Nearctica Web Site

The web is full of obscure sites. Every time I think I've seen them all, I run into another one, and since the charge of Suite 101 editors is to point people to web sites of interest, here ya go. I don't recall what I was looking for, but I accidentally ran into Nearctica, which bills itself as "your complete gateway to the natural world of North America." Quite a claim. Ever heard of it?

In its own words: "Nearctica brings you the best of the natural world on the web combining links to other sites with original material. Only the most useful sites are listed and we tell you what to expect when you get to them. Everyone will find something for interest; students, the family, scientists, and decision makers": plants, animals, "the physical environment of North America, conservation, environmental protection, education, home and yard pests, butterflies, birds, weather, dinosaurs, biking, coloring books for kids, and anything else related to the great outdoors."

The main link topics of the Nearctica site are: education, natural history, family, systematics, ecology, evolution, conservation, environment, organizations, commercial, paleontology, geophysics, and shopping mall. If you take some of these links, you will indeed run into many more links, so the site, despite the annoying advertisements, might be worth a bookmark.

Currently featured is "The Butterflies and Skippers of North America," by Paul A. Opler, Ray E. Stanford, Harry Pavulaan, the Northern Prairie Wildlife Research Center (USGS), and the staff of Nearctica.com. Great opening photo of a skipper (I think). The first foray I took into the book, however, landed me an exceptionally annoying "Punch the Monkey" advertisement placed not at the top of the page where you normally find banner ads, but almost right in the middle. If you haven't seen this money ad, consider yourself lucky. It's enough to make me leave the site, but for the sake of review, I continued. Unfortunately, poor design-for-advertisement pervades this site.

Since I'm on the topic of butterflies, you may be interested in knowing that last week researchers announced that genetically modified Bt corn grown in Illinois in 1999 had no adverse effect on black swallowtail caterpillars. This was in contrast to research from the previous year, which reported slowed growth and early deaths of Monarch caterpillars. The Monarchs got a lot of media courage. Black swallowtail larvae, the UI researchers noted, are just as likely as are monarch caterpillars to encounter corn pollen in the field during a key developmental time between late June and mid-August. "Yet under actual field conditions, no mortality directly or indirectly attributable to ingestion of endotoxin-containing corn pollen could be detected," they wrote.

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