evolution
grrlscientist | July 22, 2008tags: researchblogging.org, dichromatism, mating system, plumage color, sex allocation, eclectus parrots, Eclectus roratus, ornithology, birds, avian, parrots
Elektra, my female Solomon Islands eclectus parrot, Eclectus roratus solomonensis.
This is the smallest and most distinctively marked of all the subspecies of eclectus parrots.
Image: GrrlScientist 4 July 2008 [larger view].
Some of you might recall the recent story about scientists learning to identify plumage coloration from fossilized feathers. This might seem a sort of esoteric pursuit meant to entertain scientists with access…
evolgen | July 22, 2008
All good medicine is evidence based -- that is, diagnoses and treatments are developed via the scientific method. Oftentimes, evolutionary biology is employed to understand human health and diseases. This is known as evolutionary medicine.
Evolutionary medicine is a growing field that takes an interdisciplinary approach toward studying human disease. Tools from population ecology, molecular evolution, comparative anatomy, and many other fields are all integrated with clinical medicine to improve our understanding of human disease and develop new treatments. This approach can be applied to…
laelaps | July 21, 2008For a long time feathered dinosaurs just looked weird to me. Seeing fuzzy Deinonychus or some other dromeosaur with a splash of plumage never looked quite right and I didn't understand why in the course of a few years predatory dinosaurs went from being scaly to being covered in down. Most of the books I had seen didn't explain it beyond "These dinosaurs were closely related to birds," something I didn't dispute but was not enough to make me feel comfortable with feathered raptors. Even after I started taking a greater interest in paleontology I still had problems with reconstructions of…
pharyngula | July 19, 2008Massimo Pigliucci has posted the notes, parts 1, 2, and 3, from the Altenberg meeting that was unfortunately over-hyped by the creationist crowd (no blame for that attaches to the organizers of this meeting). It sounds like it was a phenomenally interesting meeting that was full of interesting ideas, but from these notes, it was also clearly a rather speculative meeting — not one that was trying to consolidate a body of solid observations into a coherent explanation, but one that was instead trying to define promising directions for an expansion of evolutionary theory. That's also the message…
clock | July 18, 2008Scientific Collectivism 1: (Or How I Stopped Worrying and Loved Dissent):
I want to bring up a discussion about what I perceive is a dangerous trend in neuroscience (this may be applicable to other areas of science as well), and that is what I will term "scientific collectivism." I am going to split this into two separate posts because it is so long. This first post is the weaker arguments, and what I see are the less interesting aspects of scientific collectivism-however, they deserve a discussion.
What will you be? and the related Friday Poll: Tinker, Tailor, Biologist, Researcher. So, how…
sa smith | July 18, 2008Do you guys get to see new Dawkins specials on TV like, every other month, or something?
I hate you guys!
*pouts*
razib | July 18, 2008David takes a slight detour in this Sewall Wright, series, R. A. Fisher and Epistasis:
My next note on Sewall Wright will cover the exciting subject of the adaptive landscape. As every schoolboy knows, Wright considered epistatic gene interactions very important in determining the 'peaks' of the landscape. A sharp contrast is sometimes drawn between Wright and R. A. Fisher in this respect....
This is a preamble to a very long and dense post. If it interests you in the subject, I'd also recommend Epistasis and the Evolutionary Process. You might also check out this older post of mine on…
grrlscientist | July 18, 2008tags: Microcosm, microbiology, bacteria, E coli, evolution, Carl Zimmer, book review
I lived through Seattle's outbreak of the "killer E. coli strain O157:H7" that charged into the world's consciousness after it mercilessly destroyed the kidneys and other vital organs of hundreds of children and adults who consumed contaminated fast food. During this time, I worked as a lab microbiologist in several human and veterinary hospitals in the Seattle area while I earned my bachelor's degree in microbiology, so I have a strong background in both the practical realities and the scientific lore of…
clock | July 17, 2008The third issue of the Open Access journal 'Evolution: Education and Outreach' has been published, and it is again full of good, thought-provoking articles. You can see them (for free, of course) if you click here.
razib | July 17, 2008I agree with all the other ScienceBlogs that Olivia Judson is right. Do we talk about Newtonism? Einsteinism? We do talk about Epicureanism, Platonism, Neo-Platonism, Aristotelianism, etc. I think that says it all....
edyong | July 17, 2008New Scientist's Feedback section has a running series of items on "nominative determinism", that strange phenomenon where a person's bears eerie witness to their occupation, such as a neurologist called Lord Brain, or an article on urology authored by Splatt and Weedon. Well here's another example for them - a new paper about a singing fish from a scientist called Bass.
Beyond the wall-mounted horrors of Big Mouth Billy, fish are not exactly known for their vocal stylings, but one group - the toadfishes and midshipmans - are very noisy indeed. They make a range of dull grunts and hums by…
mikethemadbiologist | July 17, 2008Since I've ripped into Olivia Judson before, it's only fair that I note Judson's good suggestion--eliminate the term Darwinism (although we definitely need to keep TEH DARWINSIMZ!!; italics mine):
I'd like to abolish the insidious terms Darwinism, Darwinist and Darwinian. They suggest a false narrowness to the field of modern evolutionary biology, as though it was the brainchild of a single person 150 years ago, rather than a vast, complex and evolving subject to which many other great figures have contributed. (The science would be in a sorry state if one man 150 years ago had, in fact,…
evolgen | July 17, 2008Olivia Judson says Darwinism is dead. She's right. Anyone who talks about "Darwinism" or "evolutionists" gets my attention. That's not to say that any use of those terms is incorrect. But they are often used as framing devices by creationists, and those frames get carried over into the lay discussion of biology. You should read her discussion of why we should get rid of Darwinism.
On a somewhat unrelated note, Judson also writes the following:
We'd want to discuss evolution beyond natural selection -- the other forces that can sometimes cause (or prevent) evolutionary change. For although…
clock | July 16, 2008Olivia Judson is absolutely right - let's get rid of the terms "Darwinist" and "Darwinism". She writes, among else:
I'd like to abolish the insidious terms Darwinism, Darwinist and Darwinian. They suggest a false narrowness to the field of modern evolutionary biology, as though it was the brainchild of a single person 150 years ago, rather than a vast, complex and evolving subject to which many other great figures have contributed. (The science would be in a sorry state if one man 150 years ago had, in fact, discovered everything there was to say.) Obsessively focusing on Darwin, perpetually…
pharyngula | July 16, 2008I'm on my way home, and am actually using a fast internet connection at the airport — I'd forgotten what it was like! I quickly uploaded a few essential files, and my mail software is downloading my email. Unfortunately, I'd need a really fast connection to handle all that — the number of messages pouring in might actually hit 5 digits. If you're hoping for a reply to anything, you might well be out of luck here.
Atlanta has been very pleasant, with friendly people and good company. I'll have to come back sometime. The meeting itself was challenging for a mere biologist, but I might have…
laelaps | July 16, 2008I've never liked the term "Darwinism." To me it has always been more of a watchword that might indicate that I was talking to a creationist, a term I generally do not encounter unless I'm reading or hearing an argument against a straw-man version of evolution. (I'm not a big fan of "evolutionist," either.) It may have been useful in the past, when evolution by natural selection (as popularized by Darwin) was competing with other systems like Neo-Lamarckism and orthogenesis, but today it doesn't have any relevance. (It should also be noted that A.R. Wallace wrote a book on natural selection…
evolvingthoughts | July 15, 2008
Ryan Gregory at Genomicron has a couple of interesting posts; One on Natural Selection before Darwin, which discusses prior presentations back to Hutton. I think he's right that prior to Darwin selection was typically not thought of as a way to form new species. It's generally not after Darwin either - speciation is usually thought of as a side effect of selection. Also he argues that abiogenesis, the formation of life from abiotic materials, is a part of evolution, but not required by evolutionary theory. I agree: but not because abiogenesis begins with replication. Rather, I think…
grrlscientist | July 15, 2008tags: researchblogging.org, speciation, adaptive radiation, , diversification, ecological opportunity, community assembly, species interactions, North American wood-warblers, Dendroica species, Daniel L. Rabosky
Yellow-rumped warbler, Dendroica coronata, After Hatch Year male.
Image: Dave Rintoul, KSU [larger view].
Several questions that motivate my own research and thinking are; How do species arise? Where does all this biodiversity that we see on Earth come from? Does speciation occur as a series of slow and gradual accumulated changes or is it an explosive process that occurs within a…
razib | July 14, 2008A profile of E. O. Wilson in The New York Times, Taking a Cue From Ants on Evolution of Humans:
Dr. Wilson was not picking a fight when he published "Sociobiology" in 1975, a synthesis of ideas about the evolution of social behavior. He asserted that many human behaviors had a genetic basis, an idea then disputed by many social scientists and by Marxists intent on remaking humanity. Dr. Wilson was amazed at what ensued, which he describes as a long campaign of verbal assault and harassment with a distinctly Marxist flavor led by two Harvard colleagues, Richard C. Lewontin and Stephen Jay…