evolution
pharyngula | September 25, 2006
Here's a small taste of Roald Dahl's Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, a sweet story about a poor boy and his visit to an amazing candy factory…you've probably heard of it, since the new movie is getting a lot of press.
Only once a year, on his birthday, did Charlie Bucket ever get to taste a bit of chocolate. The whole family saved up their money for that special occasion, and when the great day arrived, Charlie was always presented with one small chocolate bar to eat all by himself. And each time he received it, on those marvelous birthday mornings, he would place it carefully in a small…
pharyngula | September 25, 2006
Hox genes are metazoan pattern forming genes—genes that are universally associated with defining the identities of regions of the body. There are multiple Hox genes present, and one of their unusual properties is that they are clustered and expressed colinearly. That is, they are found in ordered groups on the chromosome, and that the gene on one end is typically turned on first and expressed at the head end of the embryo, the next gene in order is turned on slightly later and expressed further back, and so on in sequence. That the tidy sequential order on the chromosome is associated with…
mikethemadbiologist | September 24, 2006I stumbled across this site by People for the American Way designed to help citizens keep creationism out of the science classroom. The evolution FAQ is pretty good too.
http://www.pfaw.org/pfaw/general/default.aspx?oid=22398
evolvingthoughts | September 22, 2006
We may believe in some doctrine of evolution or some idea of progress and we may use this in our interpretation of the history of centuries; but what our history contributes is not evolution but rather the realization of how crooked and perverse the ways of progress are, with what wilfulness and waste it twists and turns, and takes anything but the straight track to its goal, and how often it seems to go astray, and to be deflected by any conjecture, to return to us - if it does returns - by a back door. [Herbert Butterfield, The Whig Interpretation of History, Penguin, 1973 (1931), 24…
loom | September 22, 2006Last week I caught some of the talks at this year's Dwight H. Terry Lecture at Yale. The lectures are in their hundredth year, and this time around the topic was "The Religion and Science Debate: Why Does It Continue?" The speakers include Ken MIller, talking about his experience at the Dover intelligent design trial, and Ronald Numbers of the University of Wisconsin, the leading historian of the anti-evolution movement in the U.S. (I'll be writing an introduction to the volume that comes out of the lectures.)
If you're interested, you can watch videos of the lectures now, here.
evolvingthoughts | September 21, 2006The Epoch Times is reporting the appearance of a snake with hindlegs in Shandong, China. Such reappearances of long-lost traits are called "atavisms", and in this case it appears this specimen has silenced genes that cause limb buds to stop growing and be resorbed. Quite a number of snakes form hind limb buds but lose them as they develop, while pythons retain spurs into adulthood and use them for mating.
What's interesting about this is not that atavisms exist from time to time, because we know now a lot more about the developmental triggering on genes and the conservation of genes across…
mikethemadbiologist | September 21, 2006Ed Brayton describes the support of intelligent design creationism by the Republican candidate for governor of Michigan. Says the hopeful candidate:
I would like to see the ideas of intelligent design -- that many scientists are now suggesting is a very viable alternative theory -- that that theory and others that would be considered credible would expose our students to more ideas, not less.
If by "credible", he means utterly unsubstantiated and without a single testable hypothesis, then, yes, intelligent design creationism is "credible."
Moron.
jlynch | September 21, 2006
A number of my SciBlings has already covered the discover of the three-year old Australopithecus afarensis skeleton that has been dubbed "Little Lucy" (see, for example, PZ's post). I'm just going to point out the the specimen was discovered and described by individuals associated with Arizona State University's Institute of Human Origins, in particular Bill Kimbel with whom I have in the past worked with on temporal bone variation. Great stuff!
pharyngula | September 21, 2006First I reported that Palaeos was lost, and then that it might be found, but now it looks like we can safely say it is being reborn. The old version of Palaeos has been at least partially restored, but the really important news is that a Palaeos wiki has been set up and people are working on reassembling old content and creating new information in a much more flexible format. If you've got some phylogenetic or palaeontological expertise, you might want to consider joining the Palaeos team and helping out with this big project.
evolgen | September 21, 2006Tara has been given the task of pointing out some of the flaws in Chapter 7 of Jonathan Wells's The Politically Incorrect Guide to Darwinism and Intelligent Design. From what I can gather, this is the chapter in which Wells claims that biology does not need evolution because evolution has no applications in medicine or agriculture. In doing so, Wells reveals he does not understand the difference between natural and artificial selection:
The clinical use of antibiotics creates a highly artificial situation. Antibiotic-producing microbes must be isolated from their natural surroundings and…
clock | September 20, 2006Bird Moms Manipulate Birth Order To Protect Sons:
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Since 2002, Badyaev, Oh and their colleagues have been intensively documenting the lives of a population of house finches (Carpodacus mexicanus) on the UA campus.
Throughout the year, the researchers capture birds several times a week to band and measure them and to take DNA and hormone samples. During the breeding season, the researchers locate the nests, keep track of activity in the nest, follow nestling growth and development, and take DNA samples from the chicks.
The researchers have also been…
pharyngula | September 20, 2006Say hello to Selam, or DIK-1-1, a new and very well preserved member of the family discovered in Dikika, Ethiopia. She belongs to the species Australopithicus afarensis and is being called Lucy's little sister.
She was only a toddler when she died about 3.3 million years ago, and from the teeth the authors estimate that she was about 3 years old. Most of the skeleton is intact, but doesn't seem to have yet been fully extracted from the matrix.
Some of the surprises: the hyoid bone is chimpanzee-like, and implies chimp-like vocalization abilities. She had a long way to go before she could…
jrosenhouse | September 20, 2006The Washington Post reports the latest fossil hominid discovered in Africa:
Fossil hunters have unearthed the fossil skeleton of a baby who died 3.3 million years ago, marking the first time scientists have discovered the nearly complete remains of a child of an ancient human ancestor.
The child, a girl who was about 3-years-old when she perished in what may have been a flash flood, provides an unprecedented window into human evolution, in part because she belongs to the same species as “Lucy,” one of the most famous hominid specimens in paleontology, experts said.
Here's another…
evolgen | September 20, 2006If you enjoyed my post on the evolution of sex chromosomes in tetrapods, you should check out Darwin Central for even more. It starts with the story of the vole, and goes into how mammalian sex chromosomes have evolved and what we can expect in the future.
evolgen | September 20, 2006Over a year and half ago (~1 eon in internet time) I wrote this blog entry in which I turned around the title of Dobzhansky's famous essay "Nothing in Biology Makes Sense Except in the Light of Evolution". I didn't think I was being all that clever when I came up with the following:
NOTHING IN EVOLUTION MAKES SENSE EXCEPT IN THE LIGHT OF GENETICS
I pointed out that evolution requires heritable variation first and foremost, hence genetics lies at the center of all of evolution. I then took the opportunity to explain why Hardy and Weinberg's derivation that random mating does not change allele…
jrosenhouse | September 19, 2006Lee Alan Dugatkin's new book The Altruism Equation: Seven Scientists Search for the Origins of Goodness was sitting on my doorstep a few days ago (too big to fit in the mailbox). Dugatkin is a biologist at the University of Louisville. That evening I sat down to read the first chapter, and ended up polishing off half the book. It's quite an engaging read.
Dugatkin recounts the history of various attempts to solve the problem of altruism in evolutionary biology. In this context “altruism” should be viewed as a technical term referring to behavior that benefits others but incurs some…
stcynic | September 19, 2006Wired has a report on the attempt by Kenyan Pentecostals to get an exhibit of hominid fossils removed from the national museum there. It contains this idiotic quote:
"We are objecting to the message that the fossil exhibits represent the scientific evidence of human evolution," said Bishop Boniface Adoyo, chairman of the Evangelical Alliance of Kenya, which claims to represents churches of 35 denominations with 9 million members. "They do not. Human evolution is still a theory and this cannot be called as evidence."
I swear, every time I hear that "still a theory" crap I want to strangle a…
mikethemadbiologist | September 18, 2006Over at Viva la Evolucion!, there's a new edition of Animalcules, the Carnival o'the Wee Beasties. I have a post there. There's also a really good post about Vibrio cholerae--the critter that causes cholera.
cmooney | September 18, 2006Back in May, fellow birthday boy Matt Nisbet and I gave a two-pronged keynote address to the annual meeting of the American Institute of Biological Sciences. The subject: How to communicate about science, particularly in politically fraught areas. I pretty much winged it, though I hope I provided some insights--and then Matt provided real data on this question. You can watch the whole thing here, complete with slide shows, transcripts, and audio. Feedback appreciated. I really think that Matt and I should take this show on the road....
P.S.: Note to Randy Olson, there's a shameless plug for…
cmooney | September 18, 2006Well, I've read through the Discovery Institute critique of my work (PDF). I am not impressed. Neither is Carl Zimmer, who has experience with this sort of thing. PZ, meanwhile, has a good refutation of Casey Luskin's attack on my credentials.
[To tell you the truth, PZ, Luskin's criticism is actually even weaker than you say, because if we were act like good Kantians and generalize it it into a universal law, that would mean that journalism in this country would cease to exist, save in the few cases where journalists happen to have advanced degrees in the subjects they're reporting on. In…