Archives for June 2017 | Nature Documentaries

Home » 2017 » June

Hover Fly (Spilomyia longicornis) on Eupatorium altissimum (Asteraceae)

June 29, 2017 at 10:33 am / Natural history, NatureDocumentaries.org, Short Observations, Video

Hover Fly (Spilomyia longicornis) visiting Eupatorium altissimum (Asteraceae) filmed in Georgia State Botanical Gardens, Athens, GA, USA on September 16th, 2012. Submitted as a short observation. When we talk about pollination bees immediately occupy our imagination almost as a cerebral Pavlovian reflex. Flies are big component of the insect pollinators yet they rarely get peoples attention. The insect family Syrphidae (aka syrphid flies) has more than more than 6000 species categorized in 200 genera worldwide. They stand out with their […]

Continue reading »
A Deeper Creek – The Watchable Waters of Appalachia

June 28, 2017 at 10:55 am / Ecological Documentaries, Natural history, Video, Wildlife Documentaries

Ecofocus Film Festival of Athens GA featured a number of short documentaries including Hidden Rivers of Appalachia filmed on location in Conesauga River by Freshwaters Illustrated. Like birdwatching, riverwatching could be a great immersive activity and have the potential to become a citizen science project. A Deeper Creek shows us how this could be done. Similar to organizing a BioBlitz, snorkeling in a river can generate a lot of informative observations. Rivers have a rich body of natural history and […]

Continue reading »
Open-air Processional Column Termites in Bukit Timah Nature Preserve, Singapore (2016)

June 17, 2017 at 5:05 pm / Natural history, NatureDocumentaries.org, Short Observations, Video, Wildlife Documentaries

Social insects are a major force in land habitats. A mature leaf-cutter ant colony can consume leaf material equal to a weight of a cow every day. Termites are another insect group (related to cockroaches) evolved independently to achieve sociality. Their effects on ecosystems in terms of material and nutrient cycling can rival those of ants. Higher termites (family Termitidae) feed on a wide variety of plant-based material, including decaying wood, leaf litter, humus, fungi, lichens, dung, and grasses. Non-wood-feeding […]

Continue reading »
The Diatomist – Matthew Killip (2014)

June 17, 2017 at 12:00 am / Natural history, Video

Klaus Kemp, is a self-taught master of the Victorian art of diatom arrangement. After his first exposure to the intricate patterns of algae by the German microscopist J.D. Möller (1844 – 1907) he was completely hooked. Diatoms are single celled algae. They are the most common form of phytoplanktons and form the base of the aquatic food chains. They represent the earliest plant lineage long before land plants evolved at about 700 million years ago. Their cell walls are made […]

Continue reading »
Seed Dispersal and Habitat Fragmentation | HHMI BioInteractive – Danny Schmidt (2017)

June 10, 2017 at 7:06 pm / Ecological Documentaries, Natural history, Video, Wildlife Documentaries

Forests are under intense pressure. In the tropical forests, between 50-90 % of the canopy trees depend on animals for seed dispersal. Even in temperate forests animals such as deer, moose, boar and even bears disperse seeds. Today due to hunting for bush meat many tropical forests are becoming depleted of their seed dispersers. Here in this HHMI documentary, the researchers Andres Link and Carolina Urbina Malo of Los Andes University in Colombia in Colombia track brown spider monkeys to […]

Continue reading »
Keeling’s Curve: The Story of CO2 – Science Bulletins – AMNH

June 7, 2017 at 10:09 pm / Global Patterns, Video

Keeling’s Curve: The Story of CO2 was produced by Laura Allen for the Science Bulletins of the American Museum of Natural History. Science Bulletins is a production of the National Center for Science Literacy, Education, and Technology (NCSLET), part of the Department of Education at the American Museum of Natural History. Ice cores drilled from the glaciers, Greenland and the Antarctic have shown that carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere is tightly linked to the average temperature of the Earth. […]

Continue reading »
The Cuckoo – Artur Homan (2013)

June 7, 2017 at 12:42 pm / Ecological Documentaries, Evolution, Natural history, Video, Wildlife Documentaries

In the James Bond movie Spectre there’s a reference to the cuckoo bird in two scenes. The evil villain Spectre leers: “I see you! Cuckoo!” when he detects Bond in the classic evil assembly room scene. In the other scene towards the end of the movie Spectre reveals why he considers Bond as a cuckoo. In order to understand the reference we must know the biology of the Common cuckoo bird (Cuculus canorus). The European common cuckoo is a well […]

Continue reading »