Evolutionary Biology
gregladen | February 14, 2009For the last couple of decades, perhaps beginning around the time of the publication of Laurie Garret's excellent thesis (The Coming Plague: Newly Emerging Diseases in a World Out of Balance) on disease and politics and continuting through Gina Kolata's "Flu: The Story Of The Great Influenza Pandemic" there has been increased attention on the 1918 flu virus and pandemic, as well as subsequent outbreaks. This interest has probably been fueled by increased knowledge of (or incidence of?) tragic and highly newsworthy outbreaks of Ebola, SARS, and so on. More recently, the perception has grown…
gregladen | February 14, 2009Feb 15 - Darwin Year Panel Discussion Featuring Myers, Laden, Moore, Cotner and Phillips
2009 marks the 200th anniversary of the birth of Charles Darwin and the 150th anniversary of the publication of On the Origins of Species. In honor of this, we have assembled a distinguished panel of scientists to give us their thoughts on evolution, creationism, and Darwin. The panelists are: PZ Myers, Randy Moore, Greg Laden, Sehoya Cotner, and Jane Phillips.
The discussion will be moderated by Lynn Fellman. Lynn is a frequent science interviewer on our Atheists Talk radio program. She is also an…
gregladen | February 13, 2009The Gallup Poll is not surprising in any of its results but it is, of course, alarming and interesting. Here's a summary.
On the eve of the 200th anniversary of Charles Darwin's birth, a new Gallup Poll shows that only 39% of Americans say they "believe in the theory of evolution," while a quarter say they do not believe in the theory, and another 36% don't have an opinion either way. These attitudes are strongly related to education and, to an even greater degree, religiosity.
The data:
Believe in evolution 39%
Do not believe in evolutoin 25%
No opinon either way 36%
Not surprisingly,…
gregladen | February 12, 2009... and made a real mess of the place when one of them spotted the jar of pickles on the counter. They fought over it until one of them had almost all the pickles and the other one had a number of bruises and a tiny fragment of one pickle that the other chimp dropped by accident.
That would be the way it would happen if two chimps walked into a bar. Or imagine two chimps, and each finds a nice juicy bit of fruit out in the forest. And instead of eating the fruit, because they are not hungry, they carry it around for a while (this would never happen, but pretend) and then accidentally run…
gregladen | February 12, 2009Mark Pagel, evolutionary theorist extraordinaire, has published an Insight piece in Nature on Natural selection 150 years on. Pagel, well known for myriad projects in natural selecition theory and adaptation, and for developing with Harvey the widely used statistical phylogenetic method (and for being a reader of my thesis) wishes Charles Darwin a happy 200th birthday, and assesses this question:
How has Darwin's theory of Natural Selection fared over the last 150 years, and what needs to be done to bring this theoretical approach to bear as we increasingly examine complex systems,…
gregladen | February 12, 2009And hominids.
We know the fossil record underestimates diversity at least a little, and we know that forested environments in Africa tend to be underrepresented. Given this, the diversity of Miocene apes may have been rather impressive, because there is a fairly high diversity in what we can assume is a biased record.
But I'd like to make the argument from another angle, that of modern ecological analogues. Let us assume that the greater apparent diversity of apes in the middle and late Miocene compared today can be accurately translated as a modern reduction in ape diversity. Not…
gregladen | February 5, 2009The first time I read the following passage from The Voyage, I was reminded of my own first experience in a rain forest (in Zaire, not Congo). Evident in this passage is at least a glimmering of Darwin's appreciation for the complexity of ecosystems. Darwin could be considered the first scientific ecologist.
But enough of my commentary ... this passage very much stands on it's own ...
reposted and slightly modified
BAHIA, OR SAN SALVADOR. BRAZIL, FEB. 29TH.--The day has past delightfully. Delight itself, however, is a weak term to express the feelings of a naturalist who, for the first…
gregladen | February 3, 2009An article released moments ago in PLoS ONE, by Gingerich et al., describes one of the more interesting fossil discoveries ever.
To cut right to the conclusion: We now have reason to believe that the proto-whale Maiacetus inuus, a true transitional form, gave birth on land, not in the water.Artist's conception of male Maiacetus inuus with opaque skeleton overlay. Credit: John Klausmeyer and Bonnie Miljour, University of Michigan Museums of Natural History
Maiacetus inuus is a newly described member of a larger group of proto-cetids (proto-whales) that are believed to be largely aquatic.…
neurophilosophy | January 13, 2009The unique capabilities of the human hand enable us to perform extremely fine movements, such as those needed to write or to thread a needle. The emergence of these capabilities was undoubtedly essential in human evolution: a combination of individually movable fingers, opposable thumbs and the ability to move the smallest finger and ring finger into the middle of the palm to meet the thumb gives us dexterity that is unparalleled in the animal kingdom.
Last year, geneticists identified a stretch of DNA which has undergone rapid change in humans but not in chimps, our closest relatives, or in…
gregladen | January 12, 2009Homeschool Showcase (Formerly The Carnival of Cool Homeschoolers) #15 is up at Weird, Unsocialized Homeschoolers. I've got an item listed in the carnival, which is typical (I often send potentially useful science content material to the homeschooling carnivals.)
While you're studying Earth science, you may want to check out Nature's Evolutionary Gems posted by Greg Laden at Greg Laden's Blog. It's up to you whether you use it to teach evolution as fact or as a teachable moment as you discuss God's creation. I know how we'll be using it. ;-)
Wink wink indeed!
gregladen | January 6, 2009It turns out that a recently discovered population of land iguanas on the Galapagos is probably a new species that represents the basal (original) form of Galapagos land iguana. Moreover, this iguana is found in an unexpected place, according to a paper just coming out in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS).
And it's pink.
In 1984, Hickmann and Lipps said the following about the various pieces of evidence giving age estimates for the Galapagos islands:
... all are less than about 2 million years old. This age, together with independently determined geologic ages,…
gregladen | January 5, 2009This is my favorite web carnival, and this is the best version of it yet, owing to the outstanding submission we have this month!
Welcome to the 15th Monthly edition of the blog carnival Linnaeus' Legacy. I thought about being cute and fancy for this edition of the carnival, but instead, I decided to be very systematic.
(de - dum - dum)
So we will work our way from foundations to theory to taxonomy, and within the taxonomic sphere we will sort out all the organisms by type and deal with them as such appropriately. And then, we will have one little item related to extinction. The place…
gregladen | January 4, 2009The following announcement is from Nature.
About a year ago, an Editorial in these pages urged scientists and their institutions to 'spread the word' and highlight reasons why scientists can treat evolution by natural selection as, in effect, an established fact (see Nature 451, 108; 2008).
This week we are following our own prescription. Readers will find at http://www.nature.com/evolutiongems a freely accessible resource for biologists and others who wish to explain to students, friends or loved ones just what is the evidence for evolution by natural selection. Entitled '15 evolutionary…
gregladen | December 27, 2008 Minnesota Atheists' "Atheists Talk" radio show.
Sunday, December 28, 2008, 9-10 a.m. Central Time
Exploring Your Inner Zebrafish
Listen this Sunday to Geneticist Dr. Perry Hackett and Evo Devo Biologist PZ Myers as they discuss the Top Life Science Stories of 2008.
Big genome stories were everywhere in 2008. The cancer genome, the woolly mammoth genome, the synthetic genome revealed their secrets. Inexpensive genetic tests hit the market and new data on understanding human ancestry. Biologists also made headlines with high speed sequencing, pluripotent stem cells, RNA regulation, copy number…
gregladen | December 23, 2008It has long been known that incest is not as bad as you think. Anti-cousin marriage laws are like prohibition laws and blue laws. They arise from a Christian conservative movement that swept Western Civilization from the late 18th century through the 19th century, up to about the time of the repeal of Prohibition.
Sure, marrying, or just plain having sex with, your sibling is disgusting. I mean, think about it. No, wait, don't even think about it. But cousin marriage? That depends. Your cousin may be kinda cute, you never know.
But seriously, anthropologists have long known of ... and…
gregladen | December 14, 2008Three videos:
Thanks to Stacy for the tip on the first of the three. The next two were sort of obvious after that...
gregladen | December 6, 2008Individual animals that live and and forage in groups may not always benefit from a particular move (to or from a foraging site) in the same way as other individuals in the group. Therefore, there must be some kind of negotiation among the critters. Theoretical work almost always seem to show that consensus based group decisions will prevail because this minimizes individual costs. The altnernative, despotic decision (where a dominant individual decides where the group goes) should rarely happen. But the theory is apparently weak because despotic decision making seems to occur in nature.…
gregladen | December 5, 2008Allen's Rule. One of those things you learn in graduate school along with Bergmann's Rule and Cope's Rule. It is all about body size. Cope's Rule ... which is a rule of thumb and not an absolute ... says that over time the species in a given lineage tend to be larger and larger. Bergmann's Rule says that mammals get larger in colder environments. Allen's Rule has mammals getting rounder in colder climates, by decreasing length of appendages such as limbs, tails and ears.
All three rules seem to be exemplified in human evolution. Modern humans tend to be larger and rounder in cooler…
gregladen | December 3, 2008New species, thousands of them, have been discovered on a tiny island in the Pacific. Click on the picture of the blog to read all about it at Zooillogix:
Then, when you are done looking at that blog post, get yourself to a magazine stand and pick up the November-December issue of American Scientist, where there is a really cool article on Silurian fossils that are being reconstructed in 3D. These are soft body part remains nearly perfectly preserved. The only way to 'see' them is to shave the rock slice by slice, digitize the visible cross section, a zillion times then create a 3-D image…