evolution
razib | March 15, 2007As I've said before I've been reading Martin Nowak's Evolutionary Dynamics. Nowak is a mathematical biologist, and a lot of his research program deals with game theory, so it isn't a surprise that several chapters in this book address exclusively game theoretic concepts. In the first chapter to tackle game theory head on Nowak covers a lot of ground, starting with the basics of frequency dependent strategies and pushing all the the way to some heavy theoretical ecology in regards to predatory-prey models. I'm going to pass over the more complex aspects of the chapter (e.g., Rock-Paper-…
mikethemadbiologist | March 15, 2007
To prevent brain damage, the Surgeon General recommends that statements by Michael Egnor be read using approved devices such as the StupidView9000
Orac bravely dives deeper into the Discovery Institute's creationist drivel, and reports on the continuing ignorant idiocy of Michael Egnor. I don't know what's worse: Egnor's willful ignorance, or his pseudo-victimization complex. Let's deal with the ignorance first.
In an interview with Casey Luskin, Egnor states (italics mine):
EGNOR: Well, it's a pretty funny claim on the part of Darwinists. It's sort of like Al Gore claiming that he…
jlynch | March 15, 2007
This beauty is a Bornean clouded leopard (Neofelis diardi ), a new species native to Borneo and Sumatra.
For many years the clouded leopard was traditionally regarded as a monotypic genus with four subspecies. But recent molecular genetic analyses (mtDNA, nuclear DNA sequences, microsatellite variation, and cytogenetic differences) have revealed that there is however a strong case for reclassification and the defining of two distinct species of clouded leopard - Neofelis nebulosa (mainland Asia) and Neofelis diardi (Indonesian archipelago). This case for two clouded leopard species based…
pharyngula | March 15, 2007Sphyrocephala beccarii
Here is a spectacularly pretty and weird animal: stalk-eyed flies of the family Diopsidae. There are about 160 species in this group that exhibit this extreme morphology, with the eyes and the antennae displaced laterally on stalks. They often (but not always) are sexually dimorphic, with males having more exaggerated stalks—the longer stalks also make them clumsy in flight, so this is a pattern with considerable cost, and is thought to be the product of sexual selection. The Sphyrocephala to the right is not even an extreme example. Read on to see some genuinely…
evolvingthoughts | March 15, 2007
One of the longstanding problems with fitness landscapes is that they are mostly abstract and arbitrary constructs used for conceptualisation rather than actual explanation. Things have changed. Now a paper in Nature shows that fitness landscapes empirically measured show accessible routes of molecular evolution from one function to another. In particular it's nice to see a comment like this:
The tentative picture emerging from the new results is one that emphasizes the possibilities of continuous optimization by positive selection. Although evolution was clearly constrained, as…
evolvingthoughts | March 14, 2007
Ordinarily, sermons should be reserved for holy days, such as when football and cricket is being played, but this is occasioned by some Scibling conflicts...
When I were a young lad, me ol' mam told me to keep a civil tongue in me 'ead. [Actually, she told me something else, but this is a family post.] Have you ever wondered about the notion of civility?
Etymology is something of a guide here - it comes from the Latin civis, meaning "city". That is, it is the mode of behaviour, the manners, of the city. In Greek, the term is polis, which means "city" also. From these two words we get…
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…
jrosenhouse | March 14, 2007Allow me to direct your attention to the cover story from the current issue of Newsweek. It provides a useful summary of recent developments in human evolution.
It's a decent article, and I recommend reading it through to the end. There are, however, a few irritating points:
The science of human evolution is undergoing its own revolution. Although we tend to see the march of species down through time as a single-file parade, with descendant succeeding ancestor in a neat line, the emerging science shows that the story of our species is far more complicated than Biblical literalists would…
loom | March 14, 2007Perhaps the notion of conservatives building an alternative to Wikipedia that includes many "scientific" entries based on creationist books aimed at seventh graders sounds like some bizarre hoax. For those who doubt, there's now audio evidence.
National Public Radio ran a segment yesterday in which they interviewed the founder of Conservapedia, Andrew Schlalfly. The interviewer, Robert Siegel, got right to the point. He described Wikipedia's entry on kangaroos, which includes details about extinct species of kangaroos known from fossils. [Update: Maybe he was looking at the Macropod entry.]…
oracknows | March 14, 2007I need some β-blockers STAT.
I say that not because I'm hypertensive or because I'm having heart palpitations--at least not at the moment. I'm saying it because, after reading the latest brave foray into antievolutionary ignorance by--as much as I hate to admit it--a fellow surgeon named Dr. Michael Egnor, I need to do something for prophylaxis against such problems. Yes, Dr. Egnor is back again, hot on the heels of taking massive and much-deserved abuse from the science blogosphere (including a heapin' helpin' of Respectful Insolence⢠from me) over his spreading of misinformation and…
evolgen | March 13, 2007The New York Times has published an article in their Science section on the evolution of human parasites, and it's not by Carl Zimmer. In the article, Nicholas Wade (another good science writer at the NYTimes) presents a few vignettes of human-parasite co-evolution, including a bacterium that causes tooth decay, the ulcer causing Heliobacter, and a tapeworm we share with pigs. I guess Carl called dibs on the pubic lice. Anyway, Wade made me smile when he presented the phylogeography of one human parasite:
The latest organism to be identified as a longtime member of the human biota club is…
mikethemadbiologist | March 13, 2007Last night, I was reading some of the comments you leave here, and, in response to a post about a surgeon who thinks evolution is irrelevant to medical practice (Got Antibiotic Resistance?), fellow ScienceBlogling Mark left a comment. I'll get to the comment in a minute, but tragically, I hear stories like his far too often. Mark writes (italics original):
Mike, you've nailed exactly what pisses me off so much about Egnor. Right now, we're talking about something that's become deeply personal to me.
Since January, my father has been paralyzed from the waist down. The cause of it is MRSA. He…
hrynyshyn | March 13, 2007Often have I tried to draw attention to creationist propaganda masquerading as reasoned discourse. Lest I leave the impression that the mainstream media are incapable of portraying biological evolution as the only scientific explanation for the diversity of life on Earth, it is perhaps appropriate to praise a couple of articles from a couple of the country's top science writers. Both treat evolution for what it is and make no concessions to the alleged, pseudo-scientific alternatives.
First is Sharon Begley's cover story in Newsweek,"Beyond Stones and Bones." The lengthy feature explores the…
pharyngula | March 13, 2007
What do you know…just last week, I posted an article dismissing a creationist's misconceptions about pharyngeal organization and development, in which he asks about the evidence for similarities between agnathan and gnathostome jaws, and what comes along but a new paper on the molecular evidence for the origin of the jaw, which describes gene expression in the lamprey pharynx. How timely! And as a plus, it contains several very clear summary diagrams to show how all the bits and pieces and molecules relate to one another.
The short summary is that there is a suite of genes (the Hox and Dlx…
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…
mikethemadbiologist | March 12, 2007I haven't been able to respond to Michael Egnor's idiocy about evolution because I've been recovering from a meeting, but fortunately my fellow ScienceBloglings have. But I'll add my two cents anyway. Here's the really stupid part from Egnor (italics mine):
Doctors don't study evolution. Doctors never study it in medical school, and they never use evolutionary biology in their practice. There are no courses in medical school on evolution. There are no 'professors of evolution' in medical schools. There are no departments of evolutionary biology in medical schools.
The evolution--not the…
loom | March 12, 2007Dinosaurs had small genomes. At least some of them did--the ones that gave rise to birds. If you have access to Science, you can read my News Focus article on the new field of "dinogenomics." As I mentioned last week, my web site carlzimmer.com is in serious overhaul, so as soon as it's ready, I'll post a copy of the article there, too.
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.
hrynyshyn | March 12, 2007Sciblogger Rob Knop of Galactic Interactions has learned that the best way to attract comments to a science blog is to post something about religion. (Hence the title of this post; we all like site traffic). I suspect that religosity -- the official SciBlog descriptor is the euphemestic "Culture Wars" -- is one of, if not the most popular category here. Why is that? Probably because it's much safer to weigh in on a subject that doesn't actually constitute a field of knowledge than something like epidemiology, particle physics or behavioral ecology. When it comes to the supernatural, everyone…
oracknows | March 12, 2007It figures.
After my having written repeated debunkings of various physicians who are creationists (mostly of the "intelligent design" variety), in retrospect I should have seen this one coming. I should have seen that the Discovery Institute, eager to use anyone they can find whom they can represent to the public as having scientific credentials (never mind whether those credentials have anything to do with evolutionary biology) and thus dupe the public into seeing them as having authority when they start laying down ignorant brain farts about how they "doubt Darwinism," would settle on…