I've been on hiatus for quite a while, in part because of some surgery (more on that later), but I just wanted to write a quick post to point you to my latest article in tomorrow's New York Times, about how birds can sing like cricket. It's a wonderful example of how sexual selection can alter bodies, not for simple survival but to lure the opposite sex.
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Yes, it's true, Culture Dish has found a new (and improved) home. After a long blogging hiatus while I finished writing my book, The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks (see below for details), I'm now packing up shop and moving here to ScienceBlogs (you can subscribe via RSS here, or get Culture…
Yes, it's true, Culture Dish has found a new (and improved) home. After a long blogging hiatus while I finished writing my book, The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks (see below for details), I'm now packing up shop and moving here to ScienceBlogs (you can subscribe via RSS here, or get Culture…
MAJeff here.
LisaJ's Danio's (hangover error) posts about Usher Disease (I and II), as well as my own syllabus preparation for the upcoming semester, have gotten me thinking about issues of intersexuality. In particular, her noting of the geographic issues related to the prevalence of various…
At some point, terror management theorists are going to attempt to explain everything in the universe with their theory (I suspect we'll see a paper titled "Mortality Salience and the Bose-Einstein Condensate" in the next few years). Since I've already talked about terror management theory work on…
Maybe the club-winged manakin's predecessor on the tree of life ate a cricket. Rather than being fully digested, some of the cricket's DNA was injected into the sperm factory. Miraculously a similar scenario took place in the female. Abracadabra, another tangle in the Tree of Life.
What I really love is Bostwick's prediction:
Its like hypothesizing that if we cut off Keith Richards fingertips he won't be able to grind his axe...no brainer! Although Keith may be a bad example since after 40 years with the Stones he may not even have fingertips anymore!
Those curious, like me, shouldn't miss the video links available in the New York Times article. Pictures and PDFs are also available on Dr. Bostwick's webpage:
http://www.cumv.cornell.edu/staff/bostwick.html
And more manakin video clips are available here:
http://jeb.biologists.org/cgi/content/full/206/20/3693/DC1
Oh, and get well, Carl. I hope it's nothing too serious. Preferably something like wisdom teeth, where its no big deal and tailored for an evolutionary lesson as well. :)
I saw a report on tv a few months ago about these birds. It was part of a rainforest documentary on PBS.
Sexual selection may be "lesser known" in the world of textbooks and science writing. But most humans spend a good part of their lives more or less obsessively engaged in its strategies.
After all, once you zoom in below the population level, sexual selection is the primary filter for differential reproduction among animals. (Not to mention plants that use animals, e.g. pollinators that mistake flower parts for a mate.)
Did you see that our President is advocating "intelligent design" to be taught in our nation's classrooms? Unbelievable.