I was amazed to see a familiar spider in Colombia. i worked on this species for 2 years for my Masters in Israel, and now it seems that the spider is an invasive species found all over Colombia. Later at the III Latinoamerican Congress of Arachnology, I found out that Cyrtophora is also found in Cuba, Brazil and Florida. Therefore it must be here in Mexico. Somewhere. Bad news for Mecynogea

Reverse positional orientation in a neotropical orb-web spider, Verrucosa arenata
Dinesh Rao, Oscar Ceballos Fernandez, Ernesto Castañeda-Barbosa and Francisco Díaz-Fleischer

Abstract
Most orb-web spiders face downwards in the web. A downward orientation has been proposed to be the optimal strategy because spiders run faster downwards and thus can catch prey quicker. Consequently, orb-web spiders also extend their web in the lower part, leading to top-down web asymmetry. Since the majority of orb-web spiders face downwards, it has been difficult to test the effect of orientation on prey capture and web asymmetry. In this study, we explored the influence of reverse orientation on foraging efficiency and web asymmetry in Verrucosa arenata, a neotropical orb-web spider that faces upwards in the web. We show that reverse orientation does not imply reverse web asymmetry in this species. V. arenata spiders captured more prey in the lower part of the web but more prey per area on the upper part. The average running speeds of spiders did not differ between upward and downward running, but heavier spiders took longer to capture prey while running upwards. We discuss these findings in the context of foraging efficiency and web asymmetry.

And therefore, here’s a list of books I picked up North of the Border last month
1. Endless things, by John Crowley. I already had a copy of this book, the last in the Aegypt cycle, but the edition I had did not match. It stuck out like a sore thumb, and it had always bothered me. So this time, I found a copy of the book in the Smith’s Family Bookstore, in Eugene, Oregon and bought it without blinking. This is a new attitude for me: and from on I will replace crappy editions of books I already own and love with nice ones. I’m already regretting not buying a superior copy of Wind, Sand and Stars by Saint-Exupery.
2. Andrea Barrett’s The middle kingdom. I liked Barrett’s previous books, especially Ship Fever, she has that nicely managed mix between science and literature. I bought this book solely on the strengths of the previous ones I’ve read, even though the them of this novel did not particularly interest me.
3. Kleinzeit, by Russel Hoban. Russel Hoban just passed away recently, yet another in the line of favourite authors dying. His The Medusa Frequency has always been a very important part of my collection, and I’ve carried it to various continents. This book was written prior to TMF, but it has a very similar feel to it. I think the three books, TMF, Kleinzeit and The Lion of Boaz-Jachin and Jachin-Boaz make a sort of weird trilogy.
4. Difficult Loves, by Italo Calvino. Nothing much to say here, except this is part of my effort to slowly have every Calvino book in my library.

Dinesh Rao and Yael Lubin

Albert Katz International School for Desert Studies, Jacob Blaustein Institutes for Desert Research, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Sede Boqer 84990, Israel
Mitrani Department of Desert Ecology, Jacob Blaustein Institutes for Desert Research, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Sede Boqer 84990, Israel

Abstract:

Colonial spiders construct individual capture webs within a matrix of shared supporting frame threads. Cyrtophora citricola is a colonial orb-weaving spider with a complex three-dimensional web. Colonies may contain a few to several hundred individuals, but individuals may also occur solitarily. Local conditions such as food supply and substrate availability are likely to influence colony formation. In this study we explored the influence of local conditions and dispersal behavior on colony establishment in a desert population of C. citricola in the hyper-arid Arava Valley in Israel. Colonies in the Arava occur primarily on scattered Acacia trees and less commonly on shrubs. The spatial distribution of colonies was clustered and was not influenced by the condition of the Acacia trees (leaf flush, flowering, or fruiting). In a controlled experiment, we showed that dispersing spiders remained longer and built webs faster in trees that contained conspecific webs than in trees without webs. We propose that spiders benefit from establishing webs in the proximity of other spiders, while dispersal to another tree may not result in arrival at an improved habitat. These two factors may promote colony living even in prey-poor environments such as the extreme desert.

Mole comes in many varieties, but it usually contains ingredients such as cinnamon, cloves, peppercorns, anise, coriander, chocolate, chiles, almonds, pumpkin seeds, raisins, bread and tortillas—all ground together and cooked in a light broth to make a harmonious brown sauce that is served with turkey, chicken or vegetable dishes.

So when Mexicans first try Indian food, especially the watery, sauce rich curries of north India, they are drawn irresistibly to the comparison with Mole. This is just like mole, they tell me, especially for dishes that are agri-dulce, i.e. sweet-sour, or tangy. Consequently when I first tried mole, D was sure I would like it, since it triggered the same taste section as Indian food for Mexicans. However, while I liked the flavor of Mole, it was way too strong for me. It was like my tongue got overpowered with tastes and flavors, such that the entire mouthful was almost unpleasant. I found with experience that I could manage small bits of mole as accompaniment to the rice or tortilla, but not like the Mexicans eat mole here, whole tortillas bathed in mole – the enmolada- or mole with rice, where the rice is accompanied by a generous helping of mole.

I just assumed that it was a personal quirk, that somehow my tastebuds were highly sensitive to the particular flavours of mole. But not a single Indian I know who has tried mole has really immediately liked it. All the Mexicans here were amazed. How can a dish that is so associated with Indian cooking like flavours can be met with such universal rejection by Indians?

I have a hypothesis. Indian cooking in general is very balanced, the proportions are quite regular and strict. This much of this ingredient goes well with that much of this other ingredient. So a dish like mole, which is famous for the number of ingredients that go into it, some familiar like cinnamon and some foreign like chocolate, completely triggers off a warning that the dish is unbalanced, and the tongue reacts to this lack of proportions. Over the period of two years in Mexico, I have grown accustomed to the taste and don’t react in much the same way as I did when I first encountered it, but even now, I would rather eat mole like I would eat pickle, as a small tangy spicy thing to accentuate the flavours than as a main dish.

Spider Silk: Evolution and 400 Million Years of Spinning, Waiting, Snagging, and Mating

By Leslie Brunetta and Catherine Craig

Spiders are best known for using silk to build orb webs, the wheel-shaped webs that look as if they were engineered. These webs, and the spider’s ability to produce them using material generated in its own body, have fascinated humans for millennia. They have inspired weavers, civil engineers, and metaphor makers from poets to designers of computer networks. Geometrical, delicate to the point of transparency, yet super strong and super sticky, these webs can stop and hold insects hurtling with tremendous speed through the air. Spiders build orb webs by piecing together a minimum of four types of silk, each having a different form and function. One silk provides strength, another flexibility, and still another a scaffold to aid the spider during construction. Scientists and entrepreneurs have spent millions of dollars trying to copy what spiders accomplish on a budget of dead bugs.

Abstract
The functional significance of web decorations in orb-web spiders has been an area of intense study for well over a hundred years. Two main hypotheses, (prey attraction and predator avoidance) have had intermittent support and criticism. By varying the decoration pattern, spiders minimize the potential predation costs of constructing a highly visible signal and deter potential prey such as bees from associating decorations with danger. The prey attraction hypothesis implies that as the signal changes, so should the response of the intercepting insects. In this study, I tested the response of bees to varying decoration patterns. I show that stingless bees (Trigona carbonaria) respond to the silk decorations of Argiope keyserlingi Karsch 1878 in similar ways irrespective of the pattern of decorations. I also demonstrate that the likelihood of prey hitting the capture area is greater than that of hitting the hub area in decorated webs. Since stingless bees respond similarly to different levels of signal strength, I conclude that variation in decorations does not affect prey interception.

But all the annoyances with ebook and ebook readers fade away for me considering that my biggest problem here in Mexico is of access to books in English. I can order from Amazon, and hope and pray that the package would somehow make its way to the door, or scrounge around the second hand books in Mexico city or Xalapa even, trying to spot the one readable one among the piles of airport thrillers. But in this day and age, when I know that there are all these books available at the click of a button, and can be delivered to your hands in seconds, it seemed silly to keep waiting for the perfect device.

The iPad landed in Xalapa, and I went to check it out. My main interest in getting it was for reading, and especially for pdfs of scientific articles. So I’ve had it for a month or so, and having read two books on it, I can now give a summary of how it performs as a ebook reader. First the format doesn’t matter at all, I read books in epub format with the ibooks app, amazon books with the kindle app, and I have the kobo reader app as well. So between these three I can read in a variety of formats. The device itself is rather heavy and the weight seems to increase with reading time. The books I read, Neil Gaiman’s anthology All New Tales, and John Scalzi’s Old Man’s War (which was lying around on my hard disk forever, but which I never read, because it turns out I really really hate reading on the computer) , weren’t too long, so I don’t know how I would fare with say, a Neal Stephenson tome. The battery life is decent, and it was quite pleasant reading in the dark here, when the electricity people shied at a particularly ominous thunderstorm and switched off the current. The clouds are very low here, and the gap between the sizzle of lightning and the rumble of thunder is very small. Of course, I could have read with a booklight, but hey, there is something very futuristic about staring into a glowing rectangle in your hand in the dark. That brings me to my other problem. In the end you are staring into a light source. I spend the whole day staring at a computer screen, and to spend the rest of the day staring at a screen is a bit tiring on the eyes. I reckon that the iPad will come into its own with respect to text books and pdfs but for novels, well, lets say I ‘d rather read short stories than novels on it. The device also doesn’t let you forget how expensive it is, and and so I would really hesitate to take it around, even though it’s meant to be an ultraportable computer.

After having it and using it for a while now, and having seen the newest kindle, I am torn once again. I never expected the iPad to be a good ebook reader, I always thought of it as a device that could also do ebooks as opposed to a dedicated device, but my search for a dedicated device is still on. I was really interested in the Kobo ebook reader, very cheap and none of the frills of the kindle, and was even planning to buy one when I went to the US, but they hadn’t released it yet and I am very loath to buy a device without having looked at it first. And then Amazon released the new Kindle, which actually doesn’t look all that bad, even though it still sports that abominable keyboard. But hey it’s cheaper now, and having bought a couple of ebooks from Amazon, the experience has not been terrible. The kindle is super lightweight, can be charged with AA batteries and can be easy taken say camping while the iPad would definitely stay at home.

So the search continues, but for the moment, I am incredibly delighted with the ability to buy books on a whim, instead of planning for three months for a single purchase. And the iPad is great for writing, there is an incredible feeling of lightness as you tap away on a bluetooth keyboard, with the screen lying around. Frictionless.

Luckily as soon as I said the word for Shop, one of them helpfully filled the blanks, the Indian shop? I said yes. He said, follow me. We walked through the narrow doors into what appeared to be a parking lot. A few cars were parked there, but the vast cavern inside was clearly underutilized. Off to one side, a door. We followed the guard through this door and then the lift. Second floor to the right, he said., and quietly disappeared. We got into the lift and at the second floor, we turned right. A maze of corridors and doors. One door had a framed portrait of an Indian god, but I don’t even remember which one. That was the only sign that behind this door was the only Indian grocery shop in Mexico.

When I first arrived in Mexico, I knew that it was going to be problematic to find indian grocery items. Mexico is not exactly known for its large Indian population. In the past I hadn’t really cared, sine I was quite happy to go with the flow, scrounging around on foreign foods. I didn’t even learn to cook till I reached Australia, and till I had an epiphany. Nobody was going to make me food that I wanted to eat, and thus I started cooking. Really simple stuff, but somehow it’s only the food of your childhood that manages to fill your stomach. Sydney did have a large Indian population, and frequent visits to Parramatta was enough to keep things stocked. So when I left for Mexico, I got a whole bunch of essential spices shipped, and stocked up with visits from my parents and anyone who went anywhere basically. We managed to find ingredients in odd places: ghee from this ultra hippy food place, mustards seeds from the general market (they feed it to birds), tea from an upmarket grocery shop in Mexico city. The first time I went to an Indian artifacts shop in Mexico City I asked the shop keeper where to get foodstuff, and he gave me a number of a wholesale dealer, but I never followed it up, it wasn’t even a real shop.

But then a friend of D’s, who’d been to Bangladesh, and subsequently enamoured of Indian food, passed her an email from another friend with a list of supplies stocked by this grocery shop in Mexico City. I looked at the list and realized that most of my troubles were over. But the shop was hard to find, and it meant a trip of 5 hrs to Mexico City and then some to find the place. We went one weekend and as luck would have it, the shop was closed for vacations. And last weekend, on a whim, we went there again, and finally it was open.

The owner of the shop, who’s been here for close to 20 yrs now, is mostly a clothes dealer, because the entire warehouse was dominated by stacks and stacks of clothes. The grocery section was a small room, with a few shelves packed with lentils and spices and all the familiar accoutrements of indian cooking. We walked in , and immediately started piling stuff on a table to take home, while the assistant looked on bemused at the flurry of activity. I even found ragi flour. In a matter of minutes we were done, with enough supplies to warrant a largish carton and the assistance of one of the workers to carry it down to the car.

I spoke briefly to the owner, and he claims to supply food to the entire Indian community in Mexico. He told me that there were around 5000 people here, but they must be well scattered. I guess I will have to make the inevitable trip to the Indian embassy to find out what they’re up to.
The address for the place is as follows
CALLE FERNANDO DE ALVAIXTLIXOCHTIL 27 INT 201
COL. OBRERA, C.P.06800. DF, MEXICO
TEL: 1325-9843
Above location is one and half block from METRO DOCTORES. Open from 10AM TO 7PM (M-F) Saturday by appointment.