Arriving with the commendable and clocklike regularity of Grendel attacking Hrothgar’s meadhall, the Carnival of Evolution returns for another month, this time hosted by Quintessence of Dust. Check it out for a month’s worth of online writing about all things evolutionary, all in once nice, tidy post.
Correction, 11:25h: I’ve just been informed that the fish in the photograph below are not swordtails, but guppies. Burned again by Flickr taxonomy! The real Darwin would’ve got it right, I’m sure.
The Carnival of Evolution is a monthly collection of online writing about evolutionary biology and its cultural and political implications, hosted by a different blogger every month. Today, Denim and Tweed hosts CoE for the first time. Since Charles Darwin’s birthday is this month (only 12 shopping days left!), I thought it might be appropriate to imagine what Darwin himself might have to say about this month’s posts. Share and enjoy!
I was grateful for your very kind wishes; and for the book about the Anoles of the West Indes, which I expect I shall read with much enjoyment. The merest thought of an approaching 202nd birthday makes me feel the need for another trip to Malvern; but I do find some relief in my reading, of which I must needs do more every day it seems, only to keep abreast of the latest work. My great-grandson presented me last month with an i-Pad, a charming device; I can now consult the “web-logs” in the garden, when it is pleasant.
And there is such a lot of reading to do! It seems I read constantly about work extending the ideas I first proposed more than 150 years ago; it is gratifying, and rather humbling, to see what has grown from my little “abstract.” And dear old Wallace’s, of course. (Have you heard from Wallace recently? The last I knew of him, he was departing on that expedition with Greenpeace; but that was more than a year ago.)
I was also charmed to discover that butterflies of the species Eurybia lycisca, have evolved elaborately long tongues, long enough to take nectar without pollinizing; an unfortunate development for the flowers they visit! And I have recently seen a delightful study of the leaping of Blenniid fishes, supported by many moving pictures; and the very interesting findings of separated forms of the Clouded Leopard in Borneo and Sumatra.
(Here is a charming moving picture of the Clouded Leopard. What a blessing You-Tube is for the stay-at-home naturalist!)
Still more interesting to me is discovering the ways in which I was mistaken (embarrassing as they often are) and facts I was unable to percieve at the time of first writing. For instance, this extensive essay about Mosaic Evolution, or what I might call the Independent Modification of Parts; which evidently has its roots in Lamarckism. We may have been too harsh on the good Chevalier. Equally as interesting is this disquisition upon conditions in which Natural Selection may not lead to modification of descendants. Of course a lack of adaptation might be just as informative as the process of adaptative modification itself!
Of course the experiments of Gregor Mendel were an important improvement to what little understanding I mustered in The Origin; some suggest that now that Mendel’s thinking is over-simple, but it retains much power I feel. The study of living species is so very complicated! We must keep watch not only upon D.N.A. but the myriad complications of its translation to form the structures of the body, and even the duplication of genic code to originate new structures. The greater understanding we have gained since I first concieved of Natural Selection promises to continue improving the condition of humanity; I read, for example, that we may manipulate adaptations lengthen life at a cost to fecundity in order to breed more productive crops.
A pair of sword-tails guppies. Photo by Alice Chaos.
I have read recently also of several challenges to my original thoughts on Selection in Relation to Sex; experimentation has found, for example that the sexual ornaments of Xiphophorus sword-tailed fishes, do not hamper the males’ abilities to escape danger, which suggests they carry no great cost.
And of course it seems that there have always been persons who object to the idea that we might share kinship with apes and even sessile cirripedes; but fortuitously they seem not to have come up with any particularly novel arguments since 1859. And we may even use Natural Selection to explain the religions that deny the common descent; I suspect that social influences are greatly to blame.
With learned discussion so abundant and easy to find, it is truly a wonder that ignorance and misinformation persist; if only more people did their researches with proper care!
Yours very sincerely,
Thanks to everyone who contributed to this month’s Carnival! Want to submit posts for next month? Go to the BlogCarnivals form, or check out the list of past and future hosts at the carnival index page. Just as importantly, the Carnival needs hosts starting next month! If you’d like to host the Carnival, CoE overlord Bjørn Østman wants you to e-mail him right now.
The 32nd edition of the Carnival of Evolution will be hosted right here at Denim and Tweed on the first of February! So you have until midnight, 31 January to send me your posts about evolution and all the grandeur in the evolutionary view of life. Use the CoE blog carnival form, or e-mail links to denimandtweed AT gmail DOT com.
The 32nd edition of the Carnival of Evolution will be hosted right here at Denim and Tweed on the first of February! So you have until midnight, 31 January to submit your posts about evolutionary biology and all its myriad cultural, political, and historical ramifications on the CoE blog carnival form, or e-mail links to denimandtweed AT gmail DOT com.
Check’em out, and tune in next month, when CoE number 32 will be hosted … right here! Submit your posts about evolutionary biology and all its myriad cultural and historical ramifications on the CoE blog carnival form, or e-mail links to denimandtweed AT gmail DOT com.
Or maybe it should be Carnival of Evolution XXX? Anyway, it’s online at This Scientific Life, and full of good posts from all over the evolution-inclined science blogosphere. Go check it out!
The 20th edition of the Carnival of Evolution is now online at Byte Size Biology—where the compilation of evolution-themed online writing is given a sporting spin. Check it out!