[FRIAM] Miller, miller moths everywhere...

Tue May 19 13:56:55 EDT 2020

The moths seem to have vanished from my house in Albuquerque. Yesterday
they covered every outdoor surface, and now I can't even find a corpse of
one. Did they all end up in Pojoaque getting nibbled on by chickens?

Cody Smith

On Tue, May 19, 2020 at 10:31 AM Marcus Daniels <marcus at snoutfarm.com>
wrote:

> Oh you mean an ODE..   <ducks/>
>
>
>
> *From: *Friam <friam-bounces at redfish.com> on behalf of Prof David West <
> profwest at fastmail.fm>
> *Reply-To: *The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <
> friam at redfish.com>
> *Date: *Tuesday, May 19, 2020 at 9:30 AM
> *To: *"friam at redfish.com" <friam at redfish.com>
> *Subject: *Re: [FRIAM] Miller, miller moths everywhere...
>
>
>
> Nick is a big fan of scientific story - at least "popular science"
> conveyed with stories - ala "Private Lives of Garden Birds" by Calvin
> Simonds.
>
>
>
> davew
>
>
>
>
>
> On Tue, May 19, 2020, at 10:13 AM, thompnickson2 at gmail.com wrote:
>
> Steve,
>
>
>
> Re stories, that’s probably why I was drawn to Darwinism.  Every Darwinian
> explanation, no matter how sophisticated, is a story, a historical
> narrative, arising from plausible suppositions about the way things were.
> Last time I read the literature, the mitochondrial data on humans suggested
> that we arose from a single, smallish, group in southern Africa.  If that’s
> not an idiographic (as opposed to nomothetic) account, I don’t know what is.
>
>
>
> Nick
>
> Nicholas Thompson
>
> Emeritus Professor of Ethology and Psychology
>
> Clark University
>
> ThompNickSon2 at gmail.com
>
> https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> *From:* Friam <friam-bounces at redfish.com> *On Behalf Of *Steve Smith
>
> *Sent:* Tuesday, May 19, 2020 9:04 AM
>
> *To:* friam at redfish.com
>
> *Subject:* Re: [FRIAM] Miller, miller moths everywhere...
>
>
>
> Nick -
>
> I *like* this kind of anecdotal/vernacular science.   I think Glen might
> refer to these stories/ideas as "just so stories" because they seem to be
> post-hoc fitting of simple yet in some sense apt models to anecdotal data
> gathered ad-hoc but widely.    I think I understand (and agree) with his
> (implied) judgment of them as being "real science" but they smack of
> something more than "wishful thinking", maybe "whimsical thinking"?  And a
> sort of proto-science.  Or a collective form of knowledge/wisdom formation
> which lacks the formal rigor of modern science.  Related to what Dave
> appeals to with us perhaps in Jung and other ideas of collective
> consciousness.   A step away from believing that the cosmos and everyday
> life are ordered by a (the) angry/benevolent god(esses) toward believing
> something perhaps equally absurd, that everything is ordered by mathematics.
>
> My father was second-generation college educated... with a BS in biology
> preparing him for an advanced degree in Forestry (soil and range science),
> and his parents before him both held BS degrees in Geology.   But they were
> all still rooted in a style of understanding the world (minerals, plants
> and animals, and people) which was roughly animistic... they all still
> lived physically close to the earth and virtually all of their relatives
> were still living in the hills and hollers of Appalachia.  This could
> easily explain why I "like" the anecdotal/vernacular and distrust the
> *over* application of mathematics.
>
> I've rattled on before about the *explanatory* power of models and the
> hypotheses they embody vs *predictive* or *communicative* or *descriptive*
> or even *inspirational*.   These are not orthogonal, but I think still
> useful...  a "descriptive" model of the utlity/power of scientific
> thinking/modeling?
>
> - Steve
>
> FWIW... re: Jon's report on their nutritive value, my young chickens (6
> weeks today?) have been foraging in our courtyard for about a week during
> the day.   At first they showed significant interest in the flies that
> would occasion their feeder, but seemed to learn quickly that they were not
> fast enough to catch them, and soon discovered the myriad ground insects
> that they could find by pecking and scratching.   I was sitting on a low
> wall next to a couple of them... they seem to like the company of humans
> and will come close and do their foraging near me, even though I rarely
> hand feed them.   I looked down and one was swallowing a very large
> grey-brown object which I am now sure was a miller.  The miller moth
> infestation/epidemic/peak at my house (near the Rio Grande) seems to have
> lagged that of the one in Santa Fe and even just up the Pojoaque Valley
> where people have been reporting the deluge for weeks.   Ours just started
> a few days ago.
>
> Speaking of anecdotal and just-so science stories.   I find it fascinating
> to note that these birds, supposedly not THAT removed from their wild
> ancestors are constructed from a single *large enough to eat for breakfast*
> egg-cell in about 20 days and emerge almost fully able to survive alone
> (though they benefit from the warmth and protection and guidance of a
> mother hen, or some people with a heat-lamp and some agri-industrially
> formulated food and our own curiosity).  And then, not too much later, they
> begin to "shed an egg" nearly daily (if you keep taking them away) which if
> fertilized, would repeat the construction, growth process right in front of
> my eyes.   Aside from their daily egg-gift, I look forward to their help in
> insect control in my garden.... I can tolerate many pests in the garden but
> some years we get grasshoppers and squash bugs, each who can decimate a
> crop.
>
> I've always enjoyed watching the Sphynx/Hummingbird moths around the
> homestead, but did not know their larval form was the "dreaded" tomato
> worm.   Last year, I was surprised to see that along with my tomatoes, they
> had discovered the volunteer datura that come up here and there around the
> property and two or three had ganged up on one plant and stripped it bare
> of leaves.    I wondered at how their metabolism handled the kind of
> alkaloids that humans (and cattle?) experience as "loco weed".  The datura,
> with it's heavily cholorphylled and thick stems seemed to survive just fine
> and put out a fresh bounty of (smaller?) leaves and returned to it's course
> of producing flowers to be pollinated by (also the sphynx?) and then a
> seedpod to lead to this year's surprise sprouts?!
>
> Hi, Merle,
>
>
>
> Are you sure it’s not 19 years?  The standard “take” on insect eruptions
> is (used to be?) that they occur on a cycle of prime numbers to make it
> harder for creatures with shorter cycles to “track” them.  See
> https://www.newyorker.com/tech/annals-of-technology/the-cicadas-love-affair-with-prime-numbers
> for a pretty thin introduction to the idea.
>
>
>
> N
>
>
>
> Nicholas Thompson
>
> Emeritus Professor of Ethology and Psychology
>
> Clark University
>
> ThompNickSon2 at gmail.com
>
> https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/
>
>
>
>
>
> *From:* Friam <friam-bounces at redfish.com> <friam-bounces at redfish.com> *On
> Behalf Of *Merle Lefkoff
>
> *Sent:* Monday, May 18, 2020 10:01 PM
>
> *To:* The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group
> <friam at redfish.com> <friam at redfish.com>
>
> *Subject:* Re: [FRIAM] Miller, miller moths everywhere...
>
>
>
> My son in Boulder says they get the "infestation" right on the dot every
> 20 years.
>
>
>
> They are also important pollinators.
>
>
>
> On Mon, May 18, 2020 at 9:57 PM Jon Zingale <jonzingale at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Wow, they are everywhere! According to wikipedia:
>
>
>
> Army cutworms are one of the richest foods for predators, such as brown
> bears <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brown_bear>, in this ecosystem,
> where up to 72 per cent of the moth's body weight is fat, thus making it
> more calorie-rich than elk or deer.[10]
> <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Army_cutworm#cite_note-10> This is the
> highest known body fat percentage of any animal.[11]
> <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Army_cutworm#cite_note-11>
>
>
>
> And according to the New Mexican:
>
>
>
> `... they do not carry disease, Formby said, and they’re not the type of
> moth that will get into your clothes closet and start shredding your new
> camel hair jacket.`
>
>
>
>
>
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>
>
> --
>
> Merle Lefkoff, Ph.D.
>
> President, Center for Emergent Diplomacy
>
> emergentdiplomacy.org
>
> Santa Fe, New Mexico, USA
>
> merlelefkoff at gmail.com <merlelefoff at gmail.com>
>
> mobile:  (303) 859-5609
>
> skype:  merle.lelfkoff2
>
> twitter: @Merle_Lefkoff
>
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