Life Sciences
grrlscientist | February 29, 2008tags: sloth, subway art, AMNH, NYC, NYCLife
This is a three-toed Bradypus species of sloth (but which one?)
as portrayed in tiles on the stairway of the NYC subway stop (A-B-C)
at 81st and Central Park West. (ISO, no zoom, no flash).
Image: GrrlScientist 2008. [wallpaper size].
Read more about the AMNH tile artworks and see the AMNH tile artworks photographic archives -- with all the animals identified.
grrlscientist | February 28, 2008tags: whiptail lizard, Cnemidophorus species, subway art, AMNH, NYC, NYCLife
I think this is a whiptail lizard, Cnemidophorus species (can you name the species?)
as portrayed in tiles on the stairway of the NYC subway stop (A-B-C)
at 81st and Central Park West. (ISO, no zoom, no flash).
Image: GrrlScientist 2008. [wallpaper size].
Read more about the AMNH tile artworks and see the AMNH tile artworks photographic archives -- with all the animals identified.
gregladen | February 28, 2008This is a photograph of wild western lowland gorillas copulating in, sort of, the missionary position. This shot was taken in the Nouabale-Ndoki National Park in the Republic of Congo.
The female gorilla in the photograph, nicknamed "Leah" by researchers, has twice made history. In 2005 Breuer and others observed her using tools--another never-before-seen behavior for her kind in the wild. Leah tested the depth of a pool of water with a stick before wading into it in Mbeli Bai, where researchers have been monitoring the gorilla population since 1995.
"Understanding the behavior of our…
tetrapodzoology | February 28, 2008
Thank you and well done to everyone who had a bash at identifying Ermentrude. For the most part, you were correct: Ermentrude was indeed an iguanian, and within Iguania a tropidurid... or tropidurine... I mean liolaemid... or liolaemine, or liolaemin.. and, within that group, a species of the large South American taxon Liolaemus. What species? Well, that's a bit trickier to answer...
An average of about four new Liolaemus species are described every year, and there are currently around 200 species*, so it can be difficult to keep track of them. Ermentrude was labelled as a 'spotted swift'…
clock | February 26, 2008There are 48 new articles published this week in PLoS ONE. It's hard to choose just a couple to highlight, so look around for what interests you (avian flu, the Plague?). How about these titles that piqued my interest:
Neural Substrates of Spontaneous Musical Performance: An fMRI Study of Jazz Improvisation:
To investigate the neural substrates that underlie spontaneous musical performance, we examined improvisation in professional jazz pianists using functional MRI. By employing two paradigms that differed widely in musical complexity, we found that improvisation (compared to production of…
clock | February 25, 2008There are a bunch of new papers in PLoS Biology and PLoS Medicine and, somewhat out of usual schedule, in PLoS ONE. So, check out these and then look around for more:
Does Mutation Rate Depend on Itself:
Many a research paper, textbook chapter, and grant proposal has begun with the phrase "Mutation is the ultimate source of genetic variation." Implicit in this phrase is the assumption that genetic variation is required for evolution. Without mutation, evolution would not be possible, and life itself could never have arisen in the first place. However, there is overwhelming evidence that the…
pharyngula | February 25, 2008Wilkins tagged me. It's all his fault.
This is supposed to be a historical meme…why bother me with this? I think it's because philosophers have a professional obligation to annoy people with weird questions, and Wilkins takes personal pleasure in poking me now and then, the brute. Here's what I'm supposed to do.
Link to the person who tagged you.
List 7 random/weird things about your favorite historical figure.
Tag seven more people at the end of your blog and link to theirs.
Let the person know they have been tagged by leaving a note on their blog.
Favorite historical figure?? I don't…
grrlscientist | February 24, 2008tags: damselfly, odonota, subway art, AMNH, NYC, NYCLife
I think this is a Damselfly (but which species?)
as portrayed in tiles on the stairway up to the ground level of the NYC subway stop (A-B-C)
at 81st and Central Park West. (ISO, no zoom, no flash).
Image: GrrlScientist 2008.. [wallpaper size].
Read more about the AMNH tile artworks and see the AMNH tile artworks photographic archives -- with all the animals identified.
pharyngula | February 23, 2008It seems to be all over the place, with both the Discovery Institute and the various overtly (as opposed to the DI's stealthy) religious creationists. It's the one message they are all pounding out consistently.
It, of course, is the argumentum ad consequentiam, the Great Godwinization of the debate, the constant claim that Charles Darwin was the evil monster responsible for the Holocaust, all modern racism and oppression, anti-semitism, whites-only seating on buses, slavery, eugenics, abortion, man-on-pig sex, gun control, job discrimination, illegal aliens, feminism, the birth control pill…
gregladen | February 23, 2008PZ Myers notes that Ken Miller is making a case for the term design in evolutionary biology. Miller simply claims that "design" comes from the usual, expected evolutionary processes (Natural Selection, etc.). PZ is not buying this bill of goods, and neither am I. One way to address this question might be to ask: "What would Darwin do?"
Darwin uses the word quite often in The Voyage (a text I'm closely examining these days) but with only one exception that I found (my search was not perfect) this is typically in connection with cultural things .... the design of a road, for instance. One…
grrlscientist | February 21, 2008tags: insect, wasp, photography, subway art, AMNH, NYC, NYCLife
I think this is an Ichneumon wasp species (but which one?)
as portrayed in tiles on the walls of the NYC uptown subway stop (A-B-C)
at 81st and Central Park West. (ISO, no zoom, no flash).
Image: GrrlScientist 2008. [wallpaper size].
Read more about the AMNH tile artworks and see the AMNH tile artworks photographic archives -- with all the animals identified.
evolvingthoughts | February 20, 2008
In a recent paper on biological nomenclature in Zoologica Scripta, Michel Laurin makes the following comment about the stability of Linnean ranks:
However, taxa of the rank of family, genus or species are not more stable. ...
This sad situation should not surprise us because the ranks, on which the traditional (RN) codes are based, are purely artificial. As Ereshefsky (2002: 309) stated, ‘they are ontologically empty designations’. Ranks were initially thought to be objective because, for Linnaeus, each rank reflected the plan of the Creator and could be recognized on the basis of…
gregladen | February 20, 2008This is the February 20, 2008 edition of The Tangled Bank web carnival. The next edition will be hosted at Archaeoporn.
Behavioral Ecology Blog
Thinking like an economist (about Parent-Offspring Conflict)
Published in 1974, this paper is arguably Bob Trivers 2nd most influential paper behind the paper describing reciprocal altruism... Because very few people read long blog posts, and the idea is to introduce these ideas to people that might not already be familiar, I'l go ahead and list the main points/finding, and then go into some brief discussion about ...
PodBlack Blog
She's Already…
gregladen | February 20, 2008Everyone knows about Darwin's Finches, of the Galapagos Islands. But of course, Darwin made observations of birds throughout his travels on The Beagle. Here, I present a number of passages from The Voyage that include some of these observations.
Struthio Rhea
I will now give an account of ... the Struthio Rhea, or South American ostrich. This bird is well known to abound over the plains of Northern Patagonia, and the united provinces of La Plata. It has not crossed the Cordillera; but I have seen it within the first range of mountains on the Uspallata plain.... The ordinary habits of the…
clock | February 20, 2008Kevin Zelnio celebrates invertebrates on his blog The Other 95% and, at the second Science Blogging Conference four weeks ago, it was announced that he has joined the Deep Sea News blog and thus officially became a SciBling (with all the associated hazing rituals involving beer).
Welcome to A Blog Around The Clock. Would you, please, tell my readers a little bit more about yourself? Who are you? What is your scientific background? What is your Real Life job?
I'm a PhD student at Penn State hopefully in my final year. My scientific training is in invertebrate zoology and marine ecology. I…
clock | February 19, 2008There are 50 new articles in PLoS ONE this week - here are some of my picks for you to check out (and post comments, ratings, etc.):
Clocking the Lyme Spirochete:
In order to clear the body of infecting spirochetes, phagocytic cells must be able to get hold of them. In real-time phase-contrast videomicroscopy we were able to measure the speed of Borrelia burgdorferi (Bb), the Lyme spirochete, moving back and forth across a platelet to which it was tethered. Its mean crossing speed was 1,636 µm/min (N = 28), maximum, 2800 µm/min (N = 3). This is the fastest speed recorded for a spirochete,…
grrlscientist | February 19, 2008tags: snake, reptiles, photography, subway art, AMNH, NYC, NYCLife
Unknown (to me) species of snake
as portrayed in tiles on the walls of the NYC uptown subway stop (A-B-C)
at 81st and Central Park West. (ISO, no zoom, no flash).
Image: GrrlScientist 2008. [wallpaper size].
Does anyone have any idea as to what is that weird appendage is that is hanging off the snake's tail?
Read more about the AMNH tile artworks and see the AMNH tile artworks photographic archives -- with all the animals identified.
tetrapodzoology | February 19, 2008
Yet again I am going to have to go quiet-ish on Tet Zoo for a little while as I just cannot put the time into completing the many planned articles. Sigh. One thing approaching on the near horizon is eating up lots of my research time: the third Big Cats in Britain conference, happening in early March, and at which I'm speaking. I'll post details on it over the next few days. For now, I thought I'd enthuse a bit about lizards: like (I'm sure) everyone in the UK interested in zoology, I am watching David Attenborough's Life in Cold Blood series at the moment, and last night's episode (number 3…
laelaps | February 18, 2008
Over the last several hundred years, humans in North America have unwittingly selected the species that are going to be coexisting with humanity in the future. Rare native flora and fauna have disappeared, but some organisms have flourished in the modified landscape. White-tailed deer, coyotes, black bear, cowbirds, and other familiar (if somewhat "plain") animals are just a few of the native species that have adapted and even benefited from the presence of people while other species have been driven into extinction.
Some researchers like Paul S. Martin, however, argue that we are living in…
evolvingthoughts | February 18, 2008
Back when Darwin was a student at Cambridge, he read, and almost memorised the Rev William Paley's Natural Theology, and thereafter remained impressed by the obvious adaptiveness of the parts of organisms and their interrelations. As is well known, he gave an explanation differently to Paley's external intelligence that designs all these facets of life - instead he claimed that natural selection, a process like Adam Smith's "hidden hand" explanation for the functioning of economies, was enough to explain adaptation.
I have long thought that Darwin was too much in thrall to the traditions…