Giant, fluorescent pink slugs found near Narrabri. There’s a reason I have a “strange creatures” category of posts. This isn’t the only hot pink creature around, either. In 2008, a hot pink millipede was named # 3 in the Top 10 New Species of 2007: So, before you say you won’t eat something…
Category: In the News
Journal Club: Scarlet macaw genome sequenced | Maniraptora
Journal Club: Scarlet macaw genome sequenced | Maniraptora. One of the questions we spend a chapter discussing is what makes a species unique. We talk about DNA and speciation and chromosome copies. This research is interesting from an evolutionary perspective, because it shows how the scarlet macaw is different from a chicken: how…
Sex & HOX genes: learning about basic reproduction
Mosses Make Two Different Plants From the Same Genome, and a Single Gene Can Make the Difference | The Artful Amoeba, Scientific American Blog Network. This article is pretty amazing and is VERY well-written. I just posted one about fish and asked why they couldn’t just asexually reproduce. Well, this kind of starts pointing you…
Desperately Seeking Cichlid: Fish Species Down to Last 3 Males, No Known Females | Extinction Countdown, Scientific American Blog Network
Desperately Seeking Cichlid: Fish Species Down to Last 3 Males, No Known Females | Extinction Countdown, Scientific American Blog Network. We talk about cichlids a surprising amount in my class. They’re found all over the world, and while many species exist, many have also gone extinct. Are we about to add another to…
The Optics of Blue Monkey Butts
The Optics of Blue Monkey Butts.
‘Living fossil’ genome unlocked : Nature News & Comment
‘Living fossil’ genome unlocked : Nature News & Comment. This is one of the most famous creatures to have ever gone extinct and then be UN-extinct. And we’ve finally got genetics! 🙂
Tracking whole colonies shows ants make career moves : Nature News & Comment
Tracking whole colonies shows ants make career moves : Nature News & Comment. One of the things we discuss in class is social living, particularly among social insects. For this to work, individuals must give up independent reproductive success–one of the key components to evolutionary fitness. Occasionally, even individual foraging for food…
Natural-Born Cheaters: A Look at Double-Dealing Animals [Slide Show]: Scientific American Slideshows
Natural-Born Cheaters: A Look at Double-Dealing Animals [Slide Show]: Scientific American Slideshows. This is cool from a behavioral perspective. BONUS: we talk about DICTYOSTELIUM slime mold in class!
Can Evolution Beat Climate Change?: Scientific American
Can Evolution Beat Climate Change? This particular article should be interesting to my students because we talk about a lot of this in class. Not specifically about sea urchins, true, but about the topics that tie into this. One of the things that we discuss in class is the idea of latent…