Small world 31 Oct 2007 Here is an article in Harvard Magazine on bacteria and other wee beasties that make up the bulk of the living world, that is worth reading. It’s called “The Undiscovered Planet”. Hat tip to Jason Grossman. Ecology and Biodiversity Evolution General Science Species and systematics
Ecology and Biodiversity Rudd does too little on climate change 14 Dec 2008 I received this from GetUp today. I wonder if the politicians recognise that no amount of economic manoeuvring or political RealPolitik will avoid the laws of nature? If we do too little, then our children – not even our grandchildren but the very next generation – will suffer and badly…. Read More
Evolution Contingency, not-quite-asexuals, and phylogeny of continuous characters 4 Jun 2008 This is a kind of scattered post on a few things that have caught my eye, while I am avoiding boring work. Paeloblog reports that a paper in Nature has done a phylogeny on continuous rather than discrete characters, using morphometric criteria to do a hominin phylogeny. This is not… Read More
Biology Quorum sensing in bacteria and cooperation 26 Aug 2009 Byte Size Biology has a post up discussing a recent paper on quorum sensing in bacteria, a process whereby the chemical signals for a community of microbial organisms can modify the dynamics of the organisms themselves. It’s interesting in its own right, but also to show how cooperation can evolve… Read More
But we knew this already, eh? The web-of-life concept that is always is the background, sussurating like insects in the night. From Jacques Cousteau to Richard Attenborough (sp?) and from Marlin Perkins to Carl Sagan, popular culture echoes with this idea. We also suspected it when we were small and got caught up watching bees and flowers, ants and sand grains, birds and wind. No surprise that it extends so deeply into the realm of the tiny and unseen. Evidence that it extends into realms much larger than us is also at hand, thanks to telescopes complimenting microscopes. What I like most is that this sense of connectedness has clear, observable evidence with which to show itself!