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Grant Haines

@gehaines

evolutionary biologist. fish stuff mostly, but not exclusively. Skip emeritus of Colgate University curling team. Formerly: Hólar U., McGill, W&M, Colgate Bethlehemite (PA) gehaines.weebly.com

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Latest posts by Grant Haines @gehaines

Thank you :)

12.03.2026 01:51 👍 0 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0

Anyway, the article is about divergent thermal stratification regimes of ponds in Icelandic lava caves, and how stratification might affect the arctic charr populations in them. 💧🐟🌎

11.03.2026 21:19 👍 0 🔁 0 💬 1 📌 0
end of the paper abstract. Included is a question and response about whether the metadata is correct.

end of the paper abstract. Included is a question and response about whether the metadata is correct.

Figure 3 from the paper. modeled partial effects of weather on stratification, and site map and photograph. Increasing partial effects of temperature on stratification (a), trough-shaped effect of wind direction with min around 200 deg (b), and the interaction between wind direction and speed, with the effect flipping ~150 deg (c) on pond stratification in Cave 23, as measured by Relative Thermal Resistance to Mixing (RTRM). Negative partial effects in (a–c) indicate reduced RTRM (increased mixing), while positive effects indicate increased RTRM (increased stratification). The photograph in (d) shows the study area from the north, facing south, with the south basin of Mývatn in the distance. In the inset map, black lines indicate the cave openings and shading indicates elevation and vegetation type. Pale green indicates grassy areas only slightly above the water table, while the darker greens indicate elevated areas with mostly low, shrublike vegetation. The orange arrows in the photo and the inset map in (d) are oriented from 200° SSW, the approximate direction in which wind has the strongest negative effect on stratification (note that this is the direction of the wind origin). The white arrow in the photograph in (d) is oriented towards due north. Photo by Kári Heiðar Árnason

Figure 3 from the paper. modeled partial effects of weather on stratification, and site map and photograph. Increasing partial effects of temperature on stratification (a), trough-shaped effect of wind direction with min around 200 deg (b), and the interaction between wind direction and speed, with the effect flipping ~150 deg (c) on pond stratification in Cave 23, as measured by Relative Thermal Resistance to Mixing (RTRM). Negative partial effects in (a–c) indicate reduced RTRM (increased mixing), while positive effects indicate increased RTRM (increased stratification). The photograph in (d) shows the study area from the north, facing south, with the south basin of Mývatn in the distance. In the inset map, black lines indicate the cave openings and shading indicates elevation and vegetation type. Pale green indicates grassy areas only slightly above the water table, while the darker greens indicate elevated areas with mostly low, shrublike vegetation. The orange arrows in the photo and the inset map in (d) are oriented from 200° SSW, the approximate direction in which wind has the strongest negative effect on stratification (note that this is the direction of the wind origin). The white arrow in the photograph in (d) is oriented towards due north. Photo by Kári Heiðar Árnason

good news: paper published
bad news: Springer-Nature's AI copyeditor published the proof comments

link.springer.com/article/10.1...

11.03.2026 21:19 👍 4 🔁 0 💬 1 📌 0
Two signs in front of a stream describing changes like removal of small dams in the creek and replacement of lawns with native plants.

Two signs in front of a stream describing changes like removal of small dams in the creek and replacement of lawns with native plants.

Close-up of the second sign:

ENHANCING FISH HABITAT
& WATER QUALITY
As a Class A Wild Trout Water With a well-established population of naturally reproducing brown trout, Monocacy Creek is a unique
resource in an urban landscape
To benefit these trout and other cold-water species, the following best-management practices were Implemented throughout the park:
ROCK DAMS REMOVED
The rock dams that previously lined the creek impaired fish habitat by hindering passage and choking off the free transfer of nutrients the fish need to survive. Removing the rock dams restores the creek's natural flow, prevents streambank erosion and reverses these negative fish habitat ippicts.
STRUCTURES INSTALLED
Structures like the one before you, designed by the Pennsylvania Fish & Boat Commission, were installed after the rock dams were Fish & Boat Commission, were installed after the rock dams were removed. They create the necessary riffles and pools for **native** fish populations to spawn, grow and thrive.
A CLEANER, HEALTHIER WATERWAY
The combination of these best-management practices not only enhances local fish habitat, but promotes an altogether cleaner, healthier waterway for the community to enjoy.
Please do not make changes to the structure or build new dams. This will impht negatively impact fish populations.

Close-up of the second sign: ENHANCING FISH HABITAT & WATER QUALITY As a Class A Wild Trout Water With a well-established population of naturally reproducing brown trout, Monocacy Creek is a unique resource in an urban landscape To benefit these trout and other cold-water species, the following best-management practices were Implemented throughout the park: ROCK DAMS REMOVED The rock dams that previously lined the creek impaired fish habitat by hindering passage and choking off the free transfer of nutrients the fish need to survive. Removing the rock dams restores the creek's natural flow, prevents streambank erosion and reverses these negative fish habitat ippicts. STRUCTURES INSTALLED Structures like the one before you, designed by the Pennsylvania Fish & Boat Commission, were installed after the rock dams were Fish & Boat Commission, were installed after the rock dams were removed. They create the necessary riffles and pools for **native** fish populations to spawn, grow and thrive. A CLEANER, HEALTHIER WATERWAY The combination of these best-management practices not only enhances local fish habitat, but promotes an altogether cleaner, healthier waterway for the community to enjoy. Please do not make changes to the structure or build new dams. This will impht negatively impact fish populations.

Some very cool environmental improvements being introduced at one of my local parks, but @pafishandboat.bsky.social ‘s designation of this brown trout population as “wild” seems to have confused the city into thinking it is native.

11.03.2026 16:22 👍 0 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0
The Redpath Miseum at night. The skeleton of a largish theropod is in the foreground.

The Redpath Miseum at night. The skeleton of a largish theropod is in the foreground.

Hey, I know that dino!

10.03.2026 21:48 👍 2 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0

Yeah, Baseball!

[Also give this camera guy an Oscar]

10.03.2026 16:42 👍 0 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0

I think you are way too confident in both your valuation of non-monetary benefits and harms, and your belief that big cities are possible without support from smaller communities (they aren't).

08.03.2026 08:11 👍 1 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0

I don't think you understood my thread. Nobody understands the scale of subsidies they benefit from and those subsidies flow in all directions and aren't always monetary. That includes rural areas that benefit from ag subsidies and it includes cities that externalize costs to surrounding areas.

08.03.2026 06:49 👍 1 🔁 0 💬 1 📌 0

The kind of rural guy you are alluding to here does not exist in politically meaningful numbers. He is party of a constituency that is mostly imagined by people who live in both cities and suburbs, of both parties.

08.03.2026 06:14 👍 1 🔁 0 💬 1 📌 0

I have lived in a big cities, small cities, and villages surrounded by farms. All of these kinds of places are dependent on each other, and pretending that isn't true doesn't help anyone or fix any problems.

08.03.2026 05:50 👍 1 🔁 0 💬 1 📌 0

To you, I would say we do vote for Democrats.
7/7 city council members are Democrats.
We have had only Democratic mayors since 1997, and only 2 Republican mayors in the last century.

GOP-voting towns don't deserve to be replaced by warehouses because you order too much stuff on Amazon, either.

08.03.2026 05:50 👍 2 🔁 0 💬 1 📌 0

Now to David's point, you might be thinking, "well surely if Bethlehem voted for Democrats, many of these issues would be fixed. These people just hate me and the virtuous and cultured urban life I lead."

08.03.2026 05:50 👍 1 🔁 0 💬 1 📌 0

Electricity is cabled in from wherever it is produced, often by fossil fuels. Food is imported. Trash is exported. And because NYC has externalized its housing crisis to effectively all of northern NJ, it's impossible to even build a train through it that can get me to New York from Bethlehem.

08.03.2026 05:50 👍 3 🔁 0 💬 1 📌 0

Public transit is better for the environment and cheaper to maintain. It is great to live in a neighborhood where you can walk most places you need to go. It is also true that life in cities is possible because they externalize costs to surrounding areas. Water is treated + piped in from reservoirs.

08.03.2026 05:50 👍 1 🔁 0 💬 1 📌 0

This has happened all across this part of PA, mostly within the last 15 years, to the extent that some towns, like Fogelsville, barely exist anymore except as a cluster of warehouses along a highway.

Is it true that living in cities is more efficient? Yes. Power and water are easier to deliver.

08.03.2026 05:50 👍 1 🔁 0 💬 1 📌 0

basically the size of the entire rest of South Bethlehem, including Lehigh University and the former Bethlehem Steel.

All of these warehouses mean that we have extremely dense truck traffic on both of our major E-W highways, I-78 and 22, that chew up our roads and make driving more dangerous.

08.03.2026 05:50 👍 0 🔁 0 💬 1 📌 0

which serves 2500 students. This box includes 3 large class buildings (one of which contains 2 large gyms and a pool), a football field with a track, a baseball field, a football pitch, several tennis courts, a parking lot, and a large lawn.

The warehouse district in the southeast of the city is

08.03.2026 05:50 👍 0 🔁 0 💬 1 📌 0
satellite image of bethlehem, with a small red box near the middle, an orange blob, a bit bigger to its northwest, and 2 huge pink blobs at the top-center and bottom-right of the image.

satellite image of bethlehem, with a small red box near the middle, an orange blob, a bit bigger to its northwest, and 2 huge pink blobs at the top-center and bottom-right of the image.

Here is a satellite picture of Bethlehem.
The areas surrounded by pink consist almost entirely of warehouses. For scale, I have drawn an orange shape around the public golf club, which includes 18-hole and 9-hole courses + a driving range. I have also drawn a red box around my public high school,

08.03.2026 05:50 👍 0 🔁 0 💬 1 📌 0

What you probably don't know is that if you live in the northeast and buy stuff online, there is a pretty good chance that stuff has also been stored in and transported from one of the warehouses that are swallowing my town.

08.03.2026 05:50 👍 0 🔁 0 💬 1 📌 0

and only slightly further from NYC. It only has about 76k people, but you might recognize it as the town where the steel for the Empire State Building, MSG, Rockefeller Center, the Golden Gate, GW, and Verrazanno-Narrows Bridges, and a substantial portion of the US Navy in WWs I and II was made.

08.03.2026 05:50 👍 0 🔁 0 💬 1 📌 0

When I say things like "libertarian Abundance is a idea cooked up by people in cities who don't understand or care about anyone else's needs or interests and is a political dead-end", this is exactly the kind of guy I am talking about.

I grew up in Bethlehem, PA, ~90 minutes from Philly

08.03.2026 05:50 👍 1 🔁 0 💬 1 📌 0
Photograph of a fossil fish skull in right lateral view. The bone is dark brown/black against a gray matrix.

Photograph of a fossil fish skull in right lateral view. The bone is dark brown/black against a gray matrix.

Out now in Contributions from me and @gilespalaeo.bsky.social, a deep dive into an early member of the sturgeon and paddlefish lineage. Bear with me, but there’s a long backstory highlighting uncertainty about the anatomy of living species and how well-studied fossils can still yield new insights.

07.03.2026 17:37 👍 78 🔁 30 💬 2 📌 6
Post image Post image

I’ll start to regularly post photos of Lebanese fossils alongside links to charities supporting the thousands displaced in this war. Even the smallest donations can save lives

Fossils on display at Memory of Time, Jbeil, and you can donate here: gofund.me/24a3cee49

05.03.2026 13:54 👍 18 🔁 14 💬 0 📌 1

Our paper is out in @Science! The Atlantic silverside spans Earth's steepest latitudinal gradient in coastal sea-surface temperature. Despite high gene flow, populations show clinal genetic variation in multiple locally adapted traits. doi.org/10.1126/scie...

05.03.2026 19:05 👍 52 🔁 23 💬 7 📌 2

Immediate impeachment. We either have a constitution or we do not.

03.01.2026 17:27 👍 0 🔁 1 💬 0 📌 0

You know US military bases also have schools on them, right?

01.03.2026 02:27 👍 9 🔁 0 💬 1 📌 0

Counterpoint: we are all fish

28.02.2026 16:25 👍 0 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0
Preview
Society for the Study of Evolution Site description

📢 Now accepting proposals for the Graduate Research Excellence Grants! These provide evolutionary biology research funds for early and advanced Master’s and PhD students. Applicants must be members of SSE. Deadline: May 18, 2026
www.evolutionsociety.org/content/soci...

27.02.2026 13:22 👍 18 🔁 34 💬 1 📌 0

The author of this piece works in what was, 150 years ago, a vast chestnut forest stretching continuously from Mississippi to Maine that has been obliterated by invasive species.

27.02.2026 14:51 👍 2 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0

@springernature.com, if you don't ditch Straive, I won't be submitting to your journals again unless I don't have any choice in the matter. Easily the worst post-acceptance experience I've had with a paper.

24.02.2026 03:11 👍 2 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0