evolution
razib | December 1, 2009We May Be Born With an Urge to Help:
What is the essence of human nature? Flawed, say many theologians. Vicious and addicted to warfare, wrote Hobbes. Selfish and in need of considerable improvement, think many parents.
But biologists are beginning to form a generally sunnier view of humankind. Their conclusions are derived in part from testing very young children, and partly from comparing human children with those of chimpanzees, hoping that the differences will point to what is distinctively human.
The somewhat surprising answer at which some biologists have arrived is that babies are…
awild | December 1, 2009
Cephalotes grandinosus, an herbivorous ant
Why are there so many ants?
This is a more perplexing question than it may seem. At first glance ants are predators and scavengers. Yet predators should be few in number, balanced on a narrow trophic peak and depending on high prey biomass to exist. Why are terrestrial ecosystems dominated by these little hunters?
A landmark study several years ago by Dinah Davidson provided an answer: many ants are not predators at all. They're herbivores. Sure, they snack now and again on flesh. But ants get most of their energy from plants, either…
razib | November 30, 2009Wet phases in the Sahara/Sahel region and human migration patterns in North Africa:
The carbon isotopic composition of individual plant leaf waxes (a proxy for C3 vs. C4 vegetation) in a marine sediment core collected from beneath the plume of Sahara-derived dust in northwest Africa reveals three periods during the past 192,000 years when the central Sahara/Sahel contained C3 plants (likely trees), indicating substantially wetter conditions than at present. Our data suggest that variability in the strength of Atlantic meridional overturning circulation (AMOC) is a main control on vegetation…
pharyngula | November 30, 2009The Royal Society of London is releasing free pdfs of some of its best-known papers — and we're talking real classics. Check out their timeline which lets you scan for papers in chronological order; the oldest are a pair for 1666-1667 by Robert Boyle and Robert Hook(e), which will horrify modern audiences: they describe experiments in blood transfusions and examinations of the lungs in dogs. I would not have wanted to be a dog in 17th century London, that's for sure.
One that is particularly interesting is this account of a new technique in preventative medicine from 1736: "An Account of…
pharyngula | November 30, 2009I'm going to be opening my mouth again on Thursday in Minneapolis — I'll be giving a talk in MCB 3-120 on the Minneapolis campus at 7:30 on Thursday, 3 December. This will be open to the public, and it will also be an all-science talk, geared for a general audience. I'd say they were going to check your nerd credentials at the door, but just showing up means you're already fully qualified.
The subject of the talk is my 3 big interests: a) evolution, or how we got here over multiple generations, b) development, or how we got here in a single generation, and c) the nervous system, the most…
grrlscientist | November 30, 2009tags: new species, biology, botany, orchid, tiniest orchid, Orchidaceae, Platystele, Lou Jost
A close-up of the world's smallest orchid, at just over 2mm from petal tip to petal tip.
Image: Lou Jost.
The world's smallest orchid was discovered recently in a mountainous nature reserve in Ecuador by American botanist Lou Jost. Dr. Jost, a former physicist, now works as a mathematical ecologist, plant biogeographer and conservation scientist, and is one of the world's most expert orchid hunters. In the previous decade, Dr. Jost discovered 60 new species of orchids and 10 other new plant…
oracknows | November 30, 2009A couple of years ago, fellow ScienceBlogger Mark Hoofnagle over at Denialism Blog coined a most excellent term to describe all manners of pseuodscience, quackery, and crankery. The term, "crank magnetism," describes the tendency of cranks not to mind it when they see crankery in others. More specifically, it describes how cranks of one variety (for instance, HIV/AIDS denialists, will be attracted to another form of crankery (for instance, anti-vaccinationism or the 9/11 Truth movement) because, as Mark put it, cranks and pseudoscientists see themselves as iconoclasts, brave mavericks opposed…
grrlscientist | November 29, 2009tags: Birdbooker Report, bird books, animal books, natural history books, ecology books
"How does one distinguish a truly civilized nation from an aggregation of
barbarians? That is easy. A civilized country produces much good bird
literature."
--Edgar Kincaid
The Birdbooker Report is a special weekly report of a wide variety of science, nature and behavior books that currently are, or soon will be available for purchase. This report is written by one of my Seattle birding pals and book collector, Ian "Birdbooker" Paulsen, and is edited by me and published here for your information and…
clock | November 28, 2009The application deadline for the NESCent blogging competition and travel award to ScienceOnline2010 is December 1, 2009. So hurry up - see the contest conditions and entries so far and meet the judges.
So, hurry up. Write (or choose an existing) post in the area of evolutionary biology and send it in. Two lucky winners will get travel grants to ScienceOnline2010. Yes, we are full, and there are 101 people on the waiting list. But the two NESCent winners have their spots saved just for them!
milhayser | November 25, 2009
Charles Darwin's Origin of Species was published 150 years ago today, and it continues to inform, illuminate, and stir up controversy. Of course, some tortoises live longer than that, but Darwin's lasting legacy seems assured. On Gene Expression, Razib Khan tackles a study on the Fore, a cannibalistic people who ate their dead up until 1960. This diet left an imprint on their genes: a deadly prion-caused illness called Kuru led to selection against homozygosity in key alleles. Elsewhere, ERV explores invasive species and their fitness versus native species when both are infected with the…
razib | November 24, 2009
Since The Origin of Species was published 150 years ago many articles on evolution are seeing the light of day today. Normally I'm all in favor of this, I ♥ evolution. But it also means that woolly thinking is put out there as conventional wisdom as journalists simply act as stenographers for any scientist who's in their rolodex. Some of the quotes in this National Geographic article make me want to tear my hair out. Ian Tattersall, a paleoanthropologist, decides to offer up his opinions as a population geneticist:
"Everything we know about evolutionary change suggests that genetic…
laelaps | November 24, 2009
Today is the 150th anniversary of the publication of Charles Darwin's On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, and there is a whole list of things I am not going to do;
I am not going to set aside time to read On the Origin of Species when I get home.
I am not going to write a long ode to Darwin in which I pontificate on how his view of nature changed science and society.
I am not going to stop by any Darwin-themed parties, lectures, or other events.
And so on. I really do not have any special celebratory plans for today at all. Instead I intend to honor the work of Charles…
clock | November 24, 2009Last couple of weeks months were awfully busy, on many fronts, not least finalizing the ScienceOnline2010 program, herding cats almost 100 moderators/presenters to do various stuff (e.g., respond to my e-mails) in a timely manner, and making sure that registration goes smoothly. This is also the time of year when activation energy for doing anything except going to bed to hide under the covers is very high for people suffering from SAD. Thus, you did not see many 'original' posts here lately, I know.
But, it's not that I have been totally idle. Apart from teaching my BIO101 lab again, I also…
gregladen | November 24, 2009The The Origin Of Species by Charles Darwin was published 150 years go as I write this. At the time, several different alternative theories of the origin and history of life were being discussed in the West. Some of these theories were theological. Theological ideas included a literal translation of the bible, with the flora, the fauna, and humans created in three separate but related creation events on a freshly made earth just a few thousand years ago. Another theological idea had an Abrahamic God's hand involved in the history of life but in ways we were not likely to understand until…
hrynyshyn | November 24, 2009
The Darwin Experience:
The Story of the Man and his Theory of Evolution
by John van Wyhe
National Geographic Books
It almost seems like a throwback to another age, a time when people actually read books and stuff. And National Geographic Books' The Darwin Experience: The Story of the Man and his Theory of Evolution may be one of the last such volumes ever produced, given the rate at which e-books are gobbling up market share. After all, if you want to browse through Darwin's life or read On the Origin of Species, you can do that online.
But for those of us born before the advent of the…
razib | November 23, 2009FuturePundit points me to a new paper on the Toba explosion, Environmental impact of the 73 ka Toba super-eruption in South Asia:
The cooling effects of historic volcanic eruptions on world climate are well known but the impacts of even bigger prehistoric eruptions are still shrouded in mystery. The eruption of Toba volcano in northern Sumatra some 73,000 years ago was the largest explosive eruption of the past two million years, with a Volcanic Explosivity Index of magnitude 8, but its impact on climate has been controversial. In order to resolve this issue, we have analysed pollen from a…
sa smith | November 23, 2009All of my research in undergrad was on corn.
All of it.
For classes, for labs, every lab-- corn. We were basically watching a gene become 'irreducibly complex' in shoot apical meristems... I mean, it was definitely cool, its just that I couldnt eat corn for years (Im over it now, but I dunno how people like Anastasia do it hehe!).
But now that we have sequenced the whole genome of a few strains of corn, I am now MADLY IN LOVE WITH CORN AGAIN!!
ITS AN EVILUTIONARY POWERHOUSE!!!
RAAAAAAAAAARW!!
The B73 Maize Genome: Complexity, Diversity, and Dynamics
Okay, there is a TON of data here, so Im…
razib | November 23, 2009Cannibalism is a controversial topic. It is routine for particular societies to accuse "barbarians", enemies, or evil mythological figures, of cannibalism. When it comes to the archaeological record some skeptics have claimed that like "sacred objects" too often human remains found in peculiar circumstances are ascribed to human sacrifice or cannibalism. In Did Adam and Eve Have Navels? Martin Gardner lays out the skeptical case for why cannibalism is rare to non-existent, and rather something which emerges from the imaginations of ethnographers and archaeologists, or is rooted in…
emjohnson | November 21, 2009Now that his plan has backfired drastically (his own website has removed the link to his "Introduction" of Darwin's book) and more people were offended by his distortions than anything else, let me briefly point out some useful information. Comfort makes the following assertions in his introduction:
Adolf Hitler took Darwin's evolutionary philosophy to its logical conclusions [and] the legacy of Darwin's theory can be seen in the rise of eugenics, euthanasia, infanticide, and abortion.
As the National Center for Science Education has pointed out:
This is simply hyperbole on Comfort's part.…