flora_explora

@flora_explora@beehaw.org

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨YouTube's long unskippable ads may have finally met their match⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  On my phone I watch via the Grayjay app (I used newpipe before, but it wasn’t as reliable). If it asks me to login, I either use a VPN or watch YouTube in a Firefox-based browser with ublock. I haven’t seen ads since years…

  On my PC I also just use Firefox and ublock to watch without ads.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Bears love oral⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  At least it follows the normal text flow and you can read from top to bottom (if you ignore the user names). Not like on xitter, where you have to jump from the middle to top to bottom…

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Great Mug⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  I agree with the second part of that sentence, but who would think that they discover universal truths or any truths at all? The whole premise of science is that we cannot verify anything or find any real truth. We can just show that anything else is much more unlikely to be true.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨You have to be orchidding me!⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  Lol, have you not seen the OP or have ever looked at plant taxonomy before? There are many different angiosperm groups where it is dubious if we can apply some sort of species concept.

  And you talk about the species concept as if there was only just one?

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Aldo Leopold was right.⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  Hm, I have the opposite feeling as well. In a heavily fragmented area without any primary forests left (Germany) I still find sooo many species that were invisible to me before I dared to look. I cannot imagine how it must have been before when humans hadn’t had such an impact on the ecosystem.

  But then I also notice how all of these species exist despite our influence. How they try to keep on living in our cities. And that’s indeed very sad.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Grok can't apologize. Grok isn't sentient. So why do headlines keep saying it did?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  Great text!!! Thanks :)

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Breed back better, or whatever Biden said⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  What isn’t iconic in nature though? Plants also have turned into similar looking herbs and shrubs over and over again. Or look at epiphytes! If there is an available niche it will get filled. And since plants all start with more or less the same basics, they fill it similarly. Evolution likes to repurpose stuff.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨>:3)⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Wow, the Wikipedia article definitely is worth a read! This thing is over the top bad :O

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Choose your Nope Rope⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  You’re probably right, yeah…

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Choose your Nope Rope⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  It’s the Rod of Asclepius, not to be confused with the caduceus!

  There are various theories why this symbol was invented. The one that makes most sense to me is that it depicts a (formerly widespread) parasitic nematode being removed by wrapping it around a stick to slowly draw it out of the body.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Increasing the surface area of a substance increases its reaction rate. Proof by garlic.⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  A friend of mine (from Palestine) taught me another trick with garlic: mince the garlic, then generously sprinkle it with coriander powder and mash it all together with a fork. Add to a dish (like a sauce or a stew) when it’s already mostly cooked, just at the end. It has a pretty intense flavor and is really yummy.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Contadont deny it.⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Can anyone explain this to me? I cannot find anything searching for contadont :/

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Ideal Beach Body⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  I like this list of instructions on how to have a beach body best:

  • have a body
  • go to the beach
• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨In 2015, the Fortingall Yew, one of the oldest trees in Europe, decided trans rights are tree rights and switched its sex to female 🏳️‍⚧️ eat shit transphobes⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Well, plants really don’t have to deal with our binary bullshit. Most of them don’t have any sex because they have perfect flowers anyways, meaning their flowers have male and female gametes.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Fun science fact⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  If Santa is the Queen, there needs to be some male drones impregnating him. It would make sense that the reindeer would fly to the freshly hatched Santas to mate with them. The sledge is only their form of wings then.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Wtf is that⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  As a biologist, it is always surprising to me, how frequently people don’t realize that all plants in our environment have some sort of reproduction. Like, that grass also has flowers and all house plants would also flower (except for ferns) if they were growing under the right conditions. Plant blindness is real.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Latin names suck⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Just that this “robin” isn’t one, it actually is a thrush. A robin would be Erithacus. They are both in different families even (and also look pretty different).

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Choose your fighters, chat.⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  I really dislike cultivars like this where they have been changed so much it doesn’t look like actual plants…

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Pika Pika⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  Zarathustra kann mich mal :P

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Pika Pika⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  You mean Pica pica?

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Pika Pika⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  Confusingly, there is the animal in the post that is commonly called pika (Ochotona daurica). What I had to think of first was Pica pica though (the Eurasian magpie)

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨South Korea police say 120,000 home cameras hacked for 'sexploitation' footage⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  South Korea actually has a major problem with sexism and gender-based violence. Especially with men secretly filming women! It doesn’t seem unlikely that the filming of the gynecologist clinic was done in secret as well. Just because something is illegal doesn’t mean it actually gets punished.

  There is also the larger context in which women experience daily sexism and violence. This fundamentally changes how they react to further violence. Victims of sexualized violence often think of themselves as responsible for the violence they receive, because society constantly tells them they are at fault! Victim blaming is part of society’s effort to tell women they are worthless and to keep control over them. If you solely focus on how the victims of this act of violence are at fault here, you are part of the problem.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Ya yeet!⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  Funnily enough, I just watched this very informative video on why the lactase-producing gene is actually not necessary at all for you to eat and digest dairy. If your gur biome can digest lactose, you are completely fine ;)

  Also, it feels intuitive to think that there are these genetic differences between Europeans and Asians etc. But this is much more complex than you would think. Humans are much more diverse genetically, especially people from Africa. If you test whole populations of people you can maybe see some generic trends, but this does not help predict anything on an individual level. There is way too much variation possible for you to reliably predict a person’s genome. And as hinted above, the genetic variation is much higher on the African continent, where populations are genetically more similar to populations outside of Africa then to other populations in Africa. That’s why there is zero biological basis to racism btw, it is a social construct in its entirety!

  Analogous to this is the difference between sexes. The variation within one sex is much higher than between sexes. And also, there is so much fuzziness in how we classify sexes with a plethora of edge cases. That’s why sexism and gender stereotypes are also just social constructs and don’t rely on biological reality.

  So saying anything about the bloodline of your child really is meaningless. Unless we’re speaking of individual genetic differences passed down from your ancestors. Then you could calculate certain probabilities based on larger population data how likely it is that your child may have some genetic diseases etc. But even then you wouldn’t know if it first actually had a certain genetic mutation and secondly if this mutation will be expressed throughout your child’s life. So this is also not really predictive…

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨South Korea police say 120,000 home cameras hacked for 'sexploitation' footage⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  if you get mugged going through a sketchy neighborhood, that does not make it ok for a robber, but it is a valid question whether it was really good idea for you to go there.

  This is classical victim blaming! Same like when people ask women what they were wearing when they experience sexualized violence. It shouldn’t matter!

  You don’t know anything about the context or what patients have said and done in this clinic. You just assume everyone was OK with it.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨South Korea police say 120,000 home cameras hacked for 'sexploitation' footage⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  What the actual fuck? This is victim blaming! Instead of focusing on the responsibility of the perpetrators you keep focusing on the victims. It obviously is a bad idea to have cameras in places like a gynecologist clinic. But that doesn’t give anyone the right to abuse the footage. And even if you want to focus on why there were cameras in a gynecologist clinic, how can you first blame the victims instead of actually talking about the people who put the cameras there??

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Ya yeet!⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  Yeah, that one is really weird!

  As a biologist, my first thought would maybe be what physiological needs my child has and how it will interact with the natural environment. And what strange foods it could potentially eat.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Honestly wtf?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  Oh wow, didn’t know that! :O

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨zingiberales⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  Glad you could get something out of it :)

  I’m not a teacher, just very passionate about biology and pretty active on iNaturalist. That’s where the vast majority of my knowledge of taxonomy comes from. Definitely a recommendation for everyone who is curious about their environment (no prior knowledge needed)

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨zingiberales⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  These are different branches on the tree of life, specifically within the plants. If you imagine this tree of life, species would be the tips of the smallest branches. And the branches itself would be different units (=taxa) that lead to various branches. So in taxonomy we use special words for these different units/taxa dependent on how far back they are removed from the species. Like, you may have heard of a genus. For example we as humans are the species Homo sapiens and our genus is the first part of that: Homo. There were also other species in that genus, like the Neanderthals (Homo neanderthalensis) or the Denisovans (Homo denisova). This works the same in plants. For example ginger is actually the species Zingiber officinale. There are also other gingers, like Zingiber spectabile. If we go one level up the branch, we reach the family ginger is in: Zingiberaceae. In this “ginger family” we have other plants of different genera like turmeric (Curcuma longa) or cardamom (Elettaria cardamomum). Notice how the first word of these species isn’t Zingiberales, because they are in other genera. So, Zingiber is more closely related to any other Zingiber than it is to the other plants in Zingiberaceae. And one level above, Zingiber is more closely related to any plant in the Zingiberaceae than to any other plant. Taxonomy is based on who evolved from whom, that’s why it is important what are the closest relatives to a given species.

  This is fundamentally what taxonomy is about. From there on we can go up the branches of the tree of life and explore the branches that connect to even more species. If we go up one major level from the family we reach the “order” (I’m simplifying here, taxonomy is much more intricate than that). An order of plants contains various families and the OP spoke of the order Zingiberales (ending in -ales). The “words” I’ve used are families (ending in -aceae) as you might have expected from Zingiberaceae above. And the families I’ve listed in the first half are all within the same order of Zingiberales. These are all very common ornamental or otherwise cultivated plants. You may know Marantaceae as calantheas/goeppertias/prayer plants, Heliconiaceae as lobster-claws. Other important members of this order are also bananas (Musaceae).

  In the second half of my comment I talk about Poales and seaweeds not being Spermatophyta. So, Poales as you might have guessed from the ending is a separate order of plants. In it are most prominently the grasses (Poaceae) OP spoke about in their post. And seaweeds not even being Spermatophyta means they aren’t even seed plants.

  I hope this explains it :)

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨zingiberales⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  Woah, what? Even Marantaceae, Costaceae and Heliconiaceae??

  As others have pointed out, the second to last panel doesn’t make much sense. There are officially only 8 families in the Zingiberales. Poaceae are obviously in the Poales and seaweeds are not even Spermatophyta… If you meant seagrasses then those are in the Alismatales, so in a different monocot order.