peer-reviewed research

tags: evolution, speciation, diversification rate, Zosterops, White-eyes, ornithology, birds, molecular phylogeny, South Pacific Islands The Splendid (Ranongga) White-eye, Zosterops splendidus, endemic to Ranongga Island in the Solomon Islands archipelago. This species' home range is smaller than Manhattan Island. Image: Chris Filardi [larger view]. For many decades, the white-eyes (Family: Zosteropidae) were known as the "Great Speciators" in honor of their apparent ability to rapidly give rise to new species while other birds in the same areas showed little or no diversification. But…
One of the newfangled ideas that's popped up in education in the past few years has been notion that more interactive methods of teaching will lead to better results. There's an appealing logic to this notion. Figure 1. A traditional lecture may not be the ideal way to transfer information.  Technorati Tags: education, active learning, clickers To quote Eric Mazur (1) quoting D. Huff (2): I once heard someone describe the lecture method as a process whereby the lecture notes of the instructor get transferred to the notebooks of students without passing through the brains of either…
Mosquito-borne diseases, like Dengue and Malaria, are serious problems in many parts of the world. While some people are working on treatments for mosquito-carried disease, others are looking at ways to treat the mosquitoes. Figure 1. Image of Aedes aegypti from the Public Health Library tags: tropical disease, yellow fever, dengue, insect control,malaria Controlling insect activities by messing with their genomes isn't a new idea. In many parts of the world, screwworms are controlled by damaging their genomes on a large scale by treating the flies with X-rays and releasing the…
tags: parrots, Psittaciformes, evolution, molecular phylogeny, ornithology, Neornithes Red-crowned Amazon parrot, Amazona viridigenalis, at Elizabeth Street Parrotry, Brownsville, Texas. Image: Joseph Kennedy, 7 April 2008 [larger view]. Nikon D200, Kowa 883 telescope TSN-PZ camera eyepiece 1/750s f/8.0 at 1000.0mm iso400. One of the most contentious issues among scientists who study the evolution of birds is identifying precisely when the modern birds (Neornithes) first appeared. This is due to conflicts between the fossil record and molecular dating methodologies. For example, fossils…
tags: evolution, honeyeaters, Meliphagidae, Mohoidae, birds, ornithology, birds, molecular phylogeny, extinct species, South Pacific Islands Two nectar-feeding birds from Hawai'i, the kioea (brown-streaked, in middle) and an o'o species (lower left), looked so much like nectar specialists from the western Pacific (two species on right) that taxonomists put them all in the same honeyeater family, the Meliphagidae. All the Hawaiian birds are unfortunately extinct, but DNA evidence shows that their resemblance resulted from convergent evolution, because the Hawaiian birds were actually much…
tags: evolution, biogeography, ornithology, birds, avian Kolo Sunset. Photo credit: Christopher E. Filardi, American Museum of Natural History (Click on image for a larger picture). Two of my ornithologist colleagues, Chris Filardi and Rob Moyle, published a paper in the top-tier research journal, Nature. This paper is especially exciting because it shows that oceanic islands are not necessarily the evolutionary "dead ends" that they have traditionally been portrayed to be. In fact, Chris and Rob's data show that a group of birds have actually accomplished what scientists had never…
tags: evolution, Phylogeny, ornithology, chemical defense, Batrachotoxin, poisonous birds, Pitohui, Ifrita, Pachycephalidae, New Guinea The Hooded Pitohui, Pitohui dichrous, endemic to New Guinea, is very unusual because it has poisonous plumage and skin. Image: John Dumbacher. I have been in love with New Guinea since I first read about it as a kid. Everything about this tropical island is exotic and fascinating to me, from the large numbers of endemic bird and plant species to the tremendous number of spoken languages -- more than anywhere else on the planet. So I was immediately…
tags: peer-reviewed paper, psychology, gift wrapping, wrapping paper, behavior, holidays, holidaze Besides bright lights, my favorite thing about the holidays is wrapping gifts. I love covering a boxed gift with colored papers (or even with plain brown paper bags), I get tremendous satisfaction from folding the paper so it makes precise corners and then I especially enjoy decorating the wrapped gift with bows, ribbons and toy flowers and birds, christmas ornaments or other decorations. I also enjoy figuring out how to wrap unusually shaped objects. However, my most favorite thing to do is…
tags: ecology, exotic species, introduced species, non-native species, invasive species, monk parakeets, quaker parrots, Myiopsitta monachus, Michael A Russello, Michael L Avery, Timothy F Wright Monk (Quaker) parakeets, Myiopsitta monachus, with nest. Image: Arthur Grosset [larger view]. Invasive species are everywhere: from plants such as Scotch (English) broom, Cytisus scoparius, whose yellow flowers bloom prolifically along roadways of North America, Australia and New Zealand to mammals such as human beings, Homo sapiens, which are the ultimate invasive species because we have…
tags: blue tit, Cyanistes caeruleus, extrapair fertilization, genetic benefit hypothesis, genetic similarity, plumage color, birdsong, ornithology, behavioral ecology Blue tit, Cyanistes caeruleus. Image: Paul Hillion, 26 April 2008. Even though most bird species form social bonds with their mates, they are not always faithful partners to each other. It's easy to figure out why male birds engage in extrapair copulations: this increases the total number of their offspring -- and this increases their reproductive fitness. But since female birds are physically capable of producing only…
One time, I suggested in a list-serve that science teachers make more use of primary scientific literature. Naturally, I learned all the reasons why teachers don't do this-lack of access being one of the biggies- but I also learned something surprising. One teacher wrote that she re-writes a lot of research articles to make them easier for her students to read. I can understand that notion, in principle. My students struggle with scientific language, too, even those that have bachelor's degrees in biology. What surprised me was thinking about the amount of time that activity would take!…
One of the holy grails of modern medicine is the development of a vaccine against HIV, the virus that causes AIDs. An obstacle to attaining this goal has been the difficulty in stimulating the immune system to make it produce the right kinds of antibodies. A recent finding in Science describes a gene that controls production of these antibodies and may provide insights to the development of an effective vaccine. (1). Antibodies are special kinds of proteins that bind to things, often very tightly. If they bind to the right molecules, they can prevent viruses from infecting cells and target…
Lots of bloggers in the DNA network have been busy these past few days writing about Google's co-founder Sergey Brin, his blog, his wife's company (23andme), and his mutation in the LRRK2 gene. I was a little surprised to see that while other bloggers (here, here, here, and here) have been arguing about whether or not the mutation really increases the risk to the degree (20-80%) mentioned by Brin, no one has really looked into the structure and biochemistry of the LRRK2 protein to see if there's a biochemical explanation for Parkinson's risk. I guess that task is up to me. Let's begin at…
tags: political views, politics, physiology, threat response, psychology, philosophyfight or flight, nature versus nurture Most Americans have been actively engaged in the frustrating sport of arguing about politics, which often leads to the common refrain; "You just don't get it!" So this made me wonder why people who seem to have similar life experiences can end up with such dramatically different personal philosophies -- philosophies that ultimately affect their political views and voting behavior. Apparently, I am not the only one to wonder about such things, because a paper was just…
tags: ratite, tinamous, evolution, biogeography, phylogenomics, convergence, flightlessness, Paleognath, homoplasy, vicariance White-throated Tinamou, Tinamus guttatus. Image: Wikipedia. New research suggests the ostriches, emus, rheas and other flightless birds known as ratites have lost the ability to fly many times, rather than just once, as long thought. Further, the ratites appear to form a group with the tinamous, a group of birds that can fly, while the ostriches are set apart as the "sister group" -- the closest relatives. Birds are divided into two groups based on jawbone…
tags: Bovine spongiform encephalopathy, BSE, mad cow disease, Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease, CJD, pathogenic mutation, prion protein gene Image: Orphaned. Mad Cow Disease, technically known as Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy (BSE), is one of a group of transmissible diseases that destroy brain tissue, collectively known as Transmissible Spongiform Encephalopathies (TSEs). TSEs are an unknown agent(s) that act by damaging the structure of brain proteins known as "prions" (PREE ons). In turn, these damaged prion proteins damage other normal prions and together, they build up to collectively…
tags: Who Blogs, blog writing and personality, Big Five personality inventory, social psychology, technology, computers, internet, researchblogging.org You all read blogs, and many of you write them, too. But what sort of person writes a blog? Are there particular personality traits that make certain people more likely to write a blog? If so, what are those personality traits? Do you have them, too? A team of scientists, led by psychologist Rosanna Guadagno from the University of Alabama, wondered what personality traits made some people more likely than others to write blogs. To answer…
tags: new bird species, African forest robin, Stiphrornis pyrrholaemus, Gamba Complex, Moukalaba-Doudou National Park, ornithology, birds, avian, Smithsonian, researchblogging.org A male specimen of the newly-discovered olive-backed forest robin, Stiphrornis pyrrholaemus, is carefully examined in the hand of Brian Schmidt, the Smithsonian ornithologist who discovered the species. Image: Brian Schmidt. A new species of bird has been identified by ornithologists from the Smithsonian Institution. The bird, which was first discovered in Gabon, a small country in Africa, was unknown to the…
tags: virology, mimivirus, sputnik, virophage, microbiology, molecular biology Now here's an astonishing discovery that's hot off the presses: a virus that infects other viruses! This amazing finding is being published tomorrow in the top-tier peer-reviewed journal, Nature. I don't know about you, but when I was in school, I was taught that viruses could only infect other living cells, and further, I was taught that viruses are not living cells. So, logically, one could conclude that viruses cannot infect other viruses. But a new discovery by a group of scientists in France reveals otherwise…
tags: researchblogging.org, premature hair graying, autosomal dominant trait, genetics, horses, hair color, syntaxin-17, melanocortin-1 receptor, cis-acting regulatory mutation, melanoma, evolution This horse is in the process of losing its pigment. It will end up being all white by the time it is eight years old. Image: Horse Wallpaper [larger view]. Even though I have always been a fan of black horses, my heart did leap at the sight of the noble Shadowfax racing towards Gandalf in response to his call in the Lord of the Rings. White horses have symbolized purity throughout most ages and…