Biodiversity
evolvingthoughts | March 26, 2007
As you all may know, I wrote a series of blog entries on microbial species concepts back when I first moved over to Seed, which had previously been on my older blog [links at end]. This then became a talk and later a paper, now in review. My argument was that there was a principle by which we could tell if microbes were a single species or not, depending on how regularly it exchanged its genetic material.
Now the American Academy of Microbiology has caught up with me <insert smiley here>...
A report by the AAM entitled Reconciling Microbial Systematics and Genomics raises the…
evolvingthoughts | March 21, 2007
OK, I recently recommended Medlar Comfits, but I thought I'd mention a few other blogs and sites I've come across lately.
George Bristow's Secret Freezer is a bird watcher's site of great grace and interest. Martin Collinson, near Aberdeen, does history, morphology (beautiful plumage!) and all kinds of nice stuff. A bit like an old bookshop that does natural history.
Agricultural Biodiversity Weblog discusses the forgotten aspect of biodiversity - the crops and animals we rely upon, and their wild relatives.
The Ranger's Blog has interesting snippets about environmental and…
evolvingthoughts | March 19, 2007
Courtesy of Moselio Schechter's blog Small Things Considered, is a new report, downloadable in PDF, from the National Institutes of Health, together with the American Society for Microbiology, on research into bacteria, entitled Basic Research on Bacteria. The Essential Frontier.
The money quote?
“...research on topics like evolution and ecology has a direct impact on the advancement of human health.”
evolvingthoughts | March 19, 2007
As a native of Victoria - the real one, not that Canadian knockoff - I heartily recommend this wonderfully illustrated blog on Gippsland, in eastern Victoria: Ben Cruachan. Makes me pine for the land of mild weather and lovely wilderness.
evolvingthoughts | March 14, 2007
Carl Linné, or as we know him from his Latinised name, Carolus Linnaeus, turns 300 this year, on May 23rd. And Nature has a series of articles on the famous Swede in this week's edition, as well as a slew of other interesting papers. I don't know, nothing blogworthy comes along for months, and then they hit you with too much to do properly...
OK, there is a piece on his legacy to taxonomy in the age of molecular systematics; one on the role and problems of amateurs in systematics and how they may resolve some of the problems of insufficient professionals; Linnaeus' raccoon named Sjupp (not…
evolvingthoughts | March 12, 2007
Here's an interesting paper: it suggests that major catastrophes need not always lead to immediate extinction pulses, but that there can be a lag of as much as 2 million years (in the case of the rise of the Panama isthmus).
In hindsight this is not so surprising. Ecosystems generate a lot of their own resources as by products of autotrophic organisms (basically, photosynthesisers and lithotrophs), and so as long as there is a sufficient influx of energy into the system, an ecosystem might be able to persist for some time, buffered by the productivity of the ecosystem itself, if it is rich…
evolvingthoughts | March 12, 2007
No, not the methodological stuff. That's boring (which is why I have a grant application out right now on that topic).
This. A roundup and prospectus on what the degradation of biodiversity is leading us to.
Also, see the interview with Peter Raven, here.
evolvingthoughts | March 10, 2007
Migrations has this wonderful image of the structure of a yeast cell done by EMBL through electron tomography. You can even see the cytoskeleton.
Below the fold:
evolvingthoughts | February 28, 2007
Ignore the incredibly lame credits song. This is a cool video, filmed in Panama by actual ecology students, foot fungus and all...
Click To Play
Biodiversity is all around us! In this video we introduce you to the concept of biodiversity. It is more than just the total number of species, however. It describes diversity at all levels from genetic diversity to ecosystem diversity. Yet we are losing biodiversity. We pose the question, "What can each of us do to help save what is left?"
evolvingthoughts | February 20, 2007Tom Hayden, who is some guy from some state in some country, writes a rather courageous thing, addressed to Christian clergy. Read on for the money quote:
When I chaired the Natural Resources Committee in the California senate, I noticed that the clergy never testified against the destruction of species, forests, clean air and water, the wellsprings of life itself. Even today, the California Fish and Game Code refers to fish and wildlife as "the property of the people" and says they provide a contribution to the state economy. The forest practices law mandates "maximum sustained production of…
evolvingthoughts | February 18, 2007
A paper out in Nature 15 February, uses a novel technique devised by one of the authors, Dan Faith, called Phylogenetic Diversity (PD), to assess the biodiversity and conservation value of endangered species and regions in terms of how unique they are in evolutionary history.
The summary article says this:
When seeking to preserve biodiversity, simply trying to count and protect every species may not be enough. A new study suggests that conservationists should also consider the extent to which the mix of species in an area has the genetic potential to adapt to change.
In the past, many…
evolvingthoughts | February 18, 2007
This announcement of an essay competition at Inter-Research, a German-located research group, may be of interest to students:
Ethics in Science and Environmental Politics
Ethics of Climate Change
CALL FOR ESSAYSMajor consequences of climate change are now predictable to a reasonable degree of scientific certainty. Many of these consequences will be experienced within the next 100 years - on time scales relevant to emergency preparedness, medical responses, infrastructure alteration, financial investments, treaty negotiations, etc. These changes will impact the globe, geographically,…
evolvingthoughts | February 16, 2007
At last, my grant application is in. I reckon there's about the same amount of work in a grant application as in a good size novel paper, which is to say a paper on a topic you haven't published before. To add to that, I finalised a paper for final submission - which I hope meets the exacting standards of the editors.
So I am able now to work on other stuff, which includes more on Darwin and species concepts. When I began this, I hadn't read David Stamos' Darwin And the Nature of Species, in which most of the source material is covered. Stamos, like me, thinks Darwin was a species realist…
evolvingthoughts | January 23, 2007
Species: A term which everybody thinks they understand, but which nobody agrees upon, to denote the "basic units" of groups of biological organisms.
It is sometimes said, or has been said to me, that one ought not know too much about a topic if you are to define it clearly. This is because the expert knows all the many nuances that apply in different conditions, and writes not to the beginner but to the other experts. So I must note here that my thesis and continuing work is on species concepts, and things may get a bit rocky. You've been warned.
First of all I'd like to disagree with…
evolvingthoughts | October 27, 2006This week's Ask a Science Blogger is
What's the most underfunded scientific field that shouldn't be underfunded?
In my view, it is taxonomy. We classify species and higher groups for a number of reasons, but the pressing reason right now is that taxonomy is the basis of nearly all measures of biodiversity, and we can't sensibly measure what is happening in terms of extinctions unless we describe and name the species that exist at present.
Almost no spending is done on basic taxonomy, and yet most biology relies deeply upon it in one way or another. The EU is setting up a general taxonomic…
evolvingthoughts | October 21, 2006The Museum of Natural History in Paris (where I drank cognac at 2am when I visited) is coordinating an extensive indexing of the species biodiversity of the island of Santo in Vanuatu, with 170 researchers attempting since September to identify and describe all the species in its rainforest and coral reefs before global warming destroys them. Tierramérica has the report, below the fold.
Pacific Island Gives Clues to Tropical Biodiversity
By Julio Godoy*
Around 100 new species have been classified in just a month on the island of Espiritu Santo island in the South Pacific, which faces…