Drain the Swamp or Time to get a little political

  Drain the swamp.

Look how dead and scary the swamp looks. Courtesy of Spork Spelunking 

 You have heard the saying as a campaign slogan from the president-elect on numerous occasions and to anyone that has studied ecology, this really shows the depth of his understanding of biology or science in general.

That is, it is not very deep. What else is new?

   This is because swamps, marshes and other types of wetland ecosystems are valuable, important real estate when it comes to providing needs to humans.  You can see the value of wetlands if you are fortunate enough to live within driving distance of a wastewater treatment plant that handles sewage.

  If you ever decide to take a tour of a wastewater treatment facility, you will learn that the primary movers for water treatment comes from microorganism growth in large tanks called bioreactors. The magic happens when the sewage water comes into contact with bacteria that are hanging onto sewer sludge and they grow, consuming the organic compounds and leaving byproducts that are harmless and don't attract unwanted pathogens. The result is remarkably clean water that is safe to drink once the water is sanitized, usually with chlorine solutions.

Courtesy of American Water College

   So what does this have to do with swamps? The two things that bioreactors absolutely need to operate, besides tax dollars, is standing water and bacteria. Swamps have this in spades plus bonuses, including trees, soil access to ground water, and an adaptive ecosystem that provides for wildlife. All of those bonuses are invaluable to humans and can be measured monetarily by environmental scientists and biologists in a concept called ecosystem services. The best part about these services is that if they are smartly managed they can be used without spending much if any money.

Some techniques incorporate some swamp features into wastewater treatment. Wikipedia

   Draining the swamp is a phrase used to evoke an image of improving a piece of land, getting rid of toxic water to make way for farming on the fertile, nutrient rich soil that is left behind. Its an old phrase that certainly dates the president-elect. Donald Trump uses it to insinuate that Washington is full of toxic components (i.e. public officials, lobbyists and lawmakers) that he will remove and replace with more useful components, his pick of  whom he considers Washington outsiders. I guess in terms of the biological analogy, he wants to remove toxic water and replacing it with corn or wheat, although scientists would probably say he is planting salt instead.

  Before people applied scientific research towards understanding wetlands, it was true that swamps became more profitable when they were drained and a farm was grown on it. However, once the soil ran out of nutrients, the land was useless for farming unless water was imported and fertilizers were used. Fertilizers are notorious for being costly and damaging because of farmer's dependence on them and environmental consequences from run-off. Now it's known that if you leave a swamp intact and farm on it with crops that are adapted to the environment such as rice, you can preserve your fertilizing potential and the water supply. Not to mention preserving fish nurseries for the enjoyment of local anglers.

I saw this in action when I volunteered with Honko Mangrove Education and Conservation on the island nation of Madagascar. Villagers there took value in their mangrove swamps by farming reeds for basket weaving, by ecotourism, harvesting wood, and by fishing in the channels for crabs, invertebrates and small fish. The alternative was to bulldoze the land and make a shrimp farm that lasts a few years before collapsing and leading to a long recovery. Profitable in the short term, but devastating to the people that live there.

A Malagasy marsh near the mangroves of Ambondrolava

So what I say in response to Donald Trump is this: save the swamp. You can make alterations to the swamp and make it more beneficial to people, you can even change the size of the swamp if that helps; but don't drain the swamp. We need the swamp.

Look how  happy that swamp house is!  Courtesy of Flickr creative commons

References:
The Economics of Ecosystems and Biodiversity initiative

EPA: How Wastewater Treatment works

Clarkson BR, Ausseil AE, Gerbeaux P 2013. Wetland ecosystem services. In Dymond JR ed. Ecosystem services in New Zealand – conditions and trends. Manaaki Whenua Press, Lincoln, New Zealand.

And if you care about Trump's drain the swamp idea
Trump pledges to drain the swamp
Donald Trump's talk of 'draining the swamp' rings hollow
What ‘drain the swamp’ really means

Creature concepts in Shin Godzilla (Spoilers)

Hello all,

    After seeing the newest Godzilla reboot during the U.S. release, becoming captivated by it, and seeing it again; I decided to attempt starting up my blog again after 4 years on the ice. The timing is also convenient since I am starting graduate school and exploring various avenues of research.
Lets begin.

   Shin Godzilla is a great film that introduces fresh and contemporary ideas to the character of Godzilla, essentially revamping it for a modern audiences. Unlike the first reboot that rehashed the same outdated origin story from the original, that of a T. rex awakened and mutated by radiation, this movie welcomes a new understanding of genetics and evolution (to a certain degree). The benefit of the changes to the reboot is to activate the imagination of audiences and inspire new interest in expanding the franchise.

  I love the Showa series and the Heisei series (Heisei series movies came out when I was young and impressionable), however, the faulty explanations behind the kaiju phenomenon had me grasping for personal interpretations that I could make it work for me. It was hard for me to rationalize how radiation could be blamed for the strange and sudden mutations seen in Godzilla movies as late as the 90's when most people realize that radiation basically just makes you deteriorate.

   Before I go on further in tangential fashion I would like to finally get to some of the ideas brought forward by Shin Godzilla. Now I enter full spoiler mode. If you haven't seen the movie, please stop and go out and see it before continuing.

Just stop and walk away.

Godzilla enters the stage in a entirely foreign form than what we are used to. It looks like a strange amphibian and they describe it to be morphologically similar to a lungfish. It seems to flounder into the city pauses and transforms into a bipedal Godzilla-like form, notably growing arms from stumpy looking pectoral fins. The one government official overseeing the transformation note that it is "evolving" reminiscent of Pokemon, but the rest quickly regard it as a mutation. It still sounds a lot like the old movies at this point. It gets more interesting in the next acts when Godzilla returns for the second time in a massive form recognizable as Godzilla. After collecting more data on the monster, the scientists on the ground conclude that it has a vast genome, they compare it to humans as being eight times longer. This gives an idea of how realistic this is, and perhaps eight times larger may be a little small for calling Godzilla the most evolved creature on the planet, as they do in the movie.
 

First form. Courtesy of  AlphaPonpo

 Introducing a genetic cause to the mutations is groundbreaking for the franchise, because now it opens up the discussion beyond established mythology. Biologists know that animals will up-regulate or down-regulate genes for an active physiological adaptation to the environment (or epigenetics). If there is a giant surplus of genes that can fulfill these needs, then it all sort of makes sense. Dramatic changes seen in insects are caused by the down-regulation of a juvenile hormone producing gene that suspends metamorphosis, for instance, and similarly amphibian metamorphosis is controlled by thyroid gene regulation. This type of explanation is needed to explain the dramatic changes that transformed an earth animal into Godzilla. Add in nuclear waste to the mix  for it to adapt to and there is your contemporary reasoning for The King of Monsters

 If Godzilla had been accumulating genes from its environment through transposable elements or a sophisticated mechanism involving viruses then there's a chance (in the way chance works in the movie studio) that such evolution could occur. The complicated mechanism behind it  would not really be comprehensible to the humans in the movie, at least not in the early stages. This idea makes the monster appealing and fascinating for me all over again.

   The idea that Godzilla is evolving right before our eyes and that it could be from a genetic source, ties in nicely with a personal favorite fan theory I found here. The end of the movie showed creatures imprisoned inside the structure of Godzilla's long tail, and gave clues to what its next plan of attack was before being defeated. According to the fan theory, it was getting ready to spawn an army of engineers to take down humanity. The reproduction of clones to populate a eusocial super-organism is particularly ant-like and, provided the genes were available to it, could have been encoded in its genome.

Last shot of Shin Godzilla. Courtesy of Toho,Co.

 A bonus thought experiment this concept provides are ethical considerations of what it means to have predetermined fate, if all of your being is laid out before you are born in your genome. Godzilla shows that there is some wiggle room after all and maybe we can win against our selfish genes.