Kohagen, give the people air!

Whoops, wrong Arnie movie.

If it bleeds, we can kill it.

That's better. That's Predator. And predators are the subject of my latest article. Scientist says predation and biodiversity are tightly coupled (like my wife and I). What does this mean? Read the story (but ignore the comment at the bottom).

The story before that was about bacteria. Old bacteria. Hundreds of thousands of years old, in fact. Some say that old bacteria use the spore defence, whereby they shrivel up and cease metabolism and just hang on tight until things blow over. Now others are saying that without metabolism there would be no DNA repair, and the timespans involved mean DNA repair would be absolutely critical. You be the judge. Or foreman.

NEWSFLASH! Dingoes are cute

The Australian dingo has been tearing about the Australian mainland for about 5,000 years. Many dingologists believe it is at risk of disappearing completely due to hybridisation with domestic dog breeds. Especially common are the dinginese (Pekinese), the dingdog (bulldog) and the dingutt (mutt). Pure bred dingos are still to be found in southeast NSW, such as parts of Kosciuszko National Park. Recent satellite tracking research carried out on wild dogs by the NSW National Parks and Wildlife Service (NPWS) has determined that for the most part individual animals have very large home range sizes, mostly around 10000 hectares (ha) in size but up to 40000 ha. Within these home ranges the dogs travel constantly. The relatively large distances moved by animals further increases the risk of hybridisation, particularly if purebred dingoes 'interact' with other dogs that are genetically compromised (aren't we all?). Photo by Andrew Claridge, NPWS. Text from NPWS with an Artful Science twist.

Note: the usually reliable google system of discerning alternate spellings of words failed me here. 'dingoes' gets 312,000 hits, 'dingos' 291,000. That may seem like a big difference, but I am not confident it is spellistically significant.