Life Sciences
evolvingthoughts | February 12, 2009So today, which is in the antipodes (we being so far ahead of you northern western types) the 200th birthday of an obscure British naturalist gentleman, we address this myth:
Myth 2: Darwin did not explain the origin of species in The Origin of Species
Here's some folk claiming just that:
One of the ironies of the history of biology is that Darwin did not really explain the origin of new species in The Origin of Species, because he didn’t know how to define a species. [Futuyma 1983: 152]
… The Origin of Species, whose title and first paragraph imply that Darwin will have much to say about…
evolvingthoughts | February 12, 2009In the Descent of Man, Darwin cites a paper published about 5 years earlier by W. R. Greg, which argues that natural selection is not active among humans (or, as the convention had it then, "Man"). It is most interesting that he does, because Greg is the intellectual father of all those who think that civilisation, and in particular medicine and poverty relief, leads to a degradation of health and virtue. In short, Greg is the father of social "Darwinism". What is Darwin's response? First he spends a dozen or so pages showing that in fact civilised human beings are still subjected to (…
clock | February 12, 2009Why Fruits Ripen And Flowers Die: Scientists Discover How Key Plant Hormone Is Triggered:
Best known for its effects on fruit ripening and flower fading, the gaseous plant hormone ethylene shortens the shelf life of many fruits and plants by putting their physiology on fast-forward. In recent years, scientists learned a lot about the different components that transmit ethylene signals inside cells. But a central regulator of ethylene responses, a protein known as EIN2, resisted all their efforts.
Y Chromosome And Surname Study Challenges Infidelity 'Myth':
Our surnames and genetic information…
cwilcox | February 11, 2009I keep reading articles for and against Darwin Day Celebrations spouting about "Darwinists" and "Darwinism". As I sat down to write my own post to "Blog for Darwin", I couldn't get these "-isms" and "-ists" out of my head. I really wanted to write more about the man behind the theory or the amazing journey he undertook, especially after reviewing the National Geographic Darwin Specials (#1 and #2), but I simply couldn't get this nagging post out of my head. So I have to leave the historical stories to someone else, or at least until tomorrow. I decided that my only choice was to explain, once…
gregladen | February 11, 2009Everyone knows about Darwin's Finches, of the Galapagos Islands. But of course, Darwin made observations of birds throughout his travels on The Beagle. Here, I present a number of passages from The Voyage that include some of these observations.
Struthio Rhea
I will now give an account of ... the Struthio Rhea, or South American ostrich. This bird is well known to abound over the plains of Northern Patagonia, and the united provinces of La Plata. It has not crossed the Cordillera; but I have seen it within the first range of mountains on the Uspallata plain.... The ordinary habits of the…
jwhitfield | February 11, 2009So, what is there left to say? Not much. As its title suggests, the fourteenth and final chapter of the origin, 'Recapitulation and Conclusion', mostly restates things that Darwin has already said, often several times.
This relentless piling, sorting and re-arranging of evidence can make Darwin seem a little OCD, like an intellectual version of Wall-E. But he also knows that beneath all the case studies, there's a logical core to evolution by natural selection, even if he can't put it in an equation. Darwin brackets this chapter by showing that, if you accept the most basic evidence the…
evolvingthoughts | February 10, 2009We are going to hear a lot about Darwin this year, especially this month for his birthday (happy 200th, Chas. You don’t look a day over 150) and in November for the sesquicentenary of the publication of On the Origin of Species. And you will hear or read repetitions of a number of common myths about Darwin’s ideas and theories. I thought, being a fecal disturber, that I would try to clarify one of these below the fold, in celebration of his birthday. I'll do the others when I can. If you can think of any more, let me know.
Myth 1: Darwin did not believe in the reality of species
Myth 2:…
edyong | February 10, 2009This is the fourth of eight posts on evolutionary research to celebrate Darwin's bicentennial.
Charles Darwin was a visionary in more ways than one. In 1862, Darwin was studying a Malagasy orchid called Angraecum sesquipedale, whose nectar stores lie inaccessibly at the bottom of a 30cm long spur (tube). Darwin predicted that the flower was pollinated by a moth with tongue long enough to raid the spur.
Few people believed him, but in 1903, zoologists discovered Darwin's predicted moth, Xanthopan morgani praedicta, and it did indeed have a very long tongue. Darwin accurately predicted the…
clock | February 10, 2009New Species Of Prehistoric Creatures Discovered In Isle Of Wight Mud:
In just four years a University of Portsmouth palaeontologist has discovered 48 new species from the age of the dinosaurs. Dr Steve Sweetman's discoveries, found hidden in mud on the Isle of Wight, are around 130 million years old and shed valuable light on the poorly understood world in which well known dinosaurs roamed.
Alzheimer's Prevented And Reversed With Natural Protein In Animal Models:
Memory loss, cognitive impairment, brain cell degeneration and cell death were prevented or reversed in several animal models after…
grrlscientist | February 9, 2009tags: Birds in the News, BirdNews, ornithology, birds, avian, newsletter
Black-throated Sparrow, Amphispiza bilineata, in Chaco Canyon.
Image: Dave Rintoul, June 2008 [larger view].
Birds in Science
This is a link to a fascinating slide show that documents 9 links in the dinosaur-to-bird transition -- plenty of strong evidence that birds evolved from dinosaurs! GrrlScientist comment: "link" number four is very dubious, though, and I am surprised they even used it in their story.
People Hurting Birds
Both engines of the US Airways flight that crash-landed in the Hudson River last month…
gregladen | February 9, 2009When reading the Voyage, it is impossible to miss the observation that much of the time Darwin was engaged in adolescent boy behavior: Pulling the heads off insects, noting how long they would wiggle after cut in half, closely examining the ooze and guts, occupied much of his time. Obviously, careful observation and a strong stomach were not all that was required to think up Natural Selection and his other theories, or the Origin of Species would have been written dozens of times by dozens of grown up kids.
Reposted with minor revisions
...
In the following passages, Darwin is still along…
jwhitfield | February 9, 2009From the first dawn of life, all organic beings are found to resemble each other in descending degrees, so that they can be classed in groups under groups.
Isn't that a good sentence? It's the first of this chapter. There's music in the way the Biblical ring of "From the first dawn of life", falls towards the swallowed repetition of "groups under groups", which itself mirrors and explains the descending degrees of resemblance that gives the sentence its scientific filling.
The next line is just as good: "This classification is evidently not arbitrary like the grouping of the stars in…
pharyngula | February 8, 2009And I don't want to hear you complaining that everything makes me cranky! I get especially grumpy about armchair futurists making pronouncements about biology when they don't know a thing about it.
Chairman and CEO of Biotechonomy, Enriquez says that humanity is on the verge of becoming a new and utterly unique species, which he dubs Homo Evolutis. What makes this species so unique is that it "takes direct and deliberate control over the evolution of the species." Calling it the "ultimate reboot," he points to the conflux of DNA manipulation and therapy, tissue generation, and robotics as…
laelaps | February 6, 2009
The African lungfish Protopterus, from A Text-Book of Zoology.
Standing before the Linnean Society in 1839, the celebrated British anatomist Richard Owen delivered a detailed description of a strange new creature. Owen called it Lepidosiren annectans, an African relative of an eel-like animal that was found by the Austrian explorer Johan Natterer in the depths of the Amazon jungle in 1837. The naturalist sent two specimens back to the Vienna Museum where they were quickly described by Leopold Fitzinger under the name Lepidosiren paradoxa.
Fitzinger considered the organisms to be "…
clock | February 5, 2009Tinkering With Circadian Clock Can Suppress Cancer Growth:
Researchers at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill have shown that disruption of the circadian clock - the internal time-keeping mechanism that keeps the body running on a 24-hour cycle - can slow the progression of cancer.
How Your Body Clock Avoids Hitting The Snooze Button:
Scientists from Queen Mary, University of London have discovered a new part of the mechanism which allows our bodyclocks to reset themselves on a molecular level. ---------- Professor Stanewsky explains: "A circadian photoreceptor called Cry is…
gregladen | February 4, 2009Of his time on the Beagle (1832 - 1836), Darwin wrote, "The voyage of the Beagle has been by far the most important event in my life and has determined my whole career." Of the manuscript describing that voyage, he wrote, "The success of this my first literary child always tickles my vanity more than that of any of my other books."
Taking a cue from these reflections, I'd like to spend some time with this book, in celebration of Darwin's 200th birthday, coming up in just a few days.
(Reposted and slightly revised from last year)
An early version of "The Voyage."To begin with, it is…
edyong | February 4, 2009
This is sure to be one of the most amazing scientific images of the year. You're looking at vertebrae from two species of snake. The smaller model on the left belongs to the anaconda, a giant serpent that can grow to 7 metres in length and weigh as much as 45kg. It's arguably the largest snake alive, so just think about how big the owner of the fossilised vertebra on the right would have been! There's a good reason why this new discovery - the largest snake that ever slithered - has been named Titanoboa.
Titanoboa cerrejonesis is new to science and was discovered by a team of North…
jwhitfield | February 4, 2009When the Origin was published, the idea that species were not fixed entities had been in the air for some time, thanks to Lamarck, Robert Chambers, anonymous author of the best-selling Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation, and Darwin's own grandfather, Erasmus.
But unlike those men, Darwin put all the different pieces together into a coherent whole. How was that? Chapter 11 of the Origin, 'Geographical distribution', gives some hints.
First there's the nurture. In the age of long-haul flights and wildlife documentaries, it's easy to forget how difficult it was to see different…
tetrapodzoology | February 3, 2009
In 2006, the second series of the BBC's Planet Earth was screened. If you saw the series, you'll know that it included a lot of awesome stuff. One thing that got an awful lot of people talking was the amazing footage - included as part of episode 2 ('Great Plains') - showing the elephant-killing lions of Savuti in Chobe National Park, northern Botswana. I wrote about this footage at Tet Zoo ver 1 back in November 2006 (it's here), and - for those who didn't see it first time round - here it is again...
While most people 'know' that elephants are immune to predation thanks to their size,…
cwilcox | February 3, 2009Somehow my self-indulgent writings managed to attract the attention of some very cool people - specifically, someone who works for the National Geographic Channel.
What this means for me is that I got to see their upcoming Darwin Specials in honor of his 200th b-day premiering next weekend. I have proof - the picture is of me with my preview DVDs! What this means for you is that you get to read my reviews of them, to get you all pumped up and ready to watch them for yourself next week. I got a total of 5 DVDs, but figure that would be a really long review post, so this first review is of the…