Life Sciences
tags: Scientia Pro Publica, Science for the People, biology, evolution, medicine, earth science, behavioral ecology, chemistry, physics, astronomy, blog carnival
Image: wemidji (Jacques Marcoux).
Nam et ipsa scientia potestas est (And thus knowledge itself is power)
-- Sir Francis Bacon.
Welcome to the 21st edition of Scientia Pro Publica, the blog carnival devoted to nurturing and encouraging an online community of blog writers who communicate with the public about science, environment and medicine. Since it was the 201st anniversary of Charles Darwin's birth, I think it is important to…
A reconstruction of Smilodon, photographed at the American Museum of Natural History.
When it comes to animals, encyclopedias often present us with generalized descriptions. Where a creature lives, what color it is, what it eats, and other tidbits of information are listed to distinguish one species from another, but what is lost is an appreciation of variation. Be they genetic, anatomical, or behavioral, variations are grist for natural selection's mill, and if you study any species in detail it becomes apparent that individuals differ considerably over space and through time.
This was…
One of the interesting aspects ensuing from the rise of molecular phylogenetics is that the trees are generally concordant in broad strokes with older research which was based on morphology. This is not too surprising, as nature does tend to show some intelligible patterns which can be cross-checked with different methods (e.g., the fact of evolutionary change in the tree of life is evident in both the paleontological record and analysis of molecular genetic variation). Additionally, the cladistic revolution has produced a general uniformity of underlying logic when it comes to systematic…
tags: Birdbooker Report, bird books, animal books, natural history books, ecology books
"How does one distinguish a truly civilized nation from an aggregation of
barbarians? That is easy. A civilized country produces much good bird
literature."
--Edgar Kincaid
The Birdbooker Report is a special weekly report of a wide variety of science, nature and behavior books that currently are, or soon will be available for purchase. This report is written by one of my Seattle birding pals and book collector, Ian "Birdbooker" Paulsen, and is edited by me and published here for your information and…
In the interests of recycling old material from Tet Zoo ver 1, I present... yes, a whole series of articles devoted to one of the most unusual and remarkable of hoofed mammals. Come on, we all love babirusas. If you've been with Tet Zoo from the beginning, none of what's to follow will be new [adjacent photo from here]. For the rest of you: buckle up and enjoy the ride...
You might be surprised to learn that babirusas have been known to westerners for a comparatively long time, having been named Sus babyrussa by Linnaeus in 1758 (the generic name Babyrousa was first coined by Perry in 1811…
That sad creationist, Professor Dendy, has been banned from this site, but he still rails against us in prolific obsession from his website. His latest diatribe is irresistible — he claims that atheists can't handle the truth, and you'll be surprised to learn that the "truth" is that Charles Darwin denied the efficacy of natural selection. "Oh, really," you might ask, "He's not going to trot out the hoariest old quote mine in the universe to back that up, is he?" And the answer is that yes, he certainly is. I had to laugh aloud. This is only second in the list of ridiculous but common claims…
This afternoon, I'll be driving down to Raleigh to the N.C. Museum of Natural Sciences for the special Darwin Day event organized in collaboration with the National Evolutionary Synthesis Center.
The evening will start with the sneak-peak pre-opening of the Megalodon exhibit which opens to the public tomorrow. Megalodon was the largest shark ever discovered in the fossil record and the exhibit will, apart from its massive jaws, showcase the evolution of sharks, modern sharks and the conservation issues facing these magificient fish today:
At 60 feet long, Carcharodon megalodon was the…
Lots of interesting papers got published in various PLoS titles this week. These are my choices - papers I find personally most interesting (as well as most bloggable). As always, you should rate the articles, post notes and comments and send trackbacks when you blog about the papers. You can now also easily place articles on various social services (CiteULike, Mendeley, Connotea, Stumbleupon, Facebook and Digg) with just one click. Here are my own picks for the week - you go and look for your own favourites:
Is It Easy to Be Urban? Convergent Success in Urban Habitats among Lineages of a…
You may not have heard of the American Pika. Pika are small little rodent relatives most closely related to rabbits, though they look chinchilla-esque. They're native to colder climates all over the world, including Asia, Europe and North America, and they tend to live on rocky mountain slopes where they can hide in small crevices. Because they are adapted to cold mountainsides, the pika are particularly at risk is the global climate warms, as changing temperatures could push them further and further up the slopes until they can go no higher. Indeed, studies have shown that the pika are…
click to enlarge
The top-tier journal Nature doesn't often deal in purely phylogenetic research. So when such a study graces their pages we know it's big stuff.
Yesterday, Nature published a 62 gene, 75 species analysis of the evolutionary history of the arthropods. Arthropods, as readers of this blog likely know, are animals with a chitinous exoskeleton and jointed legs. They include the insects, arachnids, crustaceans, centipedes, and others. This is a staggeringly diverse group, and one found just about everywhere on the planet. Most animals are arthropods.
This study has been in the…
Mothers can teach their children much about the world, but some mothers can do it without ever meeting their young. Take the field cricket Gryllus pennsylvanicus. A female cricket isn't exactly a caring mother. Once she lays her eggs, she abandons them to their fate. But amazingly, she can also forewarn her young of the dangers they might face. If a pregnant female is exposed to a wolf spider, her experiences affect her unborn young. When they hatch, the baby crickets are more likely to freeze when they smell wolf spiders nearby.
If mothers sense a threat in their environment, there are…
tags: evolutionary biology, molecular biology, Thoroughbred race horses, horses, aerobic capacity, muscle development, myostatin, MSTN, myostatin-suppressing C variant, myostatin-suppressing T variant, Horse Genome Project, Equinome, researchblogging.org, peer-reviewed research, peer-reviewed paper
Emerging from the mist is Rachel Alexandra, a champion American Thoroughbred who excels at winning both long and short distance races.
Image: Rob Carr, 2009, Associated Press [larger view]
If you've worked at or been around a racetrack very much, as I have, you'll quickly realize that everyone…
Vaccines have guarded health and life for centuries, relegating once devastating diseases to near total obscurity. But many people now take vaccines for granted, and some blame vaccines for autism and other disorders. On Respectful Insolence, Orac reports the downfall of 1998 research which first tied MMR vaccines to the occurrence of autism in children. As Orac writes, "hearing that the man whose bad science launched a thousand quackeries had finally been declared unethical and dishonest [...] brought joy to my heart, the joy that comes with seeing justice done." ERV jumps on other news…
Toads are an evolutionary success story. In a relatively short span of time, they diversified into around 500 species and spread to every continent except Antarctica. Now, Ines van Bocxlaer from Vrije University has uncovered the secrets of their success. By comparing the most home-bound toads with the most invasive ones, she has outlined seven qualities that enabled these amphibians to conquer the world. In a common ancestor, these seven traits came together to create an eighth - a pioneer's skill are colonising new habitats.
Some, like the harlequin toads, are restricted to such narrow…
I'm back. After a two month hiatus from posting due to the grand opening of Bullitt, my second bar in San Francisco, I have finally adjusted my schedule to accommodate posting, and I'm pumped.
First on my list: I have been looking for years for the best endangered species group to put my support behind. I think I've found it, WildAid. Do you know about them? If you live in Asia, then you have. If you live in the states, then maybe not. WildAid is, in my mind, the most badass endangered species preservation group in the world today. Started by wildlife investigators who were fed up with…
Yes, years after I left the lab, I published a scientific paper. How did that happen?
Back in 2000, I published a paper on the way circadian clock controls the time of day when the eggs are laid in Japanese quail. Several years later, I wrote a blog post about that paper, trying to explain in lay terms what I did, why I did it, what I found, and how it fits into the broader context of this line of research. The paper was a physiology paper, and my blog post also focused on the physiological aspects of it.
But then, I wrote (back in March 2006 - eons ago in Web-time) an additional blog post…
A restoration of Titanoboa (foreground) in its natural setting. (By Jason Bourque, image from Wikipedia.)
When I was growing up I used to spend hours poring over the Time/Life series of nature books in my little library, absolutely enthralled by images of strange creatures from all over the world, but one photograph was particularly arresting. A grainy black-and-white double-page spread showed an anaconda that had wrapped its crushing coils around a caiman and a tree, slowly squeezing the life out of the crocodylian. Without any frame of reference for size it was easy to envision the two…
Occasioned by a comment on my recent entry on the movie Avatar and the Gaia hypothesis, here's a re-run of a blog entry from March 2006.
As comments to a recent entry, I've had an interesting discussion about environmentalism with a friend. We both agree that biodiversity and ecological systems should be preserved. But we disagree as to the reason for this.
If I understand my friend correctly, her opinion is that we should preserve biodiversity because it is precious (or even holy?) without reference to the needs and wishes of humans. Let's say she feels biodiversity is an abstract good.
My…
A grizzly bear (the black dot in the middle of the photo) walking near the treeline in Yellowstone's Hayden Valley.
The quiet of my evening wildlife watching was suddenly broken by a thick Boston accent. "Oh my gawd! Look! It's a grizz! That's the last animal I needed to see! It's a grizz!"
He was right. Lumbering across the valley was a big dark shape that could only be a bear. It was not very close, being little more than a dot moving along the distant treeline, but through the zoom lens of my camera it was just possible to make out the hump that distinguishes black bears from grizzly…
tags: evolutionary biology, paleontology, fossils, fossilization, fossil forensics, Taphonomy, taxonomy, zoology, deep time, paleoceanography, amphioxus, Branchiostoma lanceolatum, lamprey, Lampetra fluviatilis, chordates, researchblogging.org,peer-reviewed research, peer-reviewed paper
Three rotting Amphioxus heads.
A sequence of images showing how the characteristic features of the body of amphioxus, a close living relative of vertebrates, change during decay. Colours are caused by interference between the experimental equipment and the light illuminating the specimens.
Image: Mark…