Very often, one of the off-putting aspects of science is science reporting. Professional papers tend to be dry, technical documents that normally don't interest many people outside of professional researchers. Enter science writing. Science writers take technical information and present it such a way that it is accessible to the general public. The good ones also make it interesting for the professional scientists.
If you would like to read an interesting science story that is magnificently written, check out this story about a small town in Canada with a fungus problem. There's a link between the fungal infestation and the Canadian Club whiskey distillery that is in the town. Read it here.
Showing posts with label evolution. Show all posts
Showing posts with label evolution. Show all posts
Thursday, October 20, 2011
Saturday, March 19, 2011
Our Primate Family Tree
Polina Perelman from the Laboratory of Genomic Diversity at the National Cancer Institute and her team has sequenced genes from 186 species of primates and tightened up the primate family tree. You can see the tree here and check out Ed Yong's slide show at Not Exactly Rocket Science here. If you're feeling really ambitious, you can read Perelman's paper here.
Tuesday, March 1, 2011
Obligate collective foraging, nomadism, and highly modified queens
You may be thinking, "What's with the title?"
Well, it's three of the evolutionary reasons for "army ant syndrome" which may be the cause of the ant death spiral (or less sensationally known as the ant mill). Check out this video.
It's apparently caused by some wayward ants following a pheromone trail. One follows another and so on until they begin spiraling around a central point. Eventually, either the mill is broken, or all the ants die from exhaustion (check here for a concise description as well as links to primary research).
You may also be interested to read this entry by Frederic Delsuc which has a very interesting explanation about why this behavior hasn't been selected against. It seems that this is the trade off army ants were stuck with. They got collective foraging ability and paid for it with the possibility of one ant causing an entire colony to all skate right to their deaths.
Well, it's three of the evolutionary reasons for "army ant syndrome" which may be the cause of the ant death spiral (or less sensationally known as the ant mill). Check out this video.
It's apparently caused by some wayward ants following a pheromone trail. One follows another and so on until they begin spiraling around a central point. Eventually, either the mill is broken, or all the ants die from exhaustion (check here for a concise description as well as links to primary research).
You may also be interested to read this entry by Frederic Delsuc which has a very interesting explanation about why this behavior hasn't been selected against. It seems that this is the trade off army ants were stuck with. They got collective foraging ability and paid for it with the possibility of one ant causing an entire colony to all skate right to their deaths.
Thursday, February 17, 2011
Free Darwin!
Why go out and buy On the Origin of Species when you can read the original 1859 version for free here.
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