Nicole Gerlach

Most chromosomes of any animal on Earth so far!

I jumped ship to Libro.fm over the summer and I keep finding - or they keep giving me - new reasons to be glad I did.

“Can you pass the gravy, please?”

Me: “Sure!” *proceeds to roll the little wheelie boat at top speed down the length of the table*

A small alligator lays on the sandy bottom of a very shallow creek; most of its head and back are out of the water.

Unbothered. Moisturized. Happy. In My Lane. Focused. Flourishing.

One coyote snarls at another one which rears back with a look of 'dude! chill!' against the backdrop of limestone cliffs. A black-billed magpie ignores the scene.

When someone reaches for the last bread stick 😉

Photographed from my kayak. #mammals 🌿

I mean, I like Calexico well enough, but I do not understand what that song has to do with salamander sex. I guess I'm just uncultured?

YouTube video by Verticalground100 Alpine Newt Breeding/spermatophore Galore

Today was Amphibian Diversity day in #Vertz, which includes a video of salamander mating with the weirdest soundtrack choice ever.

The good bit starts at ~2:15, when the male releases a spermatophore and the female walks over to pick it up with her cloaca, so she can fertilize her eggs internally.

Congratulations! Well deserved.

A two-panel picture of a ladybug laying eggs on some shaggy tree bark. The ladybug is bright red with lots of black spots, and her head is white and black. The eggs are yellow and ovoid, standing up on their ends. There are nine eggs in the first panel, organized in a rough triangle, and twelve eggs in the second panel.

These two photos are 10 minutes apart; this Asian Lady Beetle laid three eggs in that time. Good job mama!

#insect #ladybug

Granola bars (some kind with chocolate involved) and fruit leather strips.

I do tell my students that the #LocalVertDiversity assignment is not about their photography skills, but I think that counting last night’s terrrrrrible picture of a Barred Owl (Strix varia) towards my total would be stretching things a bit too far… 😂

(It took off before I could get a real pic.)

#LocalVertDiversity 19. Boat-tailed Grackle (Quiscalus major)

I haven’t been able to get a decent photo of this species this semester, so instead you get this video of one of them providing the constant soundtrack to one of our local parks. #bird 🪶

This morning I woke up to a drunken message from a 2023 grad telling me that every time they drink, they think about the connection between alcohol, ADH, and urination that they learned in my Endocrinology class. They apologized for being "unprofessional," but it literally made my day!

A little blob that looks like a walking clump of lichen bits and sand grains sits on a person’s knuckle. From underneath the clump, there are several skinny legs and a head with pincers protruding.

I made myself a little larval Lichen-carrying Green Lacewing (Leucochrysa pavida) friend at the park this morning!

Important foundations for any weevil empire.

I am 100% here for the weevil puns.

I’ve got a few, but the biggest ones (judging from people’s reactions when I admit it) are that I’ve never seen The Neverending Story, and I’ve only ever seen the last 15 minutes of Goonies.

Roseate spoonbills will splash their wings through the water as part of their beauty routine. Here's one doing so mid-splash, facing straight ahead towards the camera. I really love this shot. #birds

A graphic that reads Happy Ctenophore Day in glowing pink text twice between three rows of different ctenophore species. The top row is lobate ctenophores including Bolinopsis microptera, Leucothea pulchra, Mnemiopsis leidy, and the bloody belly comb jelly Lampocteis. The second row has three different Beroe species. The lowest row has Pleurobrachia bachei, Dryodora glandiformis, red-x, and Euplokamis dunlapae.

Happy Ctenophore Day!
🐙🦑🧪

I love when I’m given content I never knew I needed.

Okay, *now* it’s time.

This digitally painted piece honors the survivor spirit of the coyote by tracing its lineage from the first cells of life to the animal trotting our landscapes today. Below the horizon, carefully chosen ancestors mark pivotal moments in adaptation, each contributing to the form and survivor we see today. Above the horizon, Coyote stands alert at the center, framed by both Denver’s skyline and a mountain backdrop, symbols of their ability to thrive in cities as well as wilderness. Embedded in the ground are the skulls and bones of carnivores whose lineages ended long ago, emphasizing Coyote’s persistence in contrast.

"I Contain Multitudes"

This digitally painted piece honors coyote by tracing its lineage from the first cells of life to the animal trotting our cities and the wilderness today.

The thread gives descriptions of all the extinct organisms shown in this piece (not to scale)

I’m so behind on posting these, I think I’m up to species 33 or 34 for the semester by now.

An adult tricolored heron flies low over a pond, towards a concrete ledge.

A juvenile tricolored heron wades in the shallow water along the edge of a small creek.

#LocalVertDiversity 18. Tricolored Heron (Egretta tricolor)

Adult tricoloreds look very different from the juveniles. Adults are mostly slaty blue, while the juveniles have a reddish head, neck, and wings. Both have a thin white stripe along the underside of their necks, though. #birds 🪶 #heron

A meme with a photo of a larval glass eel against a background with a measurement grid. Meme text: “You seem transparent but I can see you are plotting something in the background.”

I was thinking more about this… that’s a whole-ass fish that light is passing through with minimal distortion. A couple of axons are no problem.

#InsectThursday
Boreal Bluet.
#insects #damselfly #arthropod #Odonata #wildlife #nature #photography #photographersofBlueSky #insectsofBlyeSky #colourblue #insectsofAlberta #insectsofCanada #NikonZ9

The basic retinal structure. Histological appearance of choroid and... Download scientific diagram | The basic retinal structure. Histological appearance of choroid and retinal layers. The retina is arranged in different layers of cells, from Retinal Pigment Epithelium (...

Maybe something like this? Light has to get through a lot more than the axons to hit the photoreceptors. Add an explanation that unstained, unpigmented cells are pretty transparent to light, which is why we usually have to stain them for light microscopy to work.

YouTube video by Froglife How frogs swallow

In class today we covered the levator bulbi muscle, which sits under the eye in amphibians and causes them to appear bug-eyed. They relax this muscle to allow their eyeballs to sink into their head, which helps them swallow.

The overwhelming response from my students was "thanks, I hate it." 😆🐸

Just got done teaching about this!(the middle ear part, anyways)

We're all fish at heart and apparently at jaw too