Couple of organismic blogs 20 Jun 2007 No! Not orgasmic! [There, that should bump up the hits] You all know, of course, the inestimable Darren Naish and his wonderful blog Tetrapod Zoology. What? You don’t? Go there immediately and come back when you’ve read it all, and the old site too. [Fifteen days later] So, I wanted to mention a similar blog, by a student working on spider systematics (way cool), name of Christopher Taylor, called Catalogue of Organisms. In this 300th anniversary of the first real such catelogue by Linnaeus, that’s a way cool title. And of course you have an almost endless supply of cool material, even if you stick at high taxonomic levels. And he’s being controversial too, with a shamelessly populist post on which dinosaurs are coolest or most ferocious (like those “Could Superman get Beat Up by Spiderman?” arguments nerds have, only with real beasties). Go visit. Ecology and Biodiversity Evolution General Science Species and systematics
Species and systematics Barcoding and classification, again 3 May 2008 Duck and cover, folks. I’m about to upset somebody. I have previously been fairly critical of DNA barcoding, the proposal to use a small fragment of the COI gene – a mitochondrial gene cytochrome c oxidase, subunit I – as a surrogate marker for species. That is, in simple terms,… Read More
Book Systematics and Biogeography blog 23 Oct 2007 The estimable Drs David Williams and Malte Ebach have started a blog on Systematics and Biogeography, which supports a recent book they haven’t sent me a free copy of yet. Expect much puncturing of pretensions and orthodoxies. Read More
Evolution What is “nature”? 2 Jan 20142 Jan 2014 Many critics of science, including Christian philosophers like Alvin Plantinga and William Lane Craig,attack something they call “naturalism”, the view that the natural world is all there is. As Papineau notes in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy entry, the term has no very precise meaning in philosophy, or in science…. Read More
Chris, sorry. One eight legged beasty is pretty much the same as another to my untutored eyes. Darren, not on your own blog, so far as I can recall 😉
Thank you for your kind words. Though I feel honour-bound to point out that I don’t work on spiders, but harvestmen. There’s whole worlds of arachnids beyond spiders ;-).