Life Sciences
grrlscientist | January 15, 2008tags: researchblogging.org, blind cave fish, Astyanax mexicanus, evolution, fish, genetics
Blind cave fish, Astyanax mexicanus.
Image: Orphaned. Please contact me for proper credit and linkage.
Do you keep tropical freshwater fishes? I have kept tropical fishes for most of my life and was always intrigued by the so-called "blind cave fish", Astyanax mexicanus, that were sometimes offered for sale to the public. These fish evolved from a sighted species that live in surface streams, but since the blind cave fishes lived in caves since the mid-Pleistocene or earlier, they were not exposed…
gregladen | January 15, 2008You know that organisms develop, grow, and function in part because genes code for proteins that form the building blocks of life or that function as working bioactive molecules (like enzymes). You also know that most DNA is junk, only a couple percent actually coding for anything useful. Most importantly, however, you know that everything you know is wrong. Right?
The "Junk DNA" story is largely a myth, as you probably already know. DNA does not have to code for one of the few tens of thousands of proteins or enzymes known for any given animal, for example, to have a function. We know…
grrlscientist | January 14, 2008tags: Sir David Attenborough, Attenborough in Paradise, DVD review, BBC programming, nature filming, filmography
I've always enjoyed David Attenborough's nature programs and films when I've managed to see them on TV and now, thanks to several of my readers, I've been able to view nearly everything that Attenborough has available on DVD. But after watching the wonderful collection of films included in Attenborough in Paradise and Other Personal Adventures (BBC Worldwide; 2007), I have been transformed from a pleased watcher into an unabashed and enthusiastic admirer.
Attenborough in Paradise…
grrlscientist | January 14, 2008tags: Birds in the News, BirdNews, ornithology, birds, avian, newsletter
Song sparrow, Melospiza melodia.
Image: Dave Rintoul, KSU. [larger size].
Birds in Science
I wrote about grandparenting behavior in the Seychelles warbler, Acrocephalus sechellensis, on my blog several months ago, so it is satisfying to see that the mainstream science media wrote about the same study last week.
People Hurting Birds
Analyses of satellite images have revealed for the first time the extent of deforestation occurring on the island of New Britain, Papua New Guinea, indicating that many more bird species…
tetrapodzoology | January 13, 2008
In the previous article, we covered Mesozoic stem-caudates, the cryptobranchoids, and the sirens. The latter are almost certainly part of the most diverse salamander clade, Salamandroidea (also named Salamandriformes or Diadectosalamandroidei), aka the 'internally fertilizing salamanders', or IFS clade (Larson & Dimmick 1993). You can guess from the name what makes the IFS clade a big deal (more on that in a second). Yes, I know you've all been waiting for this - it's finally time to cover the amphiumas, mudpuppies, waterdogs and olms, the mole salamanders, the lungless salamanders. Aww…
gregladen | January 12, 2008Cooperation in nature is very common, and papers about how unlikely cooperation in nature would be are also common. Especially in Nature. (The Journal.)
The latest paper is nicely summarized in a press release from the University of Bristol:
Cooperative behaviour is common in many species, including humans. Given that cooperative individuals can often be exploited, it is not immediately clear why such behaviour has evolved.
...
Professor John McNamara and colleagues demonstrate that when individuals in a population are choosy about their partners, cooperativeness is rewarded and tends to…
tetrapodzoology | January 12, 2008
Did I mention that 2008 is Year of the Frog? Just kidding. In actuality, the conservation effort so many of us are now involved in doesn't just concern anurans (frogs and toads), but all the living amphibian groups: as you'll know, there are, besides anurans, two other such groups. We looked previously at the bizarre caecilians. This time round we get through the last group of the three: the caudates, or salamanders, of which there are about 560 living species. Again, these animals are anything but boring. Yes, this is that group that, believe it or don't, includes species that have evolved…
grrlscientist | January 11, 2008tags: behavior, environmental enrichment, giant Pacific octopus, Octopus dofleini, cephalopod, animal intelligence
Louis, the giant pacific octopus, Octopus dofleini, cuddles his Mr Potato Head.
The 1.8meter-wide (6 foot) animal is so attached to Mr Potato Head that he
becomes aggressive when aquarium staff try to remove it from his tank.
Image: Apex.
Who would have thought that Mr Potato Head would turn out to be such a charmer? Certainly not I, but this morning, I unexpectedly ran across a news story about a giant Pacific octopus, Octopus dofleini, that lives in an aquarium in the UK.…
worldsfair | January 11, 2008Last night, we rolled in the new course (Arts Science Integrated Course - ASIC 200) and it was a lot of fun (a little odd for me doing what was essentially a history speel, but there you have it). Anyway, one of the first things I got to do was play a little game with the class. It's actually something I do quite often when working with the general public and trying to hone in on the disparity of brain "airtime" devoted to what are essentially trivial things, versus things that really you'd hope everyone was comfortable or literate in.
(Click on the movie to move through slides)
- - -…
laelaps | January 11, 2008
An African elephant (Loxodonta africana).
Part of what makes ecology such a fascinating subject is the complexity of interactions between species, especially when things don't happen in exactly the manner we might initially hypothesize. Such is the case with a paper just published in the journal Science by Palmer et al. called "Breakdown of an Ant-Plant Mutualism Follows the Loss of Large Herbivores from an African Savanna," which shows that the loss of large herbivores initiates a cascade of ecological changes, changes which have some important effects for acacia trees and the ants that…
tetrapodzoology | January 11, 2008
Thanks to everyone who offered an opinion and submitted their thoughts on that photo - and there were no silly answers, because I feel the real answer was not necessarily easy. As some of you correctly determined, the cat was actually not an unfamiliar or obscure species - just the opposite - it's just that it represented a body shape and/or geographical variant of this species that we're not used to seeing...
The proportionally long tail shows that this can't be a small cat like a golden cat; it's difficult to be sure from the photo, but the cat also looks much larger than a golden cat […
grrlscientist | January 9, 2008tags: subway art, dusky lory, Pseudeos fuscata, AMNH, American Musuem of Natural History, NYCLife, NYC
A pair of dusky lories, Pseudeos fuscata,
as portrayed in tiles just above the handrail on the walls of the
at the northernmost stairway to the NYC uptown subway stop
(A-B-C) at 81st and Central Park West. (ISO, no zoom, no flash).
Image: GrrlScientist 2008 [wallpaper size].
This is one of the species of parrot that I bred up until a few years ago. This species was also included in my postdoc research into the evolution of parrots of the islands of the South Pacific Ocean. Dusky lories…
clock | January 9, 200824 new article got published on PLoS ONE last night. Here are some interesting titles for you to check out (and then look around at others, add comments, annotations and ratings, and blog about them):
Self Assessment in Insects: Honeybee Queens Know Their Own Strength:
Contests mediate access to reproductive opportunities in almost all species of animals. An important aspect of the evolution of contests is the reduction of the costs incurred during intra-specific encounters to a minimum. However, escalated fights are commonly lethal in some species like the honeybee, Apis mellifera. By…
aardvarchaeology | January 9, 2008
Hey everyone, and welcome to the 96th Tangled Bank blog carnival! This is where you can toadally catch up with the best recent blog writing on the life sciences.
Beasties
Grrlscientist at Living the Scientific Life explains why bright blue tits make better mothers.
Tangled Up In Blue Guy gives us a run-down of the phylogeny of bioluminescent animals.
Podblack Cat describes her contribution thus
A brief look at taxonomy quirks(and you thought being famous had perks...) -Crypto-zoo claims,Real wacky namesAnd Seuss shows some science in his works!
Jeremy at Stand Up For REAL Science discusses…
laelaps | January 8, 2008
In the year I was born the Dutch primatologist Frans de Waal delivered a highly popular and influential book about the chimpanzees of Arnhem Zoo, the Netherland facility housing the largest captive population of the apes in the world. At first such a book might not have seemed so exciting, the well-known studies of Jane Goodall or Diane Fossey among apes in Africa making a group of chimpanzees in a zoo seem bland by comparison, but de Waal took advantage of the opportunities for detailed observation the captive setting provided and painted a vivid picture of the complex social life of…
tqa | January 8, 2008
Today is the 185th anniversary of Alfred Russel Wallace. He's best known, of course, as the young(ish) scientist who, while recovering from malaria somewhere in Indonesia, independently came up with the same ideas about evolution that Darwin had been working on for three decades, wrote them up, mailed them to Darwin, and catalyzed the old boy into finally getting the damn book written. In fact, that part of his career is so well known that it's hard to find any mention of Wallace that doesn't also bring up Darwin. Despite his enormous talents as a naturalist, he's almost always cast as…
bleimanb | January 7, 2008National Geographic reported this weekend that three new species of salamander have been discovered in distant cloud forests of Costa Rica's La Amistad National Park. Just like X-Men, each salamander seems to have a special power: "one with a bold streak, one with a 'ballistic' tongue, and one no longer than a fingernail," according to Nat'l Geographic.
La Amistad is the largest wildlife reserve in Central America, and...
...much of it has yet to be explored.
This salamander has markings reminiscent of a poison dart frog, possibly an environmental ruse.
In the article, Alex Monro of…
laelaps | January 7, 2008
From De humani corporis fabrica libri septem (1543) by Andreas Vesalius
In 1646, the first edition of Sir Thomas Browne's Pseudodoxia epidemica (or Vulgar Errors) first went into print, Browne's volume being an attempt to refute many of the erroneous "received tenets and commonly presumed truths" that would not go away despite their inaccuracy. Among the bevy of fallacious notions included in the book was a subject that often was a point of contention at the time; if the Biblical Eve was derived from one of Adam's ribs, from which side was the rib taken and therefore shouldn't the sexes…
grrlscientist | January 7, 2008tags: Birds in the News, BirdNews, ornithology, birds, avian, newsletter
Clark's Grebe, Aechmorphus clarkii, in the foreground with a Western Grebe, Aechmorphus occidentalis, behind. Both were photographed on the Bear River Migratory Bird Refuge (north end of the Great Salt Lake) in the spring of 2005. Similar birds, but the field marks are straw-yellow bill (Clark's) cf. greenish-yellow bill (Western); white feathering around the eye (Clark's) cf black (Western), and whiter flanks on the Clark's Grebe. This pair of birds was hanging out together, and that was not unusual, making one wonder…
tetrapodzoology | January 4, 2008
Overall I'm pretty pleased with the attention that the first caecilian article received (it's here): it was in the Sb top five most active articles for most of today (Jan 4th), and elicited a decent amount of response. Thanks as always to everyone who commented and especially to those who added snippets of information - in particular Lars Dietz, David Marjanović, and of course Sordes for that invaluable fact about pugs and what happens when you shake them too hard. Anyway, last time we got as far as tentacles, protrusible eyes and the dual jaw-closing mechanism - but what about all the…