Professor Jim Nardi (BS ’70 from Purdue) now at the University of Illinois wrote a captivating story for children that stems from his Entomology research. Emeritus Purdue Professor Peter Waser writes this about Jim’s book…….
Alumnus James Nardi, Research Scientist at the University of Illinois, has just published “In Mouse’s Backyard” (Schiffer Publishing Co), an exploration of all those small critters, plants, and other strange, mysterious, fascinating, and sometimes creepy or squishy living things that the curious child (or parent) will likely find in any midwestern backyard. Lovely drawings are filled with surprises — inconspicuous beasties that make you realize how much it pays to look again, with your eyes a little wider open, both at the book and at the ordinary world around you. Supplemented with some lovely photos and even electron micrographs of things like stink bugs’ beaks, mushroom spores and velvet mite toes, all with the scale marked clearly, but not in the metric system — the thickness of a nickel and the width of a hair are the units here.
The text is in verse and filled with the sort of details that drew me into natural history as a kid — introducing you to everything from how mosses reproduce to what the greek words for “toe” and “feathery” tell you about beetles whose scientific names are more imposing than they are. btw, this book just may draw some readers into looking at an earlier book of Jim’s, “Life in the Soil”, a more traditional guide to all those little organisms, from tardigrades to cup fungi, that live all around us but usually escape our notice. If you’re the sort of person who’s always wondered where you could find a field guide to the slime molds, Nardi is the author for you.
Peter
or even determine the quality of a particular host. This is a problem, however, because the frequency range of song in cowbirds (6-11 kHz) and their hosts (1-4 kHz) is very different. So far we have found that cowbirds are most sensitive to frequencies in the range of host vocalizations. Moreover, females have lower thresholds (i.e. can hear softer sounds) and have greater sensitivity than males. This suggests that females are capable of detecting and processing distant host vocalizations. For more information see Megan’s website: 
ns of pollen movement. This study provides evidence that patterns of pollen movement relative to the environmental context can play a large role in determining the edges of species’ distributions.
behavior are related to how far away (visual acuity) and how far around the head (visual coverage) two bird species (European starlings and house sparrows) could perceive objects visually. European starlings can detect objects at greater distances but have less visual coverage (e.g., a larger blind spot at the rear of their heads) than house sparrows. The Authors found that House sparrows reduced their chances of detecting the predator from farther distances compared to European starlings; which could be related to their lower visual acuity. However, the probabilities of predator detection of both species decreased with body positions and head orientations with lower visual coverage despite the between-species differences. European starlings had longer vigilance bouts probably to enhance visual coverage, whereas house sparrows had higher vigilance rates likely to update information about potential predators more often.
It appears that some birds have found a simple solution when they are not looking for a mate in the fall – they just ignore love’s call by muting their hearing.