Daniel M. Russell's Blog, page 10

Answer: When you're looking for a term or concept but can't quite say what it is?

One of the biggest SRS issues... 

P/C Midjourney
... is how to convert your vague thoughts, considerations, ruminations, and ideas into something that can be researched.   

You know what I mean--you're wondering about something, or you have an ill-formed curiosity about something and you'd like to find out more about it.  

We've talked about this many times before:  

A. That funny feeling of haziness you have when you first wake up?  (SRS Sep 12, 2022) 

B. How to find immensely talented people?  (SRS Sep 14, 2025) 

C. Finding words or phrases that you've only ever heard, but don't quite know?  (SRS Aug 9, 2012) 

D. What do you call that strangely-shaped building?  (SRS July 20, 2015) 

E. Questions about things you see while traveling? (SRS May 1, 2019)  

From all of these Challenges we learned that having a specific term that describes what you seek is usually an essential step.  

In particular, from each of these we learned the following rules-of-thumb: 

A.  Search sometimes takes a few iterations--don't give up after one search. When searching for a concept with really common terms, it sometimes helps to call an expert.  Changing your search from the generic to the specific is sometimes a great strategy.  When you're stuck, trying shifting to a more generic search (or, if you're already generic, trying shifting to more specific searches).  

B. Even vague ideas can be captured in a single word (or short phrase)--the problem is to find that term.  In this case, a 2-step strategy was the right one.  First, find the word (or phrase) by describing the concept--".. skilled in multiple arts / sciences / domains-of-expertise..." and then scanning for a short term that captures exactly that idea. In this Challenge, the term was "polymath."  

C. When searching for unfamiliar terms, sometimes you can figure them out just by fooling around a bit--explore!  Don't get too hung up getting everything just right, often the Google spellchecker will help out by suggesting alternatives.  Also, when searching for word meanings, it's often useful to include a "context term" to set the stage.  Including other terms that are "in the context" often leads to the perfect term or phrase.  

D.  Use context terms to help find articles / pages that are relevant to your search.  In this case, finding a photo of building let me read about what industry used that shape of building--once I knew that, the rest of the research was simple. 

E.  Remember reverse dictionaries.  They're incredibly handy for going from a vague concept ("buildings that are no longer churches") to a specific term ("deconsecrated").  

All in all, moving from vague understanding to some language we can actually use for search purposes is a bit of an exploration.  

The Challenges for this week are intentionally challenging--I wanted to stretch our collective imagination about what kinds of things we can search for--to go beyond the ordinary and try out new methods. Here were the Challenges:  

1. Can you find the terms / names for ardent fans of particular composers from the classical era? (I mean this expansively, anything from 1700 to 1920.)  "Debussyist" is one example, "Wagnerian" is another--can you find others?  In particular, what kind of search term(s) do you use to find such fan labels? 

I spent a few hours on this on a merry chase trying to figure out the best way to approach the problem.  I have about 10 pages of notes, documenting all of the twists and turns.  But rather than give you all the details (you can see my notes here if you're curious), let me give you the top-level summary.  

First, of course I tried the LLMs.  But for this part of the Challenge, I could not get any of them to give me a list of the "terms/names for ardent fans..." 

With ChatGPT and Gemini, I tried two different prompts: 

a. [Franz Schubert, Claude Debussy, and Ludwig van Beethoven all had followers who formed clubs or societies after them.  What is this behavior called?  That is, when a musical composer is has followers that create a movement in their name?] 

b. [what composers have movements named after them?]  

ChatGPT gave fairly boring answers "..they're called composer appreciation societies" and then 3 examples of composer movements (Beethovian, Mozartian, Bachian).  Fine, but it seems a bit thin, eh? 

Gemini gave me a bit better answer, teaching me about "Composer cults" (a term I hadn't heard before), and that "...depending on the specific activities of the groups, terms like "Schubert Circle" or "Debussy School" might be used to describe a group that not only admires the composer but also seeks to emulate or extend their musical style."  

That's an interesting twist, but not too helpful. 

(I went down dry pathways looking into Composer Cults, Circles, and Schools, but didn't get very far.)  

I then asked the LLMs [ Can you give a list of some composer societies named for individual composers? ]  This gives a better reply.  

Here is a list of some composer societies named for individual composers:

 The Bach Gesellschaft (English: Bach Society) is a German musicological society founded in 1850 in Leipzig for the purpose of publishing the complete works of Johann Sebastian Bach.

The International Frédéric Chopin Society was founded in Warsaw in 1932. The Society maintains a large collection of Chopin-related items, including manuscripts, letters, and first editions.

The Deutsche Mozart-Gesellschaft (English: German Mozart Society) was founded in 1880 in Salzburg, Austria. The Society promotes research on Mozart's life and works, and organizes concerts and festivals.

The Internationale Gustav Mahler Gesellschaft (English: International Gustav Mahler Society) was founded in 1957 in Vienna, Austria. The Society promotes research, performances, and appreciation of Mahler's work.

The Richard Wagner Society of North America was founded in 1892 in New York City. The Society promotes the study, performance, and appreciation of Wagner's operas and music dramas.

 These are just a few examples, and there are many other composer societies around the world dedicated to preserving and promoting the works of their favorite composers.

That's definitely the kind of thing I was looking for--but surely there are more.  

Sudden insight:  As I was reading through one of the LLM comments, I saw something about a group that was dedicated to preserving "the Mozartian style.."

I thought, "maybe, just maybe there's a way to attack this question if I think about adjectives..." 

So I posed this question to Gemini: [ what do you call it when a person's name becomes an adjective describing their style of work?  Is there a term for that? ]  (Highlighting mine.)

Gemini: Yes, when a person's name is turned into an adjective to describe their style or something reminiscent of their work, it's called an "eponym." More specifically, when referring to the stylistic characteristics reminiscent of an artist or author, you might hear it referred to as an "eponymous adjective." These adjectives often highlight the unique, identifiable qualities of the person's work and can be applied across various fields, including literature, music, art, and more.

For example, "Shakespearean" refers to something that is characteristic of Shakespeare's work, whether it be his writing style, themes, or dramatic structure. Similarly, "Kafkaesque" is used to describe situations or narratives that reflect the surreal, oppressive, or nightmarish qualities found in Franz Kafka's stories.

That's interesting.  Can I somehow leverage this insight?  Turn to regular Google: 

     [ list of eponymous adjectives ] 

which took me instantly to the Wikipedia list of eponymous adjectives!  (Who knew?)  

But that's a fairly long list (the page is 486 adjectives long)... 

How could I go through that long list and pull out the adjectives named for composers or musicians?  
This really is a call for ChatGPT.... 

Prompt: In this text file is a long list of adjectives named for people.  Can you select out the lines of people who are famous composers?  A: The file contains a list of eponymous adjectives in English, along with the names associated with these adjectives. Given the nature of the file, I will now filter through the list to identify and extract lines related to famous composers. Since the content spans a wide range of individuals from various fields, I'll focus on those explicitly known for their contributions to music composition. Let's proceed to identify the composers.  Here are the lines from the file that mention famous composers: Bachian – Johann Sebastian BachBeethovenian – Ludwig van BeethovenBrahmsian – Johannes BrahmsChopinesque – Frédéric ChopinHandelian – George Frideric HandelHaydnesque – Joseph HaydnLisztian – Franz LisztMahlerian – Gustav MahlerMendelssohnian – Felix MendelssohnMozartean – Wolfgang MozartRachmaninovian – Sergei RachmaninoffSchubertian – Franz SchubertWagnerian – Richard Wagner (as in Wagnerian rock) These entries represent a selection of eponymous adjectives derived from the names of notable composers, highlighting their impact on various aspects of culture and art. 

That is, this is a list (from English) of composers and musicians whose names have become integrated into the language.  I spot-checked this, but didn't go through all of the lines to verify it completely.  There are a lot of other artist-based eponymous adjectives (Hitchcockian, Felliniesque, Palinian, etc.)  
This isn't quite what I was looking for (for instance, "Debussyist" isn't in this list), but it's pretty close.  
Note that it really is oriented towards European composers, and reflects only English.  It would be fun to do this in other languages.  (Any volunteers?)  
Interesting side note:  when I ask it to do the same thing with the web page (URL given), it only returns 6 of the entries.  It's completely unclear why this is so. 
Pro tip: I found that it's much better to extract the text, save to a plain text file, and ask ChatGPT to do it from scratch—you get better answers. 

2. Can you find clubs that were formed to celebrate and fête musicians from that time period?  (I found some clubs that astonished me.  Perhaps you will too.)  

I thought I'd try the same trick--find a list of clubs or societies that are named for musicians... but I quickly ran into the ambiguous terms problem.  Just try searching for [ list of clubs ] or [ list of music societies ] and you'll quickly find out that there are a LOT of clubs and societies that have to do with music, but aren't quite as near the meaning that I want.  

I asked ChatGPT4: [ can you give me a list of organizations that are named for composers?  example: The Bach Society  ] 

I got a reasonable list of such societies: 

Here's a list of such organizations:

The Bach Society - Dedicated to Johann Sebastian Bach, focusing on performances and studies of his works.

Beethoven-Haus Bonn - A memorial site, museum, and cultural institution focused on the life and works of Ludwig van Beethoven.

Chopin Foundation of the United States - Aims to support young musicians in their studies and careers, and promote the appreciation of Frédéric Chopin’s music.

The Handel and Haydn Society - Based in Boston, this organization is one of the oldest continuously operating arts organizations in the U.S., focusing on performances of Baroque and Classical music, including works by George Frideric Handel and Joseph Haydn.

The Mendelssohn Foundation - Established to preserve the legacy of Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy, including his music and the historical sites associated with his life.

The Liszt Society - Dedicated to promoting the music and legacy of Franz Liszt through concerts, publications, and research.

The Mahler Society - Focuses on the music and life of Gustav Mahler, promoting performances and scholarship.

Rachmaninoff Society - Aims to promote the understanding and appreciation of Sergei Rachmaninoff’s music.

The Schubert Institute - A research facility and society devoted to the study and dissemination of Franz Schubert’s works.

The Sibelius Society - Dedicated to promoting the life and music of Jean Sibelius.

The Vaughan Williams Society - Aims to advance the education of the public in the music of Ralph Vaughan Williams.

The Wagner Society - Several societies around the world focus on the promotion and understanding of Richard Wagner’s music and operatic works.

These are all fine, but I have the feeling there are more.  But how many more? 

When I ask this question of Gemini, I get three more societies in addition: 

The Giuseppe Verdi Society (founded in 1951 in Busseto, Italy) is dedicated to the study and performance of the music of Giuseppe Verdi.

The Johannes Brahms Society (founded in 19 Brahms-Gesellschaft) is dedicated to promoting the music of Johannes Brahms.

The Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky Research Center and Museum (founded in 1893 in Klin, Russia) is dedicated to the life and works of Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky.

 

 

Is this all?  How complete is this list?  Are there only 15 societies? 

Another Pro Tip:  Don't mistake a list for the complete list.  

The obvious thing to do at this point is to find a list of composers (easy: [ list of composers ] leads to the ).  Then, I could ask ChatGPT to check for a society or association for each... right? 

I did a couple of manual tests to see what would happen.  (Yet Another Pro Tip: When doing searches like this, always test them out by running a few by hand.)  

When I did a test, I purposefully chose a few different composers to see what I'd find.  

     [ Domenico Zipoli society ] 

Sure enough, there's a Domenico Zipoli Society.  

Another: 

     [ Nadia Boulanger society ] 

I figured there would be a society, and there is.  

But even something easy like: 

     [ Antonio Vivaldi society ] 

leads to a bunch of societies that are named for Vivaldi, but aren't necessarily dedicated to his music.  

There're even hits for the [ Hans Zimmer society ], which tells me something.   

Uh oh.  The more I dug into the data, the more I realized that a human would have to go through each of the search results and determine if this is a society or organization that was dedicated to their music, or if it was a society that was about the history and culture of that composers lifetime, or was merely an accidental name-collision.  (There are lots of people named Vivaldi, some of them aren't musical.)  

This is gonna be a problem.  And at this point, I stopped trying to find a complete list--I've got a decent-enough list, but looking for a complete list is probably a fool's errand.  If a library patron asked for this, I'd ask them "and what will you do with this list once you have it?"  But for me, for now, this is good enough.  

SearchResearch Lessons

There are several morals to this story: 

1. Going from inarticulate and vague to crisp and clearly defined is probably the hardest issue in SearchResearch: you need to go broad, search around, keep your eyes (and mind) open to new clues as they appear.  This process of wrestling with an idea until you're able to be clear about it is, to my mind, the most fun and engaging thing you can do while searching.  It's part psychoanalysis, part essay writing, part learning new things while trying to get to your goal.  

2. A great strategy is to go back and forth between Google search (to find things you know exist) and the LLMs which can then manipulate the data you've found.  We did this by learning about eponymous adjectives, getting the list, then semantically filtering it with ChatGPT.  

3. Before doing a massive search (as I proposed doing in the last example), be sure to manually run some of the searches to understand what it is you're asking.  In this case, the responses were truly all over the place, leading me to abandon this task as requiring way too many resources... and leading me to question why I was asking it in the first place, when all I wanted were the top 20 or so.  

Keep searching! 

SearchResearch Challenge (3/20/24): When you're looking for a term or concept but can't quite say what it is?

 There are lots of concepts... 

P/C Midjourney
... in the world that I notice, but can't quite articulate.  

For instance, a while ago we searched for the concept of "wall paintings on the outside of buildings in Switzerland" and learned the term Lüftlmalerei.  (See the SRS post from Dec 9, 2023 for details.)    

This Challenge is similar in that I'm not sure what to search for these things I've noticed, but don't know what terms to use to search for them.  Here's my problem... 

You know how Taylor Swift has ardent fans?  They're called Swifties.  Likewise, the Grateful Dead has Deadheads, Phish has Phishheads, and the Insane Clown Posse has Juggalos.  

But I was reading the other day (and that always leads to odd observations and questions) about the ardent followers of Claude Debussy who call themselves Debussyists.  That was a new word to me. I already knew there were huge fans of Richard Wagner who are called Wagnerians (etc etc).  

I was then seized by an interest in learning what other composers / musicians have fans that name themselves after their musical leader.  It's easy to find modern musical groups that have legions of fans (Beetlemaniacs, etc.), but what about earlier composers and musicians? 

In the process of looking that up, I also learned that there are clubs and organizations that seem to have sprung up in their wake.  How do I find them?  The deep question here is how to go from an observed pattern or concept (e.g., legions of fans who follow a particular musician) to some practical way to search for that notion.  What's that process?  How to move from vague understanding to some language I can actually use for search purposes?  

So, here are the Challenges for this week: 

1. Can you find the terms / names for ardent fans of particular composers from the classical era? (I mean this expansively, anything from 1700 to 1920.)  "Debussyist" is one example, "Wagnerian" is another--can you find others?  In particular, what kind of search term(s) do you use to find such fan labels? 

2. Can you find clubs that were formed to celebrate and fête musicians from that time period?  (I found some clubs that astonished me.  Perhaps you will too.)  

As always, be sure to tell us HOW you found the answers to these little Challenges.  (Perhaps you'll have an easier time of it, but it took me a while to get the answers to these.)  

Let us know how you did.

Keep searching! 

  

Part 4: (3/14/24) How do animals fake each other out, and why?

  Mussels are remarkable... 

California mussel (Mytilus californianus) 
... I hope I've convinced you of that.   We've learned about the amazing mimicry behavior of mussels--they use both their mantles (soft tissue at the edge of the shell) and create conglutinates (long mucus-like secretions in which they tuck some glochidia), both of which look like prey items to lure fish to take a bite, but end up spraying the larval glochidia into their mouth and onto the gills.  
The point of all this fakery and elaborate mimicry is to get their larval baby mussels (aka glochidia) onto the gills where they can clamp on for a temporary ride on the host fish. The big question you are probably asking yourself now is this...   
3. The point of all this mussel-bound fakery is to get the glochidia into the gills of fish.  Are the glochidia actually parasites?  Or are they just hitching a ride on the fish's gills? 
The big question here is to determine if the glochidia are actually parasites on the fish, or if they're just along for the ride.  As we've learned in the last two posts, getting the precise word to describe what you're searching for is often a huge help.  So, let's look for the right word by doing this search: 
     [ a word describing an organism that gets a free ride on a host ] 
With a little looking at those results I learned the exact definitions of: 

Commensalism ... in which members of one species gain benefits while those of the other species neither benefit nor are harmedMutualism... in which both organisms benefit from each other; Amensalism... where one is harmed while the other is unaffectedParasitism... where one is harmed and the other benefits, usually in order to obtain nutrients

AND 

Phoresy ... in which a phoretic animal latches onto a host animal for the purpose of dispersal. 

The word phoresy derives from the Greek phorein, which means ‘to carry’. Typically, the attacher is an animal, such as a nematode or mite, with limited ability to travel great distances on its own is happy to get a lift from a highly mobile host, such as a fly or bee.  (More details at the Wikipedia entry for phoresy.) 
So, now we have a very precise term to search for what we want:  Are glochidia parasites or phoronts?  
Next query: 
     [ mussel glochidia parasite phoresy ] 

This takes us to several great resources. Here's the first one:  
“Plasticity, Paralogy, and Pseudogenization: Rhabdoviruses of Freshwater Mussels Elucidate Mechanisms of Viral Genome Diversification and the Evolution of the Finfish-Infecting Rhabdoviral Genera” (Full citation below.)  
 This paper tells us that 

“These larvae [glochidia] attach to the gills or fins of the fish, encyst and derive nutrients from fish blood and tissues, complete metamorphosis and excyst, then drop off to begin their sessile, filter-feeding life stage”   Later on it says that “Freshwater mussel larvae attach to fish and feed on tissues and blood..."    

HOWEVER... the next paper listed in the SERP is this one: "Adaptations to host infection and larval parasitism in Unionoida." 
And this paper says:  

"Freshwater  mussel  larval  parasitism  of  fish  is  unique  among  bivalves.  The  relationship  is primarily  phoretic  rather  than  nutritive;  only  the  smallest  glochidia  and  the  haustorial [a parasite that penetrates the tissues of the host]  larva  grow substantially while on the host. Growth of the smallest larvae suggests a lower functional size limit of ~150 μm for the juveniles... "  

Uh oh.  We've got a difference of a opinion.  The first paper is written by virologists looking for a way that mussels transmit viruses to fish, so their focus is really on mussel-to-fish blood contact.  While everyone agrees that the glochidia create little cysts while attached to the gills, it's kind of a relative thing--do they actually pull nutrients from the host fish or not?  In the "Adaptations" paper, they say (basically) that "sure, there's a little extraction, but not much..."  
I'll spare you the entertaining hours I spent reading papers in benthology (that is, is the study of the community of organisms that live on, in, or near the bottom of a sea, river, lake, or stream--that is, the benthos), but will summarize it by saying that there is a debate about how parasitical the glochidia are in reality.  Some researchers find that their is nutrient exchange between the host fish and the mussel (see "Glochidia Infection" in the citation list below) where they write that: 

"Although the relationship between glochidium larvae of freshwater mussels Unionoida and their obligatory fish hosts has been frequently described as phoretic commensalism (glochidia benefit from transportation services by fish, with no harm to fish) or even symbiotic (both partners benefit), increasing evidence has indicated that the relationship is parasitic. Stable isotope analysis, during the glochidial attachment to the fish host, indicates the acquirement of nutrients from the fish." 

So the debate is really about how many nutrients the glochidia pull out of the host fish and whether or not the mussels are really primarily along for the ride to other locations in the river or stream.  
The last paper I'll cite is this one, "Effects of parasitic freshwater mussels on their host fishes: a review."

“No specific glochidia structures have been observed to extract nutrients from the host, but stable isotope analysis does show such transfer. It is hypothesized that this transfer results from the glochidia digesting the host tissue captured within the initial bite. Denzymes used in the process of breaking down the captured tissue may seep out of the glochidia and digest some surrounding host tissue. Passive absorption of compounds from the intercellular space and blood plasma has also been proposed.”  

So.. maybe it's not such a big deal, just a little bite.  
But as always, use caution when asking LLMs about a topic even as esoteric as this one.  
Q: do Freshwater mussel larvae attach to fish and feed on tissues and blood?  
Gemini: 

“While freshwater mussel larvae do attach to fish, they don't feed on tissues and blood… The glochidia is NOT parasitic and doesn't harm the fish.  
Here's a breakdown of the interesting relationship between freshwater mussels and fish:
Parasitic dependence: Mussels rely on fish as hosts for their glochidia to survive and develop.
Temporary attachment: Glochidia latch onto the fish's gills, fins, or other external body parts for a few weeks. This attachment is relatively harmless to the fish.
Nutritional source: During this period, the glochidia obtain nutrients not directly from the fish but rather from the surrounding water.
This unique adaptation is crucial for freshwater mussels as it ensures the dispersal of their offspring. After several weeks, the glochidia transform into juvenile mussels and detach from the fish, settling at the bottom of the waterway to mature into adults.” 

ChatGPT: 

“Freshwater mussel larvae, known as glochidia, do attach to fish, but their method of feeding and interaction with their host fish is a bit more nuanced than simply feeding on tissues and blood. When glochidia are released into the water by the adult female mussel, they must attach to the gills, fins, or body of a suitable host fish to complete their development. This parasitic stage is crucial for the lifecycle of freshwater mussels.
During this stage, the glochidia encyst on the host fish's surfaces and undergo transformation into juvenile mussels. While encysted, they may derive nutrition from the fish, but rather than actively feeding on the fish's tissues and blood, they are thought to absorb nutrients directly through their tissues, benefiting from the fish's circulatory system indirectly. The interaction is generally not harmful to the fish, and most fish hosts recover without significant harm once the larvae detach and complete their metamorphosis into juvenile mussels.”

Interesting difference.  In this case, ChatGPT is a lot closer to the nuances and subtleties of reality.  (And I would say that Gemini just gets it wrong.)  

SearchResearch Lessons 
Over all of the past few posts, several lessons have become clear.. 
1. Get the most precise term you can find.  Learning the speciality (and precise) terms "mimicry" and "glochidia" get you to the best results fast.  When they're available for your research, learn and use them.  (Such as, phoresy.)
2. Pay attention as you read--you'll pick up important concepts and terminology.   As we read through the SERP results, we often found words and ideas that we could use to zero in on what we were really looking for!  
3. Remember: Sometimes simple questions have complicated answers.  It seems like an obvious question--do mussel larvae parasitize their host fish?  But the answer is nuanced... yes... but!  
4. Caution when asking LLMs... they might really get it wrong, or at least not-nuanced.  

I hope you've enjoyed this little excursion into the sometimes startling world of mussels and mimicry behavior.  I certainly did!   (And I'm grateful I don't have a glochidia infection!)  
Keep searching.  


-------- “Plasticity, Paralogy, and Pseudogenization: Rhabdoviruses of Freshwater Mussels Elucidate Mechanisms of Viral Genome Diversification and the Evolution of the Finfish-Infecting Rhabdoviral Genera” Goldberg, T. L., Blevins, E., Leis, E. M., Standish, I. F., Richard, J. C., Lueder, M. R., ... & Bishop-Lilly, K. A. (2023). Journal of Virology, 97(5), e00196-23.
"Adaptations to host infection and larval parasitism in Unionoida." Barnhart, M. Christopher, Wendell R. Haag, and William N. Roston.  Journal of the North American Benthological Society 27.2 (2008): 370-394.  https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/full/10.1899/07-093.1
"Glochidia Infection of Endemic Fishes from Lake Prespa, N. Macedonia" Blazhekovikj-Dimovska, D., Stojanovski, S., Taskinen, J., Smiljkov, S., & Rimcheska, B. (2022). Hydrobiology, 2(1), 36-43
"Effects of parasitic freshwater mussels on their host fishes: a review." Rock, Sebastian L., et al.  Parasitology 149.14 (2022): 1958-1975.  
Mussels on the beach in northern California (P/C Dan)

Part 3: (3/11/24) How do animals fake each other out, and why?

 Now we know a couple of things... 

California mussel (Mytilus californianus) 
... including that some freshwater mussels, such as Lampsilis reeveiana, release a huge cloud of mussel larvae (video), known as glochidia when a fish tries to eat the fake fish lure.  
The fake fish lure is pretty amazing: 

Not a fish, but the exterior part of a mussel that looks 
and moves just like a tiny shiner fish.
As someone pointed out, that's a pretty amazing bit of mimicry for an animal that can't see--but of course, the ability to see doesn't matter in an evolutionary context.  It's not like the eyes are connected to the mantle tissue that extends outside of its shell, so whether or not it can see isn't material to the mimicry.  
2. In addition to a fake fish lure, there are OTHER mimic devices that freshwater mussels use.  Can you find them as well?  (Think beyond a minnow sitting on top of the mussel shell.) 
Now that I know that "mimicry" is the preferred term of art, my next query was: 
     [ mussel mimicry -Lampsilis ] 
 Why the -Lampsilis in the query?  Because I wanted to find OTHER mechanisms than what Lampsilis would use.  I already know that they use a fake fish lure--but what would other mussels do to attract fish to their glochidia?  
Sure enough, the very first hit was to a National Wildlife Federation page about other kinds of mussel lures.  Here I learned about snuffbox mussel and riffleshell mussel, both of which trap curious fish with a snap of their shells and while holding them tight, douse them with a cloud of tiny glochidia! That's pretty aggressive action by a otherwise quiet mussel!  You can see the snuffbox mussel (Epioblasma triquetra) grabbing a logperch fish by the nose and holding on for a few seconds, blowing glochidia into its mouth and over the gills.  


Here's a still frame from that video, the mussel holding the logperch quite firmly:  
What's more, the edge of the mussel shell has denticles (little teeth-like serrations) that help it hold onto the fish snout.  In this mussel, a part of the mantle inflates to form a gasket-like seal around the head of the captured fish, reducing the leakage of glochidia.  
And one more video of mussel mimicry and fish capture behavior, just because it's so wonderful: 



But wait.. there's more!  
While reading, I was impressed when I read this sentence: "Many species of [mussels such as] Pleurobemini and some Lampsilini release conglutinates of eggs and larvae that resemble host food items."  
That's a big tipoff: a conglutinate that resembles host food items?  What's that? 
My next query was: 
     [ mussel conglutinate mimicry ] 
and I quickly learned that "the mantle lures and conglutinates of various mussel species can mimic fish, a wide variety of aquatic insects, crayfish, snails, leeches, worms, and other prey of their fish hosts.."  
Looking at the Images tab shows us some of the various forms of the conglutinates (which I learned are bits of mucus-like stuff that stick together with glochidia.  Again, through the power of evolution, these conglutinates look an awful lot like tasty fish food.  
Thumbnails of different mussel conglutinates. Some look like worms, insect larvae,
others like fish, while  others like shrimp or packets of eggs. 
This is a closeup of the conglutinate in the lower left: 
Looks like a watercolor painting, but is actually the conglutinate of
Ptychobranchus subtentum, which strongly resembles pupae of the blackfly. 


 Once again, we see the importance of knowing the right terms.  Last time we learned about "mimicry" as a technical term that will improve the accuracy of your searches.  This time we found that removing Lampsilis as a term would let us see even more results.  And we found "conglutinates" as just the right words to let us find even more amazing mimicry behavior.  
For our third special-edition SRS Challenge of the week, we turn our attention to the point of all this fakery--the glochidia.  
3. The point of all this mussel-bound fakery is to get the glochidia into the gills of fish.  Are the glochidia actually parasites?  Or are they just hitching a ride on the fish's gills? 
Let us know what you find out.  
Keep searching.  

Part 2: (3/8/24): How do animals fake each other out, and why?

 Mussels are more than you might think... 

... in Wednesday's Challenge I asked:   
1. Given that mussels are fairly quiet and sessile creatures, do they ever try to do some kind of fakery in their appearance?  If so, why?   
When you think about animals doing fakery, the word that should spring to mind is (as SRS Regular Reader Krossbow pointed out) is mimicry.  
It's true that mussels are stationary for most of their lives, but they're not static.  They can open their shells and do stuff.  Plus, they've been evolving for around 500 megayears and are capable of quite rapid evolutions!  
My first query was: 
     [ mussels mimicry ] 
which quickly led me to find this result from PBS (the Nature series): 
For example, females in the mussel genus Lampsilis have an extension of the mantle tissue that strikingly resembles a small fish. The mussel displays this tissue outside its shell between the valves and twitches it repetitively to attract its predaceous fish host – like a fishing lure.
Be sure to check out their video (especially at :52)  


That's a wonderful example of mimicry which you can also see in
this video with a slightly different camera angle:  

This is one of those cases when knowing just the right word works really well.  In this case, knowing the vocabulary word mimicry makes a huge difference.  This particular freshwater mussel, Lampsilis reeveiana, releases a huge cloud of mussel larvae (video), known as glochidia, some of which then attach themselves to the gills of fish that dares to try and eat the fake fish lure.  (See the glochidia attach themselves to fish gills in this video.) 
But that's not all... There's much more to discover, and that's the second part of this 3-part Challenge.... 
2. In addition to a fake fish lure, there are OTHER mimic devices that freshwater mussels use.  Can you find them as well?  (Think beyond a minnow sitting on top of the mussel shell.) 
As always, let us know what you find and what you did to find it!  
(Warning: These next couple of mimicry mechanisms are wild!)  
 
Keep searching.  

SearchResearch Challenge (3/6/24): How do animals fake each other out, and why?

While strolling on a Northern California beach one day... 

... I spied a large colony of mussels.  (See above.)  The mussels in the top pic are around 1 inch across (2.5 cm), but they vary widely in size (see bottom pic).  
By mussel I mean bivalves of the marine family Mytilidae, most of which live on exposed shores in the intertidal zone, attached to rocks and stable platforms by means of their strong byssal threads (which are, by the way, incredibly strong).  
Interestingly, marine mussels have a wide range of predators--they're eaten by humans, starfish, seabirds, dog whelks. Likewise, freshwater mussels are eaten by muskrats, otters, raccoons, ducks, baboons, humans (again), and geese.
For an animal that's been around for nearly 500 million years (early precursor bivalves evolved during the middle of the Cambrian era, around 100 million years before trees evolved on land!), they seem pretty static.  I mean, look at them--they just hang around and filter feed for most of their life.  
As I was standing in the tidepools looking at them I couldn't help but wonder if such a long-lived creature had something else up its behavioral sleeve. 
We know that many creatures go to great lengths to create fake displays.  Here's one that I saw while scuba diving--the fabled frogfish, which looks and acts a lot like a sponge, until a small fishy swims too close to its mouth, and then learns the hard way that it's not a sponge! 
Frogfish in Bonaire.  P/C  dive buddy Megaaan. 
You can see the mouth on the lower left, with the eye right above.
So this brings up our SearchResearch Challenge for this week.  
BUT... this is going to be slightly different than normal. I've got 3 SRS Challenges that I'll release one-at-a-time over the next few days. (I'm doing it like this to make a kind of cliff-hanger experience.  You'll see why...)  
Here's the first Challenge: 
1. Given that mussels are fairly quiet and sessile creatures, do they ever try to do some kind of fakery in their appearance?  If so, why?   
Once you figure that out, I'll post SRS Challenge #2 about mussel fakery.  It will all become clear in a bit. 
Let us know how you found the answer!  
Keep searching.  

Answer: Are tree rings nested cones or cylinders?

  Simple questions... 

P/C Sevenstorm (from Pexels.com)
... can begin from humble circumstances and can lead to deep insights. 
In this Challenge, I saw the stump of a tree wondered if the number of growth rings near the top of the tree would be the same as the number of rings near the bottom.  I counted the rings and found that it was around 25 years old.  But then I saw another cross section of the tree, but much narrower and taken from much higher up on the trunk, a bit like this: 

THAT made me pause for a moment and wonder--if I could somehow X-ray the tree, how would the rings be arranged on the inside?  

In other words, are number of rings the same at the bottom of the tree as at the top?   

1. Are the rings in a tree trunk arranged as a cone or as a collection of cylinders?  In other words, if you count the rings at the top of the tree, would you see the same number of rings as at the bottom?  (If they're stacked cones, you'd expect the number to be different--if they're cylinders, you'd expect them to be the same.)  How ARE the tree rings organized inside of the tree trunk? 

This turns out to be more complicated than it sounds.  (See what I mean?  Even simple questions about things you see everyday can lead to unanticipated depths.)  

I was thinking of the inside of tree like this: 

Dan's sketch of a tree
And, if you took a vertical cross-section of the tree, you'd see something like one of these two sketches of the very top of the tree:

Cross section of a tree.
The question I had in mind was this: Are the tree growth rings arranged like the one on the left? (Like nesting cones stacked on top of each other.) Or more like the one on the right?  (All of the growth rings flow from a single point on top of the tree.) 

In other words, are the growth rings conical or cylindrical?  

This matters because if you cut the tree at level 1 (see above), the left tree would show only 2 rings, while the right tree would show 3 rings.  So... which is it? 

I did various versions of searches like: 

     [ tree growth rings same at top and bottom ] 

     [ are the number of tree rings the same at the top and bottom ] 

     [ are tree rings arranged in a cone or a cylinder ] 

These searches all led to Quora pages or Reddit pages, most of which disagreed with each other.  Some say the number of rings are constant from bottom to top (like cylinders) while some say the number varies from bottom to top (like stacked cones).  

I asked Bard and ChatGPT this question: 

     [ do trees have the same number of growth rings at
        the top of the tree as at the bottom of the tree?  ] 

ChatGPT:  

Yes, trees have the same number of growth rings at the top of the tree as at the bottom. Growth rings, also known as annual rings, are layers of wood produced by the tree's cambium (the layer of growing tissue) each year during its growing season. These rings indicate the age of the tree and can provide information about the environmental conditions during each year of the tree's life.

The number of growth rings is consistent throughout the entire height of the tree because the rings represent the growth of the tree in a given year, regardless of the height at which you are examining the tree. Whether you're looking at a cross-section near the base of the tree or a cross-section higher up, you will count the same number of growth rings, assuming the sections are from the same tree and the tree is healthy and growing normally.

The uniformity of growth rings throughout the tree is a result of the tree's growth process, which occurs outward from the cambium layer, encircling the entire trunk and branches. This process ensures that each year's growth is recorded as a ring around the entire circumference of the tree.

Gemini/Bard: 

Yes, trees generally have the same number of growth rings at the top as at the bottom of the tree. This is because new growth occurs at the tips of the branches and the main stem, and this new growth adds a new ring to the entire tree, from the top to the bottom. 

Imagine the tree trunk as a long, thin cylinder. As the tree grows taller, the cylinder gets longer, but its overall width stays the same. The growth rings are like the layers of paint on the cylinder, and each new layer is added on top of the previous ones, all the way from the top to the bottom.

Aside from telling me that trees don't taper as they get taller (really, Gemini?), interestingly, and oddly, the Gen-AI answer feature in Google gave a different answer in the SERP than regular Gemini!  (See below. The SERP says "no," but Gemini says "yes."  What's up with that?) 

Okay... How am I going to get an authoritative answer?  

Rather than asking the LLMs, or believing the conflicting stories in Reddit and Quora, I went to Google Scholar and Google Books.  Both have pretty reliable content, most of which is peer-reviewed (or in the case of Books, at least carefully reviewed by an editor and publishing house).  

In Google Books I did: 

     [ tree ring growth same at top of tree as at the bottom ] 

and found several books of interest, but one in particular stood out.   Tree rings: timekeepers of the past. Phipps, R. L., & McGowan, J. (1993). US Department of the Interior, US Geological Survey.

In this book (published by the USGS, a reputable organization) you'll read: 

Looking down at a stump top, it may be difficult to visualize how tree rings go together to make a tree. Perhaps this is because a tree is a three-dimensional object and a stump top displays only two dimensions. The idea of three-dimensional growth can be clarified, however, by disregarding for the moment the leaves, branches, roots, and bark, and considering only the wood portion of the tree trunk. At the end of its first summer, after germination from a seed, a tree seedling is composed of one annual growth increment or growth layer. This somewhat cone-shaped increment, a fraction of a centimeter in diameter and only a few centimeters high, will not grow or change dimensions after the year in which it was formed, but will remain the same size and in the same position as long as the tree exists.

During the second year, another annual growth increment is formed around and above the first year's increment. At the end of the third year, an increment has been formed around that of the second year, and similar cones of growth are formed in each succeeding year. The growth increment of each year thus increases the diameter and height of the tree trunk.  

Most intriguing, it also has this diagram: 

Figure from page 7 of "Tree Rings" (1993) 
Which shows pretty clearly that the correct model of tree rings is that of stacked cones.  (And is pretty similar to my hand-drawn sketch above.)  

But... just to be sure, I wanted a verification check. So, I also did a search in Google Scholar for papers on this topic.  There, my search was much shorter and to the point: 

     [ cross-section tree height ] 

That led me pretty quickly to a technical paper "Two models for predicting the number of annual rings in cross-sections of tree stems" published in the Scandinavian Journal of Forest Research (2007).  

I won't bore you with the details (it's a fun paper to read, but you have to be willing to read through the math), but the key insight for me was that one of the key parameters of the model is "Number of annual rings (cambial age) in cross-section at height h", which strongly suggests that the number of tree rings varies by height.  (Looking at the data in detail shows that it does.)  More support for the idea of "stacked cones" rather than a simple cylinder.  

  

2. If tree rings are the fingerprints of a tree, I know that cloned trees can have very different ring patterns, but what about humans?  Do identical twin humans have identical fingerprints, or not?  

This was a much simpler Challenge.  My query was much like Ramon's: 

     [ identical twins fingerprints ] 

which quickly leads to two articles from reputable sources.  Medline Plus and  Healthline both of which tell us that: 

The finer details of the patterns of skin ridges are influenced by other factors during fetal development, including substances taken during pregnancy and the environment inside the womb. These developmental factors cause each person’s dermatoglyphs to be different from everyone else’s. Even identical twins, who have the same DNA, have different fingerprints.

And there you have it: reputable source and a verification from a second reputable source.  

SearchResearch Lessons

1. Even simple questions can be difficult to answer.  I guess that's often the case (standard example, "why is the sky blue?" is tricky), but you'd think searching out the answer would be straightforward. As you see, this isn't always the case.  Here we had to dig into the Books and Scholar literature to get a decent answer. Which reminds me... 

2. (Once again) Don't trust the LLMs for answers to tough questions.  It's bad enough that both ChatGPT and Gemini/Bard got the answer fundamentally wrong, but the fact that Gemini gives different answers between the SERP and the regular chat interface should give you a clue that something's really weird here.  

I'll say it again:  Always verify. Always get a second source (and asking another LLM is NOT validating.)  

Keep Searching!  

SearchResearch Challenge (2/14/24): Are tree rings nested cones or cylinders?

 While walking through a forest... 

P/C Sevenstorm (from Pexels.com)
... of very tall trees, I was wondering how old the trees were.  Luckily, just around the next bend in the trail there was the stump of a tree.  I counted the rings and found that it was around 25 years old.  But then I saw another cross section of the tree, but much narrower and taken from much higher up on the trunk, a bit like this: 

THAT started me thinking about markers of growth.  As you know, each ring is 1 annual growth cycle.  The dark bands are usually made of smaller cells that grow close together when times are tough, while the light bands are larger cells, created when living conditions are much better. 

But is the number of rings the same at the bottom of the tree as at the top?  That is... 

1. Are the rings in a tree trunk arranged as a cone or as a collection of cylinders?  In other words, if you count the rings at the top of the tree, would you see the same number of rings as at the bottom?  (If they're stacked cones, you'd expect the number to be different--if they're cylinders, you'd expect them to be the same.)  How ARE the tree rings organized inside of the tree trunk? 

2. If tree rings are the fingerprints of a tree, I know that cloned trees can have very different ring patterns, but what about humans?  Do identical twin humans have identical fingerprints, or not?  

Can you work your SRS magic on these Challenges and let us know?  

As always, tell us what you found, and how you found it.  (And yes, you can use LLMs or anything that floats your boat, including asking your fingerprint specialist detective uncle.)  Just be sure to include the details of what you did, including any tools or resources... be they AI or human.  

Keep Searching!  

PSA: Do not believe citations created by Gemini (Bard)

 As you probably know, 

... I'm writing a book.  That means every day I'm looking things up, checking into the backstory so I can be sure that what I'm writing is accurate, up-to-the-minute, and full of the zesty and intriguing insider information that you've come to expect from SearchResearch.  

Today I was looking up the difference in behavior between the Eurasian Tree sparrow (Passer montanus) and the ordinary House sparrow (P. domesticus).  Oddly, it turns out that even though they're very similar, the Eurasian Tree sparrow has a much smaller range that the House sparrow.  (Buy the book when it comes out to learn why anyone might be interested in this strange-but-true fact.)  For two very similar birds, the question is obvious: Why?  

In the process of searching for the answer, I thought that I should give Gemini (Bard) a try.  So I posed this question to it: 

[ why have house sparrows expanded their range dramatically since being introduced into the US, while Eurasian tree sparrows have not?  They're so similar, you'd think they would expand at a similar rate. ] 

And it gave a reasonable answer.  At least it looks reasonable.  

So I asked it to give me me a few citations:  

[ can you suggest further reading in the scientific literature about the differences in range expansion?] 

No surprise, it gave me a set of reasonable looking titles of papers I should read.  In fact, these titles look great!  I need to read these articles, and what's even better, there are actual links to the articles.  

What could go wrong?  Here's what I saw (I added the red Xs):  

To start with, NONE of those papers actually exist.  That's a serious deal-breaker. 

Yes, I checked everywhere, but no, I could not find any of these papers in the scholarly literature or even the trash heap. They just don't exist.   

And those links?  They go to actual papers, but not the papers cited, and in three cases, the links went to papers that weren't about sparrows at all but about random other topics!  

Which brings up the basic question--if Gemini can't get the citations and links correct, should I really trust the answer it gave to my first question?  

My answer:  I'm not going to do so.  It seems drunk.  

Just for giggles, I gave the same questions to ChatGPT-4.  Its answer to the first question was very similar to Gemini's, but to its credit, when I asked for citations, it replied with a hedge, listing places I could go look on my own, but NOT giving any direct citations.  At least the journals are real journals.  (Yes, there is an journal called The Auk, it's been published since 1884).  

I thought that ChatGPT would take the day here, but then, at the end of its answer, it included this very odd suggestion: 

Did I read that right?  "... here are some hypothetical examples of articles or chapters... though these exact titles may not exist."  

Maybe that's helpful?  (It certainly suggests some key terms that might be useful in doing regular searches.) 

But "hypothetical examples"?  I'm not sure this is really much of an addition to my search task.  

My bottom line?  Don't trust Gemini to tell you any actual citations... it just makes stuff up. (And that, my friends, makes me very concerned about the quality of the summaries it makes to complex or subtle questions...)  

Keep searching!  Your SRS skills are still relevant!  

Answer: How can I get an AI to summarize a document?

So, in summary … 

Last week we asked an important question:  How can we use LLMs (and AI tools in general) to help summarize things that we'd like to read?  

As I said, I find that I spend roughly half of my research time just browsing, scanning, and reading—it’s what you need to do to understand a topic area enough to do real work. 

Will AI systems make the long, original documents into a shorter, more focused work, punchier crystals of knowledge?  Or will that tool end up blurring everything into mush?  That's our choice: beautiful crystals of insight or mushy oatmealy language.  

What did we find out?  

1. How well does your favorite bit of AI technology do at summarizing long texts?  What system do you like for summarizing, and why?  

Let me start by pointing out the obvious:  Creating a good summary is fairly hard.  

I could quote Woody Allen's quip about speed-reading the infamously lengthy Tolstoy novel War and Peace--"It's about Russia."  

That's a summary, but not a useful one.  (Likewise, summarizing Moby Dick as "It's about whales," also doesn't help anyone.)  

What makes for a good summary?  

Interestingly, there are oodles of testing systems that measure the performance of LLMs on various dimensions: Closed-book Open-domain question-answering, Reading Comprehension, Instruction Following, Fact-Checking... etc.  

One of those dimensions is "Summarization."   (Probably the best known of the LLM performance measurements is the Hallucinations Leaderboard by HuggingFace. You can click on it for today's measures on a bunch of different LLMs on a bunch of different dimensions.)  

Basically, these measures of the quality of a summarization look at the overall similarity between the text (usually texts that are between 200 - 4K words long) and the summary that's generated by the AI tool.  That is, if there's a high degree of overlap in the words used in the summary and the original text, then the score is high. (The most commonly used measure is the ROUGE score to measure summary/original similarity.)  

Of course, while the ROUGE score is handy and easy to compute, it's not necessarily what makes for a good summary.  If I summarize  Frankenstein as "an exploration of how a quest for understanding the secret of life, and how it all goes horribly wrong," that's not going to be ranked very highly by ROUGE.  

A good summary, like a good explanation, is largely determined by who the summary is for, not its term overlaps.  A good summary of War and Peace to a 10-year old kid is (or should be) very different than for a 25-year old graduate student in world literature.  Likewise, a summary of something very technical (say, Calculus: Early Transcendentals by James Stewart, probably the best-selling math textbook on calculus in English) would be very different depending on the target, but also what the purpose of the summary is.  Summaries can have very, very different uses.  A summary of a book for the New York Times Book Review (which is intended to give a critical perspective on the text) will be different from a review that you post on GoodReads.com (which usually gives the plot points and description).  

Having said all of that, what DO people like as a summarization tool?  (I'm assuming we're not going to use human-written summaries, such as Blinkist, Sparknotes, or Cliffnotes.)  

The bigger question is actually "what LLM will actually summarize long texts?"  

2. Test out your summarization method on two long-form texts.  First, let’s try that classic gothic tale, Frankenstein by Mary Shelley.  (Here’s a link to the full text that you can use.) How good is that summary?  

As I'm sure you found out, there's no convenient way to upload a long text file into Bard/Gemini. If you paste the entire text of Frankenstein into Bard, it stops accepting input around page 15.  This is obviously a problem. 

If you upload the full-text of Frankenstein into ChatGPT4, it not only uploads easily, but if you then ask for a summary, it produces a very nice one.  This is the ChatGPT4 summary of Frankenstein: 

The novel "Frankenstein" by Mary Shelley begins with letters from an explorer named Robert Walton to his sister, where he describes his journey to the North Pole. During this expedition, Walton encounters Victor Frankenstein, who then narrates his own tragic story of ambition, creation, and loss. Victor, a young scientist, creates a sentient creature in an experiment, but is horrified by his creation and abandons it. The creature, seeking companionship and understanding, faces rejection and becomes vengeful, leading to tragic consequences for both creator and creation. The novel explores themes of ambition, isolation, responsibility, and the quest for knowledge.

If you ask for a longer summary (which I did), it creates a slightly longer version, but only about 100 words longer.  I couldn't figure out how to get it to create a much longer version. (Even when I asked for 1000 words, it topped out at 400.)  

So, for summarizing long texts, ChatGPT4 wins over Bard by a monstrous amount.  

3. Second, let’s try your summarization method on a piece of text you might have read, but might have slightly forgotten—Chapter 10 of my book, The Joy of Search, link to the full-text of Chapter 10 here.  "When was oil first discovered in California?"  Did your summary method create a good/useful summary?  

This was really interesting: I got both ChatGPT4 and Bard/Gemini to produce good summaries of Chapter 10 of The Joy of Search.  Let's look at their summaries side-by-side.  

First, here's Bard/Gemini's summary: 

Bard/Gemini: Summary of the Text on California Oil Discovery:

The text explores the complexities of discovering when and where oil was first found in California. It emphasizes the importance of critical thinking and careful research when navigating historical information.

Key Points:

Multiple Claims: Different sources make various claims about "first" oil discoveries, citing events like:1865: Union Matolle Company's commercial sale from Humboldt County.1876: Pico No. 4 well producing continuously for over a century.1892: Edward Doheny's supposed oil strike using a eucalyptus trunk (less credible).1855: Andreas Pico's small-scale distillation for local use.Challenges in Research:Unreliable sources and repetition of errors, especially online.Conflicting interests and "romantic wildcatter" narratives influencing storytelling.Best Answer:For commercial sales, evidence points to the Union Matolle Company in 1865.For long-term success and impact, Pico No. 4 in 1876 holds the title.Research Lessons:Define your question clearly.Be wary of duplicated content and unattributed citations.Organize your findings and compare competing claims with evidence.

Additional Notes:

The text criticizes poor scholarship and plagiarized content.It emphasizes the importance of scrutinizing sources and understanding potential biases.The provided research tips can be applied to various historical inquiries.

This summary captures the main points of the text while highlighting its critical approach to historical research.

And here's ChatGPT4's summary: 

ChatGPT4:

The text is a research narrative exploring the origins of oil discovery in California. It begins with the author's personal reflection on growing up in Los Angeles, an area dotted with oil wells, which sparked the question: When and where was oil first discovered in California?

The author's search for an answer reveals complexities due to conflicting information and widespread text reuse across sources. The narrative follows the investigation through various claims:

1. Union Matolle Company in 1865: Said to be the first productive well in California's Central Valley, but the location was inaccurately attributed, as the company operated in Humboldt County, not the Central Valley.

2. Charles Alexander Mentry in 1876: Credited with striking oil in Pico No. 4, which became California's first commercially successful well, corroborated by Chevron's corporate history and a Wikipedia entry.

3. Edward Doheny in 1892: Reported to have used a eucalyptus tree trunk to drill for oil in downtown LA, but the narrative casts doubt on this claim due to its tall-tale nature.

4. Andreas Pico in 1855: Known for distilling small amounts of oil in Pico Canyon, but not considered a commercial success.

The author finds that the Union Matolle Company had the first commercial sales of refined oil from a well in Humboldt County in 1865, but Pico No. 4, beginning operations in 1876, had the most enduring success. The narrative concludes with insights on research methodology, emphasizing the importance of precise questions, skepticism toward duplicated content, and the organization of findings to answer complex research questions.

Both are decent summaries, but there's an interesting difference between them.  ChatGPT4's summary is primarily focused on the oil discovery claims (that's what the 4 points are all about).  

By contrast, Bard/Gemini's summary is focused on what makes this online research difficult to do, and the lessons you should learn along the way. (That's what Bard's bullet points highlight.) 

To be sure, they both mention that this chapter is about research methods and skills... but I think Bard/Gemini gets the focus a bit more right than ChatGPT4.   

SearchResearch Lessons

1. As we've learned before, different tools have different strengths.  ChatGPT4 is MUCH more able to handle large quantities of information (we could upload Frankenstein to ChatGPT4 but not to Bard).  You, the SearchResearcher need to understand what you can do with each tool. 

2. Summaries are complicated--ask for exactly the kind of summary you need.  For instance, I could have asked for a summary of Chapter 10 "written for a 6th grader" and the language and lessons would have been much simpler.  

I'm sure I'll have more to say about this topic in days to come.  But for the moment, different LLMs have different strengths.  Try them all! 

Keep searching!