What a waste of a beautiful day it was, to spend this rare January sunny day inside the depths of a gloomy dark cave gathering springtails. Springtails, however, are important to Joseph Reznek, a graduate student at the University of Vermont, and as well, I am a very nice guy, so Joesph and I spent all day today inside McCluny Cave capturing them i. e. springtails.

Springtails are interesting little fellows; shorter than -> - <- they are hard to see, especially in a cave, but they are ubiquitous (I promise not to use the term "ubiqitous" anymore in this report . A fad word, the term today is overused everywhere. Smile.) in common soil.

But the springtails that we were after are not common in caves or outside, only one specimen of the species (Pseudosinella nata) has ever been found and that was back in the seventies in McCluny Cave (Crystal Caverns), and my job was to get Joesph in and out of McCluny cave without being killed. Not from any danger in the cave but from Lamar the Landowner, who trucks not much with strangers.

Operating on funds provided by the Cave Conservancy of the Virginias, Joesph Reznik's thesis is simple: At the outset of the last glacial period many species of springtails (or Collembola ) took refuge against the intense cold in caves and adapted to conditions there in. Therefore the amount of divergence of DNA in the cave springtails compared with their cousins on the outside of the cave should give (since glacial and interglacial periods are well-dated) a temporal frame for the rate of DNA change.
Or something like that.

As we drove to the cave I looked over at Joesph. He looked like he was Vermont. He was a snag in his early thirties sporting a bandana for hair and wearing a ring in his ear. I didn't call him a snag, he told me that he was a snag. I didn't even know what a snag was. Joesph said it was a complimentary term; an acronym for a "Sensitive New Age Guy"...sorta like Faldage.

Both Joesph and I were a bit nervous as we pulled up and stopped in front of Lamar's house. A United States flag, a larger Confererate flag, and the biggest red Marine Corps flag I had ever seen stood erect, but waved not at all, in front of Lamar's neat woodframe house. Boldly I knocked on the front door. No one opened the door but a tiny voice inside said, "Go to the back. Daddy's in the shed."

Whoever first said "Once a Marine always a Marine" was talking about Lamar. Visualize a red-headed fire hydrant with a shaved head with a handle-bar mustache with no tatoo that reads "born To Lose" and you have seen Lamar. He met Joesph and me at the door of his shop with a 45 in his hand and a smile on his face while saying,
"Hi Milo, excuse the gun, but a man can't be too careful these days."

But now, least you think Lamar a stereotype.
Lamar is sharp. He measures every word, every nuance. Say for example you wanted to have a war...you'd fare best to have Lamar to tote your guns.

Lamar's shop is quite a shop, mostly leather goods. Lamar reproduces gun straps and bridles and saddles for a contingency of Marine enthusiasts nationwide. After many southern pleasantries and reinforced assurancies by me that Lamar's well-though-out rules would not be breached, we were given seven keys and set out for the cave.

Do any of you know what is a "Military Lock"? Well we found out;the key of a Military Lock can only be removed when the lock is reclosed.

In summary, it is late, I apoligise for not finishing the fossil track puzzle today. But the track story has layers of things important, And today's events are merely on my befuddled mind.

Milo.

(below is an abbreviated version of Joesph's request.)




Dear Milo Washington,

My name is Joseph Reznik and I am a graduate student
at the University of Vermont. I have recently
been funded by the Cave Conservancy of the Virginias
to study a group of springtails that
occur in caves. I need to collect material from the
type locality for one species, Pseudosinella nata, but
I am having trouble finding the cave that it was
described from. Do you know where Crystal Cave
(Jefferson County, AL) is? I am planning on traveling
to your state at the new year and if you
would be willing to guide, I would be very appreciative.
Thanks for any help you may give.

Joseph Reznik
120A Marsh Life
University of Vermont
Burlington, VT 05405
joseph.reznik@uvm.edu

Be interesting to see the results of that DNA shift study.

No need to stop using a word correctly just because some people use it a lot. Bet the word the is more used than the word ubiquitous.

That Lamar feller sounds like he's really looking out through his eyeballs.

I now know springtails are shorter than a - (dash) and i am guessing they are bugs.. (or are they fish ? or repiles? )

strange creatures take up habitat in caves.. and i am a city gal.. there are some rocks ovehangs that offer shelter (one in inwood park (north manhattan) was refered to in 'last of the mohicans', and is still unchanged) but no natural caves. (and the animals that populate the un-natual caverns aren't nice or interesting ones!)

before you go on, what is a springtail?

here are a couple of links:

http://entowww.tamu.edu/fieldguide/aimg1.html

http://www.ext.vt.edu/departments/entomology/factsheets/springta.html

do a google image search for springtail for more pics.

Be interesting to see the results of that DNA shift study.

Joesph is to send Lamar and me his report as soon as the study is completed. A well done DNA test takes about six hours per sample, according to Joe. He hopes to have some test results within a month or so and I'll post them here.


No need to stop using a word correctly just because some people use it a lot. Bet the word the is more used than the word ubiquitous.

Yes faldage, I agree the the word "the" is ubiquitous, but the word "ubiquitous" is ubitquitous unnecessarily.
And don't get me started on the inaccurate stupid overuse of the word "issue". What jerks they are he who uses it!

That Lamar feller sounds like he's really looking out through his eyeballs.

Cute term, but Lamar is much more than he appears. Lamar is a key block in a grandiose social scheme. Lamar and I are close politically.

Just lie back on the couch, Milo, and tell us how long you've had these DNA issues that seem to worry you... Oh, and it might be more comfortable for you if you took your gun holster off first. :)

he's really looking out through his eyeballs.

Love it - whence that expression, oh snaggly bunny?

Dear of troy,

Please overlook Maverick, he's not from around here and he says strange things, like "snaggly bunny" and "People don't kill people, guns do!"

Here is more about springtails...

* Springtails in caves eat Cave Cricket droppings.

* Although most people don't give a whit about springtails, the average person has probably eaten hundreds in his lifetime...some hop in your open mouth at night.

* My snaggly pal, Joesph's big hope is to find a cave up north that was covered with ice during the last glaciation. Then all specialized adaptations accomplished by the springtails such as blindness, loss of pigmentation, increased antenna length, etc. would be limited to the last 10,000 years and the rate of DNA change could be fixed in time.

- Milo the Snag

there are some caves up here -- pennsylvania has a number of caves -same limestone formation that causes caves down your way.(same geological mountain range.)

In NYC most of the limestone layer is total eroded away. some very small out cropping still remain-- (marble hill in north bronx, Whitestone in south bronx (and the name of the bridge. some can be found in manhattan, too, (parts of roosevelt island, and in parts of harlem.)

Most of Manhattan is schist, under it is gneiss (most of the bronx is gneiss, the oldest rocks in NYC).. Queens, brooklyn (part of LI for geographic purposes) and staten island are mostly termimal moraines. (LI is made from 2, the North hills moraine, and the Ronconkama moraine, (see the tail end of the LI fish--each tail is one moraine) they cross each other in brooklyn/queens, with Bay Ridge (d'oh) being the highest point. (this is also location of Verrenzaro bridge.. the bridge crosses the place were the moraine which was acting as dam, and holding back melting flood water from glacial hudson river, broke.. water(fresh) drained out, and then sea (salt water) came in.

NY harbor is an estuary at the mouth of an (old) fjord.

i don't know the geology of the appalacians well enough to know where the limestone layers are close to surface.. (but i would expect somewher up near Nova Scotia..)

the layer with coal is close to surface (mine able) in parts of pennsylvania, but too deep in most of NY and New England, but there are coal mines again in NS canada.. the two layers seem to lie close to each other.. (you get limestone caves in the same area's there is coal mining.)

i hate (well to be honest, i am really afraid) of the dark. Not a problem most places in the world now days, but caving was always a challege.. so i don't think i have ingested as many springtails as others..

my ex had a nominal interest in spulunking, and we often stopped at small family developed caves but almost never went caving in undeveloped caves. (we did explore the old colonial iron mine just a mile or two from the town of Tuxedo NY)

Afraid of the dark, of troy? You're not by yourself. I heard about a Marine who was terrified when he tried to go caving. Couldn't cope with the darkness and the tight quarters. Interesting story, I thought.