Alex's New and Hot

"What's in a Name? The Future of Life"
by Kristen Philipkoski

I found this article the other day, it's somewhat related to Becca's story earlier this week what with it being Linnaeus's 300th birthday and all. This article goes into a little bit of detail about the man and his work, but otherwise, most of the article is actually a critique of the current Linnaeian system of classification. That is, it looks at the history of binomial nomenclature and basically says that it's a horrible system. A scathing critique, if you will.

The problem is, the naming scheme is not optimal. For the most part, the naming is very ad hoc and often times species are often named after really random things like the name of the discoverer. There's not a particularly elegant way of organizing everything. In addition, the currently classification system does not take into account a lot of the current advances in the evolution of life and molecular genetics.

The point is, many people think that the current system is really outdated, here is a quote:

"The binomial system for naming species is a necessary evil," says David Hillis, a professor of integrative biology at the University of Arizona who says he'd prefer a more precise nomenclature, such as registration numbers for all species. "No one would suggest such an awkward system today, but it is so entrenched that it is virtually impossible to change."

So people want to replace it with something that's perhaps more streamlined and makes more logical sense, but I guess the problem is that there's too much precedent. The Linnaean system has been around for so long that a lot of people think that it's going to be really hard to replace this system, so we might be stuck with what we have for a while now.

This is going to be a horrible analogy, but it's like Galileo/Copernicus vs. Aristotle almost. Aristotle had so much sway and power and he had tradition on his side that even when something else came along later that was better, people didn't really care and it was hard to get that new thing stuck. Eventually though, the better thing did stick around. Same with the recent demotion of Pluto as a planet. In any case, I'd be interested to see what people do with binomial nomenclature in the future.

Book review to come later.

Julie's New and Hot (Week 9)

"Nature's Tricks Help Moths Say 'Don't Eat Me"
by Nicholas Wade

New York Times, May 29, 2007

Butterflies and moths have evolved a wide variety of colors and camouflage patterns. Throughout these insects' lifetimes, they have evolved special traits to escape from predators. In "100 Caterpillars" and "100 Butterflies and Moths," Daniel Janzen and Winifred Hallwachs (with photos by Jeffrey Miller) examine these insects and their colorful appearances.

A few examples of these strategies that are mentioned in the article:

• Calledema plusia, a type of moth, has a "silvery gash on both sides of its brown wings," which "mimics a shaft of light streaming through a dead leaf."
• Pieria helvetia has a "disappearing act." When a predator is near, it will fly very rapidly, flasthing the red spots on its hindwings. Then it will quickly close its wings and is then invisible.
• The most interesting adaptations are in the moth, Oxytenis modestia. As a caterpillar, this moth imitates bird droppings. At the end of the caterpillar stage, the moth mimics a green snake. As an adult, the moth imitates a leaf, but the shape and form of the leaf depends on the time of the year it is born. Moths born in the dry season mimic dry leaves by being light beige colored. Moths born in the rainy season look dark and moldy.
  

These adapations are incredible, especially the varied and specific ones of the Oxytenis modestia. The photos from the book that are included in the article are amazing as well. (Captions are also from the article.)

"DISGUISES The mechanisms for warding off predators include dark coloring that allows the H. amphinome to blend in to tree bark."


"Silver stripes on the C. plusia look like sunlight streaming through a dead leaf."


"During caterpillar stages, O. modestia bears a resemblance to a bird dropping."


"A pattern on Z. ellops mimicks a dead leaf."


"H. icasia releases a bitter yellow fluid if bothered."

p.s. Here is my review for Letter to a Christian Nation. In the book, Harris mentions www.whydoesgodhateamputees.com (footnote on page 78). There are other links on this site as well to YouTube videos and other sites. Interesting stuff...

Kate's New and Hot (Week 9)

Pretty flowers...

Hey all, Last week I mentioned a really cool article about Carl Linneaus in June's National Geographic. Becca already posted about his 300th birthday celebration, but I just wanted to let everyone know about this article. It's pretty biographical...there's an online version here. There is a whole section that talks about evolutionary trees and stuff. Another interesting thing to note is that this article was written by David Quammen, author of The Reluctant Mr. Darwin. Quammen mentions Darwin once in the article: "But his passion for order--for seeking natural order--did move taxonomy toward the insights later delivered by Charles Darwin."

I really wanted to post these pictures from the article...I think they're incredible. I love NatGeo :)

Sagar: Fun With Limbless Lizards!

A new limbless lizard may have been discovered in India though the finding has yet to be published in a scientific journal. The discovery is significant because it seems for now that the species is only found in eastern India with its closest relatives being in Sri Lanka and South Africa! Lizards and snakes diverged on the evolutionary tree a long time ago. Limbless lizards are thus not snakes. I just thought this new discovery was interesting as it tangentially relates to our discussion last week about how the difference between two closely related species seems arbitrary. What makes this species a lizard and not a snake???? This new species sure does look like a snake. It seems nowadays, that species are traced genetically as well as morphologically making the classifications more legitimate. The link to the article is here .

Lauren's New and Hot (Week 9) and Dawkins

This photo is of invasive goats and a native tortoise on the Galapagos. Here is the website the photo came from.

No kidding as slaughter of Galapagos goats nears completion

This article on the Scotsman.com website describes the measures taken to save the Galapagos from goats. Whalers introduced goats to the islands in the 1800s, and the goats have caused significant problems for the islands in that they eat the cacti that normally feed Galapagos tortoises and otherwise disturb the environment. In the 1970s, a program was started to exterminate the goats. This program took off in the 1990s, and now goats have been nearly eradicated from some of the smaller islands and a portion of Isabela (the largest island). One method of eliminating goats is flying over the islands in helicopters and shooting the goats. New Zealanders experienced with shooting feral goats from helicopters were hired to perform this task. Another method used is to take goat-sniffing dogs on foot and shoot the goats. The most creative method listed in the article is the use of hormone-treated sterile female goats to lure wild goats.

Some people say that the extermination effort is necessary because otherwise the goats could destroy the fragile ecosystem. Poor people living on the islands make their livelihoods from selling goat meat, so they object strongly to the extermination effort. Without the goats, these people would have extremely little to eat or live on.

One interesting reaction to goat extermination is that of natural resources management expert Robert Nelson, who says that the human impact on the Galapagos has been tremendous, and that goat extermination is merely an artificial means of trying to return the Galapagos to their state before human intervention. He says, "it is more like Disneyland than the real thing."

I have reviewed The God Delusion, and here is the link to my review. An amusing note: no one has marked my previous three reviews as helpful, yet within hours of my Dawkins review being posted, three people have marked it as helpful. I guess this shows how popular The God Delusion is. A preview of what I thought of Dawkins: overall it was a very well thought out book, however, he may have taken things a bit too far when he claimed that religion (including moderate religion) is the root cause of anything evil humans do. I can't help thinking that if it were not religion, something else would serve to do the same thing.

On an unrelated note, I was amused to find the following Daily article:What you didn't know about Darwin. The author takes the stance that Darwin delayed publication of the Origin deliberately out of religious concerns. This article amused me because it has a very cursory summary of a number of things we learned this quarter, and there are at least 14 students who already know the things that the author considered to be "What you didn't know about Darwin".

Sagar's New and Hot (Week 9)

Why are there no Unicorns? This is the question that scientists at the University of Calgary asked as they seeked to study evolutionary trajectories of species in general. Instead of directly studying the horse and the horse's lack of a horn, the scientists studied patterns of inflorescence (or the way flowers are arranged on a plant) in plants and asked why, of the infinitely many ways in which flowers could branch, only three types of branching predominate. The scientists developed a mathematical model based on empirical studies of the garden weed Arabidopsis that showed the three types of branching predominate because they follow naturally when growing tips on plants switch to make flowers. This study thus sugggests that the way genes control development does guide the way in which evolution occurs by providing a limited set of possibilities that species can evolve into. This article is light-hearted, an easy read, and short, so check it out here !

Also, I have reviewed Letter to a Christian Nation here .

Becca's New and Hot-- Week 9

May 23 marked the 300th birthday of Carl von Linne, more popularly known as Carolus Linnaeus-- or, the "Father of Modern Taxonomy." Sweden, Linnaeus's home, went wild celebrating, and Linnaeus's alma mater (the University of Uppsala) awarded honorary degrees to prominent figures in the world of science and beyond, including Jane Goodall, James Watson of DNA discovery fame, and former U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan (random?). I thought it was interesting to hear what his contemporaries (or... more contemporary than we are) had to say about him. According to this article, "The French philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau said there is "no greater man on earth." The German writer Goethe compared him to Shakespeare and Spinoza. The Swedish author and playwright Strindberg described him as a poet who happened to become a naturalist." The article goes on to describe him as a physician, linguist, ethnologist, ecologist, and botanist. It was Linnaeus who coined the term "Homo sapiens," or "man the rational." Sounds like another of the overachievers we've been learning about! Like Darwin's, Linnaeus's contributions to biology helped lay the groundwork for science up to the present. According to Jane Goodall, "The importance of Linnaeus is the way he grasped the similarities in structure between so many different organisms and laid them out in a way that's still useful today." She especially praised Linnaeus for grouping primates and humans together so long ago, noting that some scientists even today won't admit that we are related. Linnaeus made some very useful contributions, and it seems that he deserves his world-wide tricentennial birthday party.