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A great lens for this is to look at how organisms manage in terms of stocks & flows. Inputs, outputs, and storage.I learned recently that bears recycle urea during hibernation and turn it into muscle/protein. Urea comes from processing fats. Store fats help them w/ insulation. https://t.co/zaBBRxyCJ3
But as Szabo alludes to, there are some fundamental things going on in terms of resource gathering dyamics at many biological levels.There's a fun theory here that I really enjoy:https://t.co/6Gqa6rK2iL
I've been getting the ants in my backyard to fight each other by manipulating the resources they have access to, and selectively stressing them at certain stages of their lifecycle. I often wonder if similar things happen at a geopolitical level.
Pavement Ants have naturalized, so I'm intentionally overfeeding a local colony, then preventing it from nuptial flight via artificial floods. This is destabilizing the local ant politics... So while last year we had 30+ European Fire Ant mounds, now there is only one left. 🐜
For the curious, I was interested in using ants as a natural pest control after reading about it here: https://t.co/qoVwfpq38jAuthor has lots of great pubs on the topic:https://t.co/WapHWj7Qjm
What does this have to do with bears?Well, my strategy is deeply entwined with assumptions about how the Pavement ants forage for food in response to the seasons. I think they (ant/bear) might be modulating their microbiome in a similar way as these ants:https://t.co/9H8pP5S9iB