Biodiversity
evolvingthoughts | May 8, 2009It's called Philosophy and Theory in Biology. This is based on some heavy hitters: Massimo Pigliucci, Jon Kaplan, Alan Love and Joan Roughgarden are the editors, and the editorial board looks like a Who's Who of philosophy of biology. No apparent page charges, and it's online only (I hope they take care of the enduring archiving), but it looks interesting. How it differs, apart from being virtualised, from Biology and Philosophy, Biological Theory and the several other more specialised journals I can't yet say.
sb admin | April 29, 2009[This is a repost from the Myrmecos Blog, originally published February 2008]
In 1934, a diminutive book by an unknown author seeded the largest conservation movement in history. The book, Roger Tory Peterson's A Field Guide to the Birds, pioneered the modern field guide format with crisp illustrations of diagnostic characters, all in a pocket-sized read. The Guide sold out in a week, but the book's effects are ongoing.
To understand the magnitude of Peterson's impact, consider how naturalists traditionally identified birds. They'd take a shotgun into the field, and if they saw something…
evolvingthoughts | April 16, 2009Elio Schaechter has a nice piece up on the recent success at growing a pure line of Coxellia pathogens, the cause of Q Fever. I have been told that fewer than 10% of all microbes are able to be grown in cell-free media, so perhaps this will be the start of a new set of methodologies. Doing this means that pathogens and other microbes will be able to be sequenced and studied in vitro.
evolvingthoughts | April 9, 2009Older histories of biology are often full of useful and interesting facts. One of my all-time favourites is Eric Nordenskiöld's history, but I came across an earlier one by Louis Compton Miall in which I found this text:
Bonnet in 1745 traced the scale of nature in fuller detail than had been attempted before. He made Hydra a link between plants and animals, the snails and slugs a link between mollusca and serpents, flying fishes a link between ordinary fishes and land vertebrates, the ostrich, bat, and flying fox links between birds and mammals. Man, endowed with reason, occupies the highest…
evolvingthoughts | March 19, 2009If I may interrupt the politics for a bit with a sciencey note, I strongly recommend reading this blog post at Small Things Considered (the go-to site for all things microbial and smaller): parasitoid wasps insert viral-like particles, or VLPs, into the host caterpillars in which they lay their eggs. They make the immune system of the host non-responsive.
I find this interesting, because one of the unsolved mysteries is the origins of viruses - this shows that at least some of them might have started life as manipulative nucleic acids (although these are DNA not RNA viroids). However, the…
evolvingthoughts | March 11, 2009Taxonomy - the science of classifying organisms into putatively natural groups - is often treated as a kind of necessary bit of paperwork without much theoretical import by some biologists. Others think it is the single most important thing to do, usually justifying it in terms of conservation biology, but sometimes in terms of foundational knowledge. One thing that has become clear to me is exactly how foundational taxonomy is. Now, historian Polly Winsor has published a paper in the leading taxonomic journal, appropriately named Taxon, in which she argues, I believe correctly, that Darwin's…
evolvingthoughts | February 26, 2009PD Magnus on the history of the philosophy of science in the last 50 years, in around 1400 words.
A short primer on the Greenhouse Effect
Mendeley, a bibliographic cloud project, has raised funding from Last.fm, Warner and Skype execs. Looks like next gen after Endnote...
evolvingthoughts | February 21, 2009A new blog that looks promising is here. In one of their first pieces they note that Cameroon is following the Congo's example and setting up preserves for gorillas (and other things).
evolvingthoughts | January 23, 2009There's been a slew of "Darwin was wrong" and "Evolution is more complicated" stories in the media lately. It's nearing Darwin day so simple minded media hacks can be explained as needing to find the requisite "drama" in their "stories". But the real picture is a lot more nuanced, and ultimately a lot more interesting, than the dichotomies pedalled by what passes for science journalism these days. I am picking up themes also covered by Larry at Sandwalk, Evolutionary Novelties, and Jason at Evolution Blog.
The targets journalists I wish to attack here are those of New Scientist, Newsweek, The…
evolvingthoughts | January 14, 2009Chris Nedin at Ediacaran has a nice discussion of the metaphor of the adaptive landscape, "Climbing Pit Improbable". It should be noted that the genetic notion of adaptive peaks is exactly the same thing as the AI notion of gradient descent learning., which inverts the "landscape" the way Chris describes.
The philosopher responsible for initiating the "deep ecology" movement, Arne Naess, has died at the age of 96. Maybe there is something to this exercise thing.
John Whitfield, at Blogging the Origin, is, well, blogging his way through the Origin. Chapter 1 is here. Comments by various folk…
evolvingthoughts | December 23, 2008Damn it's hot. Around here, snow is at a premium, which means our solstitial celebrations are less active than those oop north. Anyway, I got interviewed last night on national radio, the ABC's National Evening show, talking about the early ideas of philosophy to presenter Rhys Muldoon. Nice fellow. It was more like a chat than an interview (which means I did most of the talking, as my chats tend to). It seems I am the sole contactable philosopher in Australia.
So anyway, to entertain you there are some pre-solstitial items just announced. First off, I'm going to put all the internet…
grrlscientist | December 18, 2008tags: National Geographic, Vanuatu, Pencil Urchin, biodiversity, image of the day
Image: David Lane, University of Brunei.
My friends at National Geographic have provided permission for me to share some of the images from the recent discovery of a huge number of new species on and around the south Pacific island of Vanuatu.
Tiny Tropical Island Yields a Wealth of Species
The thick, solid spines of a pencil sea urchin jut out like the writing instruments that lend this creature its name.
These nocturnal animals hide in coral reef cavities during the day and crawl out after dark to forage…
grrlscientist | December 17, 2008tags: National Geographic, Vanuatu, cockle, biodiversity, image of the day
Image: Delphine Brabant, MNHN.
My friends at National Geographic have provided permission for me to share some of the images from the recent discovery of a huge number of new species on and around the south Pacific island of Vanuatu.
Tiny Tropical Island Yields a Wealth of Species
A cockle's large, muscular foot juts through an opening in the mantle supporting its shell.
The cockle bends and straightens the foot to jump away from predators in its shallow-water ocean habitat off the island of Espiritu Santo,…
grrlscientist | December 16, 2008tags: National Geographic, Vanuatu, sundial snail, biodiversity, image of the day
Image: Annelise Fleddum, University of Oslo.
My friends at National Geographic have provided permission for me to share some of the images from the recent discovery of a huge number of new species on and around the south Pacific island of Vanuatu.
Tiny Tropical Island Yields a Wealth of Species
Scientists sampled some 4,000 different mollusk species in Espiritu Santo. Mollusk expert Philippe Bouchet speculates that as many as 1,000 of these could be new species.
Among the finds: this sundial snail, already…
grrlscientist | December 15, 2008tags: National Geographic, Vanuatu, lobster, biodiversity, image of the day
Image: Dr Tin-Yam Chan, University of Keelung.
My friends at National Geographic have provided permission for me to share some of the images from the recent discovery of a huge number of new species on and around the south Pacific island of Vanuatu.
Tiny Tropical Island Yields a Wealth of Species
November 24, 2008--Even on tiny remote islands, scientists can find an impressive array of life.
During the Santo 2006 biodiversity survey in Vanuatu, 153 scientists from 20 countries fanned out across the remote South…
evolvingthoughts | December 14, 2008
Just a couple of days ago I mentioned the Annual Review of Ecology, Evolution, and Systematics. They must have heard me because today I get my email notification that they have published this year's volume. I'd like to mention three papers of interest to me. Alas, children, if you don't have a library subscription (or a personal one), you won't be able to access these papers directly...
To start with the last one first, here's a paper (Coates et al.) that discusses the history and biology of the relationships of early tetrapods - organisms with four limbs, backbones, and bony skeletons. We…
evolvingthoughts | December 14, 2008I received this from GetUp today. I wonder if the politicians recognise that no amount of economic manoeuvring or political RealPolitik will avoid the laws of nature? If we do too little, then our children - not even our grandchildren but the very next generation - will suffer and badly. The ALP (sorry, the Clean Feed Censorship Party) is starting to look like More of the Very Same... again.
I'm writing from Canberra with an urgent message. I've just finished reading an advance copy of the Government's White Paper on climate change. They aim to reduce carbon pollution by only 5% by 2020,…
evolvingthoughts | December 12, 2008
There is a widespread tendency of biologists to overgeneralise from their study group of organisms to the whole of biology. Sometimes this is because the organisms are model organisms, like Drosophila (the "fruit flies" that have been used in genetics since the beginning).Other times it is because specialists tend to overestimate the generality of their results and domain. The recent trend to finding "speciation genes" is an example. For some time now various researchers like Chung-i Wu and his collaborators have sought speciation genes. These are genes that cause speciation, in a general…
awild | December 11, 2008
The above pie chart shows the relative proportions of described species in various groups of organisms. As we can see, most species are invertebrate animals. Things like snails, flatworms, spiders, sponges, and insects.
Now compare that slice of pie to the proportion of GenBank sequences that represent invertebrates:
Yes, that thin blue wedge is all we've got. While most mammal species have had at least a gene or two sequenced, the vast majority of non-vertebrate species have yet to meet a pipettor.  Entire families of insects haven't received even a cursory genetic study.
Of…
evolvingthoughts | December 10, 2008I've been travelling a little to organise my move to Sydney. Love the building, the department, the people and the project. Not sure about Sydney... so anyway, nothing of substance from me for a while.
Here's a lovely little essay about Newton pissing off most of the European intellectual giants of his time, by one of our commentators, Thony Christie, at Etherwave Propaganda. He truly was the most egotistical and curmudgeonly bastard of his time, matched only by his actual achievements.
The latest Linnaeus' Legacy is up at Agricultural Biodiversity. They had the good taste to use one of mine…