I’ve already tweeted about this last night, as soon as I got the e-mail—but Jennifer Ouellette has just made it official with the complete list of science blog posts chosen for Open Lab 2011. And among them is my long discussion of natural selection and homosexuality. It’ll be great to see that piece in actual dead-tree print. It’ll be even better to see it alongside top-notch writing from such a long list of folks whose work I admire. ◼
Category Archives: science
Nothing in Biology Makes Sense: Tracing the evolutionary history of HIV infection
The molecular structure of HIV. Photo by PHYLOMON!.In the latest post at the group blog Nothing in Biology Makes Sense!, contributor Luke Swenson describes how biologists can reconstruct the evolutionary history of HIV to estimate when the virus make the jump from chimps to humans, or even when a single patient became infected.
Although HIV evolves rapidly, it does so at a fairly constant rate. In essense, you can use this constant rate to act like a clock to tell you roughly how many changes accumulate over a year. Then, by figuring out the number of changes it would take for both sequences to converge on a single identical sequence (their most recent common ancestor, “MRCA”), you can get an estimate of the date that the MRCA existed at.
This is one of the best cases I know about in which evolution directly informs medical practice and treatment, and it’s well worth reading the whole thing. ◼
Diversity in Science Carnival No. 11: Native American Heritage Month edition
There’s a new edition of the Diversity in Science blog carnival out today, too: Urban Scientist DNLee rounds up stories of Native Americans in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics disciplines for Native American Heritage Month. It includes meditations on the value of cultural diversity in science, celebrations of individual scientists, and discussion of scientific insights from Native cultures that we’re still just beginning to recognize. ◼
Carnival of Evolution, December 2011: A very special carnival of evolution
Forty-two. Photo by Valerian Gaudeau.The new Carnival of Evolution, freshly posted over at the Ocelloid, is the forty-second iteration of the monthly roundup of online writing about evolution, the universe, and everything. Well, maybe not everything.
Highlights include, but are not limited to, Larry Moran illustrating the difference between census population size and effective population size, Hannah Waters on the evolutionary context of grieving, and Jenna Gallie’s description of her own research on rapid adaptive evolution by E. coli. There are also multiple contributions from Nothing in Biology Makes Sense!, in case you haven’t already seen them. Go read the whole thing, and don’t forget your towel. ◼
Science online, gesturing ravens edition
Raven in flight. Photo by ingridtaylar.- In mice! Gene therapy has proven effective at preventing HIV infection.
- Still no opposable thumbs, thank heavens. Ravens gesture to other ravens with their beaks.
- Awww. The embryonic development of anoles, imaged.
- Eight-month-old infants understand justifiable meanness.
- A gene “for” many things, or nothing? Mutations to a single gene may cause many different malformations.
- But only until the flavor runs out. Chewing gum helps you concentrate.
- Romans weren’t so careful about “leave no trace.” European plant communities still show the effects of ancient Roman settlements.
- I mean, seriously. Gender-specific science kits are not a good way to get girls into science, and not really helpful for boys, either.
And lastly, here’s video of a starfish-inspired “boneless” robot in action. Good luck getting to sleep tonight!
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Pitcher plant ants keep their host clean
Via Scott Chamberlain: A species of ants that lives in and around carnivorous pitcher plants isn’t entirely freeloading. They also clean the walls of the plant’s pitfall trap, keeping it nice and slippery for insect-trapping.
Of course, the ants have a vested interest in keeping the trap effective, since they eat some portion of the critters caught by their host. But it seems pretty straightforward to think that this helps the pitcher plant, too. A more definitive test would be to compare the survival and seed production of pitcher plants grown with and without a colony of ants to keep them clean. ◼
Nothing in Biology Makes Sense: Sexual selection and the lek paradox
A peacock, which made Darwin “sick.” Photo by aussiegal.This week at the collaborative blog Nothing in Biology Makes Sense!, guest contributor Tom Houslay makes sense of costly mating displays:
Time and again in the animal kingdom, we see exaggerated ornaments, vibrant colours, and fantastic acoustic and visual displays. Frogs and crickets advertise their whereabouts with loud calls, fireflies flash patterns with bioluminescence; greater sage grouse strut brazenly in open pastures. While they undoubtedly brighten up the world around us, these behaviours and morphologies can seem not only unnecessary, but downright detrimental to the survival of an individual. How, then, can their existence be resolved with our knowledge of evolution?
To find out how a single showy trait can come to “capture” all the genetic variation in a population, read the whole thing. On an almost totally unrelated note: if I ever open a gay bar, it will definitely be called Lek. ◼
Science online, pepper sprayed turkey edition
Happy Thanksgiving, U.S. readers. Photo by Bemzilla.- This week at Nothing in Biology Makes Sense! Fruit flies prefer mates with the same gut bacteria.
- Worst pets ever? An online ant supplier provides invasive pests.
- Powers combined. The fungus killing frogs worldwide may have originated as a hybrid between non-lethal species.
- The developmental regulatory systems that determine biological sex before birth don’t stop after birth.
- Planning ahead. The U.S. Defense Department’s research arm is thinking about life after antibiotics.
- Hell, yes. Should pepper spray be subjected to clinical trial?
- Maybe. Can a genetic marker predict your impulsivity?
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Nothing in biology makes sense: Gut microbes and mate preference
Will this male fruit fly pick a mate based on what she ate? Photo by Max xx.This week at Nothing in Biology Makes Sense!, Sarah Hird tackles a series of studies suggesting that fruit flies may pick mates reared on similar diets because their gut microbes make them do it.
In 1989, Diane Dodd reared fruit flies (Drosophila pseudoobscura) from a common stock on two different food sources: starch and maltose. She found that after multiple generations of isolation on their separate substrates, starch-flies preferred to mate with starch-flies and maltose-flies preferred to mate with maltose-flies. The result was robust and repeatable, but the reason why and its mechanism were unknown.
To find out how the mechanism was discovered, go read the whole thing. ◼
Science online, sexist mosquitoes edition
Lab mouse. Photo by Rick Eh?.- What’s next, a Nature centerfold? Janet Stemwedel, Anne Jefferson, Christie Wilcox, the Lab Lemming, and Paul Anderson, among others, respond to Jurassic-era “humorous” sexism in the pages of Nature. Kate Clancy proposes occupying the Nature Publishing Group.
- This week at Nothing in Biology Makes Sense! Making sense of the latitudinal diversity gradient.
- Some folks’ bootstraps are shorter than others’. Academic life isn’t so easy when you don’t enter academia from the middle class.
- Diversity matters. The heavy use of standardized lab mice in biomedical research may have some undesireable consequences.
- And so ad infinitum. An amber-preserved spider has amber-preserved mites.
- Not just in the usual way, either. Mosquitoes engineered to fight malaria may suck.
- Power laws, and laws of power. What probability distributions can tell us about causes of income inequality.
- Backyard science! A plan for behavioral observations of birds at your bird feeder.
- Watch your glass, gals—and guys. “Date-rape” drugs may cause quite a lot of accidental deaths.
- Annals of unsurprising results. Scientific evidence (such as it is) suggests that religion doesn’t make you more moral.
- Less than you might think. The evidence that women in close regular proximity synchronize their menstrual cycles.
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