Virus-like particles a wasp’s way of making more wasps 19 Mar 2009 If I may interrupt the politics for a bit with a sciencey note, I strongly recommend reading this blog post at Small Things Considered (the go-to site for all things microbial and smaller): parasitoid wasps insert viral-like particles, or VLPs, into the host caterpillars in which they lay their eggs. They make the immune system of the host non-responsive. I find this interesting, because one of the unsolved mysteries is the origins of viruses – this shows that at least some of them might have started life as manipulative nucleic acids (although these are DNA not RNA viroids). However, the evidence is this VLP system is the result of viral infection. It looks like the wasps have integrated some of the virus’s genes into its own genome and uses them to generate the VLPs for its own purposes. Weird and interesting stuff. I particularly like microbial-and-smaller biology because it can break the hold over our intuitions that “macrobial” biology, particularly zoology, but also most eukaryotic biology, has. “Exotic” cases stress our comfortable certainties. Ecology and Biodiversity Evolution
Evolution Explaining religion 3 – Is it adaptive? 31 Oct 2007 To summarise: so far we have three general kinds of explanations of religion. There are sociological explanations in terms of the economic, societal and political conditions under which religions develop. There are psychological explanations in terms of experiences, existential dread, need for control and so forth. And there are sociobiological… Read More
Ecology and Biodiversity Taxonomy was the reason for Darwin’s theory 11 Mar 200918 Sep 2017 Taxonomy – the science of classifying organisms into putatively natural groups – is often treated as a kind of necessary bit of paperwork without much theoretical import by some biologists. Others think it is the single most important thing to do, usually justifying it in terms of conservation biology, but… Read More
Biology A nineteenth century view on classification 18 Oct 201420 Oct 2014 The principle upon which I understand the Natural System of Botany to be founded is, that the affinities of plants may be determined by a consideration of all the points of resemblance between their various parts, properties, and qualities; that thence an arrangement may be deduced in which those species… Read More
My biology isn’t good enough to make the article easy to read (I struggle with the technical bits), but I recognise that it is talking about the very same topic as is discussed in chapter 20 of the third Science of Discworld book (starting at the bottom of page 273 in my hardcover Ebury Press edition).
Truly fascinating stuff! I’m mesmerized by this astounding adaptation to parasitoidism. It is cases like this that make me not regret of taking a Biology major. Thank you very much for the link!