Ho-hum. Photo by v1ctory_1s_m1ne.

A week from today, I defend my dissertation. Fortunately, Eric Michael Johnson pointed out to me that the most worrisome possible question has been answered. So I’m all set!

• Historical perspective with your marine biology. In which a coral is unceremoniously plucked from the ocean floor after 2,000 years of not-quite undisturbed growth.
• Movin’ north. Predicting how individual species will respond to climate change is often tricky, but the broad trends are crystal clear.
• With our powers combined … Photosynthetic algae plus salamander eggs equals solar-powered salamander eggs.
• Cretaceous cooties. A new phylogenetic analysis suggests that the common ancestor of all modern lice made its living irritating feathered dinosaurs.
• I’m not bored—I’m empathizing! Chimpanzees are more likely to yawn in response to another chimp’s yawn if the other chimp is a member of their own social group.
• Hypothesis testing fail. Do ovulating women buy sexier clothes to be more attractive while they’re most fertile, or because they’ve been objectified by evolutionary psychologists?
• Clean up your act! People seem to cope with disordered environments by relying more upon stereotypes.
• I’m shocked, shocked that this story was misreported! The recently uncovered remains of a “gay caveman” were probably neither gay, nor a caveman.

Wristwatches have a surprisingly deadly history. Photo by wjhall31.

• In which a new technology loses its shine. World War I helped create a fashion for wristwatches with radioactive glow-in-the-dark faces—a fashion that turned deadly.
• Not gay, just confused. Really. Male mice with low serotonin are sexually interested in both males and females, but this is could be because lack of serotonin makes them less sensitive to smell.
• Wow. A 1987 outbreak of radiation poisoning in central Brazil didn’t actually start with an egg sandwich, but the sandwich is when folks started to notice.
• Just as nuclear power is starting to look extra scary. A new “artificial leaf” uses sunlight to efficiently generate hydrogen from water.
• Useless and potentially harmful. Not only does human chorionic gonadotropin not help with weight loss as popularly thought, it can also transmit mad-cow disease.
• Perfect for reading while in queue. Why do airline passengers jostle for quicker access to reserved seats? Maybe because waiting is territorial.
• No one is an island, but we might all be lakes. Advances in understanding the immense diversity of microbes every human being carries around may make medicine more like ecology.

After a long stretch of linkfests bereft of moving pictures, here’s video of a wasp deliberately removing ants from its food. Via Ed Yong, who provides more explanation based on the journal article from which this comes.

Rawr! Photo by pasma.

Wink wink, nudge nudge, Facebook. Say no more.

• You can’t cuddle a wind turbine. Everybody’s worried about the birds killed by wind turbines, but domestic cats kill more than 1,000 times more.
• Evolved in response to complaints from the downstairs neighbors. Giant (well, 26-pound) rabbits that lived on Minorca three to five millions years ago probably didn’t hop.
• File under: more evidence in support of common sense. Regular testing for HIV doesn’t just help prevent transmission—it can also improve health outcomes if infection does occur.
• Best opening anecdote ever? Those penis spines we heard so much about recently might not have the function folks think they do.
• Speak up! When windy conditions make social signalling by head-bobbing less obvious, anoles modify their communication method.
• Ironically, Stephen Jay Gould changed his mind gradually. When, if ever, do prominent biologists admit they’re wrong?
• Hint: read the comments on this one. Months after the “arsenic life” paper was roundly criticized in online fora, its authors respond in print.
• In case you missed it. Jesse Bering and Gordon Gallup respond to criticism, and do not improve their case. P.Z. concurred, and hectocotyli found still other faults.

The weather was lousy, but the coffee was excellent. Photo by andrewyang.

I spent most of my final spring break as a graduate student in Portland, Oregon, where I am not sure I saw direct sunlight even once. Who wants to get a tan over spring break, anyway? Regular posting resumes when I’m back in Moscow next week. If you “like” D&T on Facebook, you’ll get an alert about that right in your News Feed (TM). That’s a good thing, right?

• Not sure this’ll be practical in Portland. Solar power systems became both cheaper and more efficient in the last twenty years, and they’re likely to keep doing so.
• Not helping. If you’re HIV positive in Missouri, you can be prosecuted for “recklessly” transmitting HIV when you do things that don’t actually transmit HIV.
• Get out your “jump to conclusions” mats. Antidepressants seem to cause increased weight gain in lab rats—but that doesn’t mean they’ve caused the obesity epidemic.
• Take two mind games and call me in the morning. Even if you tell a patient the truth, prescribing a placebo can be ethically complicated.
• Sperm aren’t that tough to kill. A contraceptive pill for men is probably about five years away. In fact, it’s been about five years away for decades.
• Blood and rhetoric. The first attempts at blood transfusion were greeted with controversy that prefigured our modern debates over stem cells and genetic engineering.
• No blarney. Krystal D’Costa recounts how the Irish first came to the Caribbean as slaves.
• In case you missed it. Jon Wilkins bounces off the “adaptive homophobia” kerfuffle to explain more broadly why plausibility is not enough to test adaptive hypotheses. In related news, I got Phrayngulated.

Bat in flight. Photo by tarotastic.

Blah blah blah, Facebook, blah blah blah.

• When life gives you parasites … Ancient ammonoids—forerunners of modern squid and nautiluses, dealt with parasites by encasing them in pearl.
• Evolutionary baby pictures. Bats’ evolution from flightless ancestors, illustrated.
• Note to my students: no human testing planned yet. Enhancing the levels of a particular enzyme in rats’ brains helps them retain memories.
• Discredited more than a century ago, but you get to use a “cephalometer of Anthelme.” Want to make a living reading people’s personalities by the bumps on their head? Maybe phrenology is for you.
• Using foremost legs as antennae, even. Spider mimics ant surprisingly well.
• Sensory metaphor hijinks. People are more likely to identify an ambiguously-gendered face as female when touching something soft.
• Glass ceilings are durable. Active discrimination may not be preventing women from advancing in the sciences, but institutional biases sure are.
• Don’t panic. Panic Virus author Seth Mnookin understands the parental worries underlying vaccine denialism, but he still thinks it’s a problem.
• In case you missed it. Jesse Bering thinks homophobia might be adaptive. He’s wrong.

And now, after a string of weeks without video in my Friday roundup, I give you a slow loris with a tiny umbrella.

Waiting for the next one to drop? Photo by KhayaL.

What? You still haven’t told Facebook you like Denim and Tweed? But then how else will it know to send you ads for, um, obligate pollination mutualism?

• Gotta start somewhere. The simplest possible biological eye—and the starting point for the evolution of more complex models—may have been found in brachiopod larvae.
• Look out below! In Palmyra Atoll National Wildlife Refuge, introduced coconut palms are literally bombing the natives into extinction.
• In case you missed it. The Carnival of Evolution is out at Genome Engineering.
• Herpetologist porn. Anolis osa has just been differentiated from Anolis polylepis based on what a leading Anole scholar calls their “man parts.”
• Big cats, but no longer the top dogs. With population declines of more than 90 percent since 1960, lions are in danger of extinction in the wild.
• But wait, there’s more. It’s not looking so great for every other known species, either.

Yeah, I’d domesticate these guys before wolves. Photo by law_kevin.

Let’s just take my passive-aggressive hint to like Denim and Tweed on Facebook as read this week, shall we?

• Science blogging gets interdisciplinary. Scicurious and Kate Clancey evaluate the neurology and endocrinology behind a study of pre-menustrual dysphoric disorder.
• Belyaev’s domesticated foxes are back, with minks and rats. The “domestication syndrome” of animals selected to live with people may have the same genetic origins in many mammal species.
• They are mighty cuddly. A new archaeological find suggests that there was at least one pet fox in a Pleistocene human settlement.
• Only one possible name for that illusion. With the right visual cues and some careful tactile stimulus, it’s possible to convince people they have a third hand.
• Fresh country air has lots of germs. Children raised in the diverse bacterial communities found on farms are less likely to develop asthma.
• It’s a tricky bugger. Curing HIV isn’t going to be easy, but there are some new lines of attack that look promising.
• In case you missed it. I wrote a guest post for Scientific American!