evolution
evolvingthoughts | March 19, 2007
It is, as JBS Haldane noted, a fact the whole world knows, which he called "Aunt Jobiska's Theorem" after Edward Lear's poem:
The Pobble who has no toes
Was placed in a friendly Bark,
And they rowed him back, and carried him up,
To his Aunt Jobiska's Park.
And she made him a feast at his earnest wish
Of eggs and buttercups fried with fish;--
And she said,-- 'It's a fact the whole world knows,
'That Pobbles are happier without their toes.'
What fact? Well, it doesn't matter. Any fact, that everyone knows, will do. Try this:
On the morning of November 24, 1859, Charles Darwin’s On the…
evolvingthoughts | March 19, 2007
Courtesy of Moselio Schechter's blog Small Things Considered, is a new report, downloadable in PDF, from the National Institutes of Health, together with the American Society for Microbiology, on research into bacteria, entitled Basic Research on Bacteria. The Essential Frontier.
The money quote?
“...research on topics like evolution and ecology has a direct impact on the advancement of human health.”
evolvingthoughts | March 19, 2007
Courtesy of the inimitable Jason Grossman, who passes such things along to me, comes this announcement from the even more inimitable John van Whye who is responsible for the Darwin online project:
Friends of Mr Darwin may be interested to learn that images of his diary or 'Journal' (DAR158) now join the online transcription (provided by the Correspondence Project). The transcription and new images can be seen here.
I am of course aghast that Dr van Whye failed to note that Darwin died with a doctorate honoris causa, and hence should be called Dr Darwin, even at the risk of confusing him…
jrosenhouse | March 19, 2007So far I haven't been participating in the anti-Egnor festivities. For those who don't know, Michael Egnor is a medical doctor who lately has become the flavor of the month over at the Discovery Institute's Blog. They get very excited, you see, when someone with actual credentials can be found to parrot their talking points. In Egnor's case he's harping the meme that doctors don't need to know anything about evolution.
Since I know next to nothing about medical practice I've been content to allow bloggers more qualified than I explain the numerous ways in which Egnor is confused. For a…
oracknows | March 19, 2007Two days ago, I posted a challenge to Dr. Egnor and clarified that challenge yesterday.
Thus far, there has been no answer.
I'm still waiting.
evolvingthoughts | March 19, 2007
Most historians of evolutionary biology have contended that Darwin did not believe that species were real. Instead, they claim, he believed species were arbitrarily delimited from each other, and the species was nothing more than a more distinct variety. Thus, according to Mayr, Darwin did not attempt to solve the problem of speciation because he did not and--because of his species concept, could not--appreciate that there was a problem to be solved. Since he did not consider the species a distinct natural unit, it was only natural that he did not see the need to explain how species multiply…
razib | March 19, 2007A few days ago I began a survey of Martin Nowak's treatment of modern game theory in his book Evolutionary Dynamics. Today I'm going to hit the Prisoner's Dilemma. Roughly, this scenario is one where two individuals are isolated, and if they both keep their mouths shut (cooperate) they get off, but, if one rats the other out while the other keeps silent, the silent partner is screwed while the snitch gets off. If both of them rat the other out they get a prison sentence, but a lighter one than if they had kept silent while the other ratted them out. In other words: ratting the other person…
evolgen | March 19, 2007In the comments of my dinosaur genome size post, Shelley asked:
So do ALL birds have equally small genomes or is there variation among species?
I don't think she was looking for a trite response along the lines of: "Of course there's variation among species." What she was asking, I presume, is how much variation in genome size do we see in birds? As you can see in this phylogeny, all birds (and nearly all theropods) have small genomes. But that tree only presents data from a few species.
To get a better idea of genome size variation within birds, I downloaded C-values (amount of DNA in a…
evolvingthoughts | March 18, 2007
I remember when we had 80,000 genes. I really do. Then along came the Human Genome Project and suddenly we had 30,000 genes, hardly more than your average mouse. Suddenly again, we now have a mere 18,000 genes (well 18,308, but I don't think that will stand for long). At this rate, we'll all have less genes than your average E. coli.
It's all devolution, right?
Late note: Larry Moran gives the history. It seems we are losing genes at a somewhat slower rate...
grrlscientist | March 18, 2007
The island clouded leopard, Neofelis diardi on the prowl.
Image: WWF.
According to genetic research, clouded leopards found on Sumatra and Borneo are a new species. Until now it had been thought they belonged to the same species that is found on mainland southeast Asia. But genetic data indicate that the two species diverged 1.4 million years ago, and have remained separate since.
"Genetic research results clearly indicate that the clouded leopards of Borneo should be considered a separate species," said Stephen O'Brien, head of the Institute's Laboratory of Genomic Diversity.
"DNA tests…
oracknows | March 18, 2007Yesterday, at the end of a post about the fallacious statements about evolution that Dr. Mike Egnor, a Professor of Neurosurgery, has been routinely serving up at the Discovery Institute, I made a challenge. I think I'll repeat it daily for a while until we see if he's up to answering it. It should be a very easy challenge for him to meet, given the number of times that he has made the two assertions that I plan to challenge him about.
Here are the two assertions that Dr. Egnor has made on more than one occasion, but most recently on Friday, and I'll quote him directly:
In fact, most research…
evolvingthoughts | March 17, 2007
The Cafeteria is Closed has a very nice little discussion of whether Nietzsche was properly the foundation of German nationalism and anti-Semitism, answering, with documentary support, no to each claim. Given the recent slurs on evolutionary theory as the foundation for Nazism and the holocaust, it's a good point to make.
But is Nietzsche even a "Darwinist" (a term only the Discovery Institute, or as we like to call it, DIsco, seems to use these days, as it has no real meaning)? He certainly accepted that evolution occurred, and he managed to avoid some of the sillier philosophical claims…
grrlscientist | March 17, 2007Over the course of the previous 20 years, Scottish Soay sheep have been studied on the island of Hirta in the Outer Hebrides. This study revealed that weather patterns were driving changes in body shape and population size. Harsh winters led to larger sheep, which brought about changes in population size, but these effects were not seen in milder winters.
"Until now, it has proven really quite difficult to show how ecology and evolutionary change are linked, but we have developed a way to tie them together," said Tim Coulson, an author of the Science paper and a scientist at Imperial College…
evolgen | March 17, 2007Genome size can be measured in a variety of ways. Classically, the haploid content of a genome was measured in picograms and represented as the C-value. People began to realize that the C-value was not correlated with any measures of organismal complexity and seemed to vary unpredictably between taxa. This was known as the C-value paradox, and it confused geneticists for quite a while. With an increased understanding of genome structure, however, came the resolution of the paradox: this measure of genome size does not correlate with gene content. The majority of many eukaryotic genomes…
oracknows | March 17, 2007Agh!
I say: Agh! Again.
Remember how it was just a mere three days ago that I administered some Respectful Insolence⢠to Dr. Michael Egnor, the Energizer Bunny of jaw-droppingly, appallingly ignorant anti-evolution posturing based on his apparently nonexistent understanding of what the theory of evolution actually says? Remember how I said how much I sincerely hoped that I could ignore him for a while? I really did mean it at the time.
Really, I did.
And then Afarensis and Mike Dunford had to and let me know that Dr. Egnor's at it yet again.
Dr. Egnor just won't stop, and as a fellow surgeon…
evolvingthoughts | March 17, 2007
Origins of life research, or etiobiology as I like to call it, is an odd discipline. It is rarely done under any direct funding, instead being done as a side effect of other, mostly molecular, biological research, especially since NASA shut down the bulk of its Astrobiology Program under massive budget cuts. A few researchers, however, make it a primary focus. One of these is the laboratory of Andrew Ellington, AKA "deaddog". Michael Robertson, a researcher in his lab at the University of California Santa Cruz has discovered the structure of enzymes that replicate RNA.
This is bigger than…
clock | March 16, 2007About a year ago, there was a great paper about polyphenism in moth caterpillars.
Now, in the new issue of Seed Magazine, PZ Myers uses that example to teach you all about it. Cool reading on one of my favourite topics (outside clocks, of course).
pharyngula | March 16, 2007
The latest Nature reveals a new primitive mammal fossil collected in the Mesozoic strata of the Yan mountains of China. It's small and unprepossessing, but it has at least two noteworthy novelties, and first among them is that it represents another step in the transition from the reptilian to the mammalian jaw and ear.
Here's the beautiful little beast; as you can see, it's very small, and we need to look very closely at some details of its morphology to see what's special about it.
(click for larger image)Main part of the holotype (Nanjing University-Paleontology NJU-P06001A). b, Skeletal…
evolvingthoughts | March 15, 2007
So, lots of people are talking about spirituality. What do I think it is, if anything? Below the fold.
I'm a naturalist. This means, in a philosophical context (i.e., neither a scientific nor a religious context) that I think that phenomena can be given a naturalised account. I think this also of spirituality.
I had something of an epiphany when reading Alfred Wallace's essays on Spirit. For those who do not know, Wallace had an argument that ran roughly thus:
1. All humans are roughly as intelligent and capable as each other (Wallace was a true racial egalitarian, even when Darwin…