Diversity of Species; Microscopy; Spike's Gallery

Diversity of Species - to the right you can see an example of the cutest species in our apartment

There are at least ten varieties of houseplants in my apartment, and outside in the neighbor's garden I can see a couple dozen species of plants. In our apartment I've noticed some fruit flies lately, although as the weather has cooled they seem to have moved on. We adopted a kitten this week, and Ebi pleasantly boosts the number of mammal species to two. If only I'd been at my mom's house in Florida for this post, I would have felt more significant somehow; she has 5 dogs, turtles, lots of fish, frogs, toads, and grows a bunch of food in her jungle/backyard... quite a healthy, diverse environment! Is anyone counting the species of plants in their pantries/refrigerators?

Microscopy!

As I've often felt frustrated with two-dimensional scientific illustrations of cells (even if they help differentiate organelles), I was fascinated by the fluorescence images on this FSU site. As for Spike's Gallery, the user-generated/submitted content was especially impressive. Following the survey of plant species in my neighbor's yard, these fern microscope-photos made me smile.