terça-feira, 3 de fevereiro de 2015

So! I have been away from this blog for quite a while... 


Will try to make up for this. I will following proceed with a series of posts on ideas I mentioned in a book chapter I just published. The complete reference for this chapter (online since SEPTEMBER 2014) and respective link is http://link.springer.com/referenceworkentry/10.1007/978-94-007-6649-5_38-1

Let us see how much impact is generated by some facts I mention on this chapter!.. For instance, did you read the statement given by Bates (1856) in his famous The Naturalist on the River Amazons, describing the problem with fire ants in the Brazilian Amazon? “This species is exclusively found in sandy soils, in open semi-cultivated or neglected places [where] they increase only in the neighbourhood of deserted houses or unweeded plantations; consequently they are a scourge only to the lazy and worthless people that inhabit the shores of this magnificent river.” – Poor fellow, he was unaware that, essentially 100 years later, these fire ants would become a “scourge” to many different peoples around the planet! Curiously the specific passage seems to have been censored out without notice from present today's digital public copies of this book!!