Life Sciences
clock | May 29, 2007Young Meerkats Learn The Emotion Before The Message In Threat Calls:
It is well known that human speech can provide listeners with simultaneous information about a person's emotions and objects in the environment. Past research has shown that animal vocalizations can do the same, but little is known about the development of the features that encode such information.
Tropical Birds Have Slow Pace Of Life Compared To Northern Species, Study Finds:
In the steamy tropics, even the birds find the pace of life a bit more relaxed, research shows. Tropical birds expend less energy at rest than do…
pharyngula | May 25, 2007We've often heard this claim from creationists: "there is no way for genetics to cause an increase in complexity without a designer!". A recent example has been Michael Egnor's obtuse caterwauling about it. We, including myself, usually respond in the same way: of course it can. And then we list examples of observations that support the obviously true conclusion that you can get increases in genetic information over time: we talk about gene duplication, gene families, pseudogenes, etc., all well-documented manifestations of natural processes that increase the genetic content of the organism.…
razib | May 25, 2007I've received a few emails from friends about this piece in Edge titled Why the Gods are Not Winning. The reason is that I've made it clear that in many ways I think religiosity as we understand it naturally arises out of the intersection of our societies and our cognition, that atheism is not the ancestral "wild type" for our species. In some ways the piece at Edge is a good corrective and offers up a lot of data that people need to know. Recently an acquaintance of mine mentioned that the United States is undergoing a "religious revival." I responded that over the last 10 years those…
clock | May 24, 2007New Genetic Data Overturn Long-held Theory Of Limb Development:
Long before animals with limbs (tetrapods) came onto the scene about 365 million years ago, fish already possessed the genes associated with helping to grow hands and feet (autopods) report University of Chicago researchers in the May 24, 2007, issue of Nature. This finding overturns a long-held, but much-debated, theory that limb acquisition was a novel evolutionary event, requiring the descendents of lobed-fin fish to dramatically alter their genes to adapt their bodies to their new environments of streams and swamps.
New…
cmooney | May 23, 2007Much emphasis in traditional conservation is paced on 'charismatic megafauna,' meaning the species that we all know and love. The heroes of the big screen. Save the Oceans for Flipper and Free Willy. Keep those penguins marching and the polar bears drinking Coca-Cola. Market the smiling dolphins, the majestic blue whales, and those adorable baby seals. 'Save the Sea Cucumber' just doesn't have the same clout. Package your landscape or region of choice under the umbrella of huggable marine mammal and everyone's on board to clean up the next oil spill and protest dynamite fishing. All in…
purepedantry | May 23, 2007The latest issue of Science magazine (May 18) has several reviews devoted to the coming of age of behavioral neuroscience. However, one by Paul Bloom and Deena Skolnick Weisberg caught my eye. The review is entitled "Childhood Origins of Adult Resistance to Science," and their core argument is that resistance to science in adulthood is the result of persistence of childhood traits. Ouch. Provocative from the very first.
Let's go into what they actually said before I say what I think about it.
The authors begin by listing the myriad litany of unsupported things that people believe: ESP,…
sb admin | May 22, 2007Intelligent Design is cleverly designed.
Much of what I say here will apply to almost any other religious tradition in the modern world. I refer specifically to Christianity for three reasons. First, it's the most dominant religion in the USA, which is where I am. Second, I'm a Christian myself. Third, a form of Christianity is the religious tradition followed by those who designed Intelligent Design. However, whenever I refer to Christians or Christianity, I am aware that it could easily apply to many other religions.
Consider the situation many people find themselves in. They are…
pharyngula | May 22, 2007Here are three animals. If you had to classify them on the basis of this superficial glimpse, which two would you guess were most closely related to each other, and which one would be most distant from the others?
On the left is a urochordate, an ascidian, a sessile, filter-feeding blob that is anchored to rocks or pilings and sucks in sea water to extract microorganismal meals. In the middle is a cephalochordate, Amphioxus, also a filter feeder, but capable of free swimming. On the right are some fish larvae. All are members of the chordata, the deuterostomes with notochords. If you'd…
voltagegate | May 22, 2007I've always been conflicted about vegetarianism. I have known many vegetarians and vegans in my life and it is a lifestyle choice that I can respect for its intent. I genuinely dislike factory farming of any food product, animal or plant. We take it for granted that our supermarket shelves will be stocked with mountains of flesh for consumption, and I hate to think of all the meat that is wasted.
Last night I skimmed a Facebook post fervently discussing vegetarianism. The author posted a huge list of claims, from its health benefits to supposed evolutionary ties, and I wanted to take some…
grrlscientist | May 21, 2007tags: Birds in the News, BirdNews, ornithology, birds, avian, newsletter
"Black-throated green warbler", Dendroica virens.
[song]
Image appears here with the kind permission of the photographer, Pamela Wells.
[larger]
Birds in Science
According to ornithologists, the Gorgeted Puffleg has been discovered living in the cloud forests of southwestern Colombia. Despite its recent discovery, this stunning rare hummingbird that has violet blue plumage and iridescent green on its throat, is already endangered by the environmentally damaging illegal drugs industry. "We were essentially following a…
evolvingthoughts | May 21, 2007
In honour of Linnaeus' 300th birthday, and to rescue him from the canard that he merely applied Aristotelian logic to biology, I offer up this essay on his view of classification and species. I do not think Linnaeus was an essentialist in the Mayrian sense - he nowhere specifies that species have essences, only that there are diagnostic descriptions or definitions that allow naturalists to identify species in the field or in museum collections. But I'm no Linnaean scholar, so if anyone has information to the contrary, let me know.
Not much is known about the early education of poor Swedish…
grrlscientist | May 20, 2007tags: beetle, insects, physiology, respiration
An X-ray of a yellow mealworm beetle showing the system of white tubes, or tracheae, running through its body.
When I worked with and dissected insects as a graduate student, I always found their breathing apparatus to be fascinating and beautiful, although mysterious because I could only guess how their tracheae functioned while they were alive. Even though insects have a small body size, they need more than a simple, small respiratory system to provide enough oxygen to sustain their lives. Using X-rays to visualize what lies beneath their…
grrlscientist | May 19, 2007tags: Trypanosoma evansi, parasite, wasting disease, Tabanus, Australia, conservation
A PhD student from James Cook University in Australia hopes her research will help protect Australian wildlife from an exotic wasting disease that could devastate kangaroos and other endemic marsupials.
Kirsty Van Hennekeler has spent four years studying Surra, the disease caused by a parasite that lives in mammalian blood. This parasite, Trypanosoma evansi, causes fever, weakness, and lethargy in its victims and can lead to weight loss, anaemia and even death of infected animals. It is thought this parasite…
revere | May 19, 2007Influenza is primarily a disease of birds. Most emerging infectious diseases in humans are started out as diseases of animals, what are called zoonoses. We worry about zoonoses for that reason. It is one of the hardwired tendencies of any species to think of their own survival first -- that's natural -- but humans are only one species amongst many. And while we worry about viruses we might catch from animals, the animals are also getting sick. It's not just influenza we share with birds. Birds suffer from other diseases they can pass on to humans, too, and one of these is West Nile virus (WNV…
clock | May 18, 2007
As we mentioned just the other day, studying animal behavior is tough as "animals do whatever they darned please". Thus, making sure that everything is controlled for in an experimental setup is of paramount importance. Furthermore, for the studies to be replicable in other labs, it is always a good idea for experimental setups to be standardized. Even that is often not enough. I do not have access to Science but you may all recall a paper from several years ago in which two labs tried to simultaneously perform exactly the same experiment in mice, using all the standard equipment,…
grrlscientist | May 17, 2007tags: Antarctica, Weddell Sea, new species, ANDEEP, zoology
The scientists said an "astonishingly diverse" collection of isopods had been discovered. This young male isopod represents one of 674 isopod species found.
Image: W. Brokeland. [larger image]
According to a paper that was recently published, scientists have found more than 700 new species of marine creatures in seas surrounding Antarctica -- seas once thought too hostile to sustain such rich biodiversity. Fabulous creatures, such as carnivorous sponges, free-swimming worms, crustaceans and molluscs, were collected.
The…
tetrapodzoology | May 17, 2007
Yet again, I am totally snowed (the day job, editorial work, technical consultancy, in-progress manuscripts, etc.) and haven't been able to complete any of the frighteningly long list of articles I am planning to blog: you know, the ones on more sheep, more anguids, Australia: land of placentals, It's all about me, proto-narwhals and beluwhals, vampire pterosaurs, Piltdown, plethodontids, the probing guild, Cenozoic sebecosuchians, more Triassic crurotarsans, dinoceratans, pyrotheres, astrapotheres, 'new' big cats, more phorusrhacids, J-Lo and other fossil pleurodires, meiolaniids, passerine…
grrlscientist | May 16, 2007tags: ferret, black-footed ferret, endangered species
Today, I received an email from Jenna Bowles, who is the head of distribution for The Futures Channel. They produce "micro-documentaries" that feature industries and professions that are both innovative and inspiring. One of their newly launched videos focuses on the endangered black-footed ferret recovery program. Basically, 25 years ago, a dog discovered one lone black-footed ferret in a hole -- the last one known to exist in the wild. Since then, the recovery effort has become one of the most successful conservation programs conducted…
grrlscientist | May 16, 2007tags: turtle, Cantor's giant softshell turtle, Pelochelys cantorii, endangered species, herpetology, reptiles
This photo released by Conservation International, shows two rare Cantor's giant
softshell turtles, Pelochelys cantorii, thought to be on the brink of extinction.
Conservation International and the World Wildlife Fund announced today, 16 May 2007,
that scientists discovered the rare species in Cambodia in a former stronghold of the
Khmer Rouge in March.
A rare soft-shell turtle has been found in Cambodia's Mekong River, raising hopes that the threatened species can be saved from…
voltagegate | May 16, 2007This post discusses an article published in PLoS Biology reviewing Cornell Ecologist Josh Donlan's idea of importing African analogs of extinct North American vertebrates like the American lion and the mammoth in the hopes that filling these niches will restore and stabilize lost ecosystems. Two questions from my end: Are these non-native organisms truly analogous to their extinct American cousins and is it too late to make such a bold move?
Ecologists have been debating about whether or not they know enough to begin rebuilding long-lost ecosystems by replacing extinct large vertebrates with…