commercial production, ornament. Soon orangeries became popular among the elite, structures built to keep botanical specimens alive, like the building at Versailles that housed King Louis XIV’s 3,000 orange trees. When glass became more available in the Victorian era, greenhouses came into fashion. The upper class and aspiring botanists built elaborate structures like those at Kew Gardens. New methods of specimen transportation continued to expand the intercontinental plant trade, like the Wardian case, a glass planter. By the turn of the twentieth century hobbyists could easily order Chinese bananas, Brazilian rubber trees, Iranian jasmine. ...]]></description>
		<wfw:commentRss>http://www.yourwildlife.org/2013/04/the-secret-and-ancient-lives-of-houseplants/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
		<slash:comments>1</slash:comments>
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		<item>
		<title>Let Me Introduce You to Your Tiny Neighbors</title>
		<link>http://www.yourwildlife.org/2013/04/let-me-introduce-you-to-your-tiny-neighbors/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=let-me-introduce-you-to-your-tiny-neighbors</link>
		<comments>http://www.yourwildlife.org/2013/04/let-me-introduce-you-to-your-tiny-neighbors/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Mon, 15 Apr 2013 23:10:09 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Guest Contributor</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Books]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Feature]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Projects]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Stories of Your Wild Life]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.yourwildlife.org/?p=3056</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[**Today we have a guest post from the one and only, Dr. Eleanor Spicer Rice, author of the NEW eBook, Dr. Eleanor’s Book of Common Ants.** As a myrmecologist, I’m always intrigued by people’s reactions to ants. From total disinterest to full-on flailing freakout, many people feel an ant is an ant is an ant. While the faces of these six-legged picnic ruiners might blend together from our giant’s height, the ants surrounding us are incredibly diverse. More than 20,000 ant species crawl around the earth. In North America, nearly 1,000 species creep between blades of grass in our back yards, make homes in our acorns, and shake with the leaves blowing in our trees. No matter where we live, in a high-rise city apartment or a hut in the middle of the woods, we spend every day with thousands of these creatures shuffling all around us. Who are they? What are they doing? How can we tell one ant from the next? While we’ve long had a good idea of who’s sharing space with us, until recently we never actually knew what ant species were the most common in the United States. Thanks to the School of Ants project, under the direction of Rob Dunn and Andrea Lucky, we’ve started to figure out who those common species are. This massive citizen science project invites people across the country to collect ants from their backyards and neighborhoods and mail in their samples. A team of ant experts then goes to ...]]></description>
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