Weltmurksbude: Carnival of Evolution: catch 49

[note] Due to a late loss of the whole CoE49 post from my blog, I chose to structure the re-make economically. Hence the format of all entries is alike and as follows:

Author (Date) Post title (also links to blog post). Blog Name (no link to blog for clarity). Link to source article (when needed).
My comment will follow in italics, if I have one.

P.S.: I did neither include submissions of posts from March or earlier nor submissions of posts that are only loosely about evolution as in 'evolution' of the solar system or climate. [/note]

Evolutionary studies are rich both in concepts and methods but not dis-integrated. As you will see, there is a common theme. Have fun.

Trees or Networks

Both figures from Gibson (1881).

Kathy Orlinsky (9 June) Recombination between RNA and DNA viruses. The Stochastic Scientist. Relates to an article in Biology Direct.
As RNA viruses are not retro-viruses, the enzyme reverse transcriptase should be lacking and recombination at the DNA level should be impossible. Nevertheless, recombination did happen somehow.
David Morrison (16 June) Charles Darwin’s unpublished tree sketches. & Charles Darwin's unpublished tree sketches, part 2. The Genealogical World of Phylogenetic Networks.

One sketch is in The Origin of Species and another headed “I think” has become emblematic, but there are more sketches in the notebooks etc.
Carlos Anderson (18 June) Speciation and genetic incompatibilities in digital organisms. BEACON Researchers at Work.
He’s also doing experiments with real yeast, so he’s not just a simulator.
David Morrison (20 June) Rooted networks for exploratory data analysis. The Genealogical World of Phylogenetic Networks.

Discusses the merits of rooted phylogenies with an example of pathogen data allowing inferences about transmission events.

Stone or Clay


'Figure-4 trap (Gibson 1881).

Clay rodent trap used by the Tuareg in Niger (Drummond 2005).

Arvind Pillai (25 June) Reigning reptiles - the Archosaurs. Fins to Feet.
A systematic plea for Archosaurs, who are forever playing second fiddle to Dinosaurs.

The next three entries remained in news media that aren't blogs proper (you cannot comment).

Brandon Bryn (14 June) Cave paintings from paleolithic Spain are older than expected. AAAS News. Relates to an article in Science.
40,000 year old paintings could even be from Neandertals.
Ewen Callaway (20 June) Pottery shards put a date on Africa’s dairying. Nature News. Relates to an article in Nature.
Traces of fats on the shards of pots suggest dairy is 7,000 years old.
Pallab Gosh (28 June) Pottery invented in China to cook food and brew alcohol. BBC News. Relates to an article in Science.
At a radiocarbon age of about 20,000 years these shards are older than agriculture.
Some Author (Some Date) Some title. Some Blog. Relates to an article in Biology Letters.

Some turtles died copulating and got fossilized that way. Creationists and ID-ists are all over the moon about this, whereas it hardly raised an eyebrow among Darwinian bloggers.* While this leads over to the next category, I wish Lonesome George had died that way. *[By the way, neither did the discovery of the eldest Australian rock art by ~~Johnny O’Keefe~~ Bryce Barker nor that of a giant wombat graveyard.]

Creative or Selected

Pater Schacht disguised as a mousetrap peddler during a mission in Scandinavia (Tanner 1694).

Rosa Rubicondior (5 June) Why evolution is not random. Rosa Rubicondior.
Debunks a favourite ploy of anti-evolutionists -- the claim that immensely unlikely coincidences are required for adaptation.
Larry Moran (9 June) My review of Shapiro’s book is finally published. Sandwalk. Relates to a book review in Reports of the National Center for Science Education.
Shapiro seems to think that skating along the fringes of established evolutionary biology is a good idea, because the fringe is the frontier. Moran disagrees and thinks he builds up a dated ‘neo-Darwinian’ straw-man and plays into the hands of anti-Darninians.
Zen Faulkes (11 June) The biology of Prometheus. NeuroDojo.
Discusses a movie. Flying over this post, I got the impression the film has been inspired by Intelligent Design.
Matt Young (17 June) Evolution and belief: book review. Panda’s Thumb. Reviews the book Evolution and Belief: Confessions of a Religious Paleontologist by Robert J. Asher.
Matt read the book as though it was a confession towards biologists and is disappointed to find just one accommodationist confession that Asher, nevertheless, believes in God. Creationists, however, will read it as so many confessions of a murder and will need a dictionary of biological terms at the side to even get the evidence.
Wiley Miller (18 June) Hey, I’m not the one who …. Non Sequitur.
A cartoon that neatly sums up the ‘controversy.’
Troy Britain (21 June) Creationist horse feathers. Playing Chess with Pigeons.
Thoroughly debunks creationists' claims about Archaeopteryx and horses.
Adam M. Goldstein (30 June) Forms of accommodationism. The Shifting Balance of Factors.
Sorts out the different varieties of accommodationism. Besides this, he would like to know who coined the term accommodationism. If I remember correctly, Larry Moran will know.

Individually or in Groups - Few or Many

Tinker traps by courtesy of Jozef Mičieta, mayor of Velke Rovne.

Michael Shermer (4 June) The science of righteousness. The Works of Michael Shermer. Relates to the book The Righteous Mind. Why Good People are Divided by Politics and Religion by Jonathan Haidt.
Can language and morals (righteousness) play the role in humans that genes and kinship plays in other social species?
Steven Pinker (18 June) The false allure of group selection. Edge.
I liked the comment by David C. Queller best. By the way, the June issue of the Journal of Evolutionary Biology provides a good and free review article (part IV of a series) concerning the Price equation by Steven A. Frank. Even more pertinent to the group selection controversy, however, is part III of Frank's serial attempt at enlightenment.
Zen Faulkes (18 June) Group (selection) therapy. NeuroDojo.
Might be a good idea in this standoff.
Jason G. Goldman (20 June) The average bear is smarter than you think. The Thoughtful Animal. Relates to an article in Animal Behaviour.
Bears can count.
Matt Zimmerman (25 June) Pinker and "cultural group selection. Biased Transmission.
A Ph.D. student of Pete Richerson speaks his mind. By the way, selection at a lower level (e.g., for a meiotic driver gene) looks like transmission bias at the higher level (e.g., of the individual carrying the driver gene).
Leonard Finkelman (29 June) Enjoying natural selection at multiple levels. Rationally Speaking.
On levels of selection from a philosophy-of-science perspective.

Sexual Reproduction or Not

Claude Mellan (1598-1688) La Sourciére. Look at left margin about shoulder height.

Joachim D. (2 June) Argument maps for the paradox of sexual reproduction. Mousetrap.
Points out a problem with one of the assumptions underlying the paradox argument.
Sarah Fecht (6 June) Lady liaisons: does cheating give females an evolutionary advantage? Scientific American. Relates to an article in The American Naturalist.
Female song sparrows cheat. Surprisingly, they gain no fitness advantage as far as measured – on the contrary.
Jeremy Yoder (11 June) The living rainbow: in ducks and geese, do bigger eggs raise the sexual stakes? Denim and Tweed. Relates to an article in Evolutionary Biology.
Female investment in eggs correlates with strength of sexual dimorphism as a sign of sexual selection.
Jeremy Yoder (14 June) The living rainbow: for the selective benefits of being gay, count your cousins. Denim and Tweed. Relates to an article in the Journal of Sexual Medicine.
Correlation study showing: “increased fecundity greater reproductive health, extraversion, and a generally relaxed attitude toward family and social values in females of the maternal line of homosexual men.” (quote from abstract of original paper).
Gunnar DW (18 June) Evolution to the rescue. The Beast, the Bard and the Bot. Relates to an article in Evolution.
Recombination can save algae from extinction in a changing lab environment.
Jeremy Yoder (27 June) The living rainbow: a fatal flaw in a classic study of sexual selection. Denim and Tweed. Relates to an article in PNAS.
A crew repeating Bateman's study on sexual selection in Drosophia melanogaster could not reproduce his results.

Wound Up or Relaxed

Egyptian clap-bow trap (Schäfer 1919)

Adam Benton (12 June) Did your ancestors knuckle-walk? EvoAnth.
Though not our closest relatives, Orang Utans seem to have preserved the ancestral states of traits allowing an upright posture more easily, whereas Chimps cannot bend their back hollow due to adaptations to knuckle-walking. They have to bend their knees instead.
Anne Buchanan (21 June) Noise becomes music—but is it Darwinian? And is it music? The Mermaid's Tale. Relates to an article in PNAS and a website called DarwinTunes.
A bot recombines, mutates, and replicates tunes. Consumer choice is taken as selection.
Zen Faulkes (21 June) Do cephalopods dream of aquatic sheep? NeuroDojo. Relates to an article in PloS ONE.
Stressed cuttlefish need more sleep. Just discovered the blog of Peter Godfrey-Smith (philosophy of science at CUNY) The Giant Cuttlefish also posting on this.

Simple or Complex

William Heath Robinson (1872-1944) Poster commissioned by Procter Bros (Drummond 2005).

Levi Morran (5 June) Use it or lose it? Nothing in Biology Makes Sense. Relates to an article in PLoS Genetics.
Bacteria streamline their genomes according to their (lab) environment.
Bradly Alicea (14 June) Does arbitrage exist in biological systems? Synthetic Daisies.
Arbitrage is an economic term for finding the lowest cost in one marketplace and the highest pay-off in another, for example, buying chicken legs in Brazil and selling them in China.
Carl Zimmer (14 June) We are viral from the beginning. The Loom. Relates to an article in Nature.
Viral DNA has become a-virulent in mouse genome first, but is now active in controlling the potency of cells (omnipotent cells, for example, can become any cell, skin, brain, guts, etc.).
David George Haskell (21 June) Lyme disease, foxes, coyotes. Ramble. Relates to an article in PNAS.
Correlation study with stunningly complex implication: more coyotes → less foxes → more mice → more Lyme disease -- deer acquitted.
Bjørn Østman (25 June) What happens to bacterial communities under selection? Pleiotropy.

From micro- not to macro- but to mass-evolution (the evolutionary change of each species in a community).

Red in Tooth and Claw or What?

Mäusekamm by Hubertus Ermecke (Drummond 2005). This is not a hair-slide.

Ken Weiss (7 June June) The vampire monlogs: ancient DNA and the un-dead. The Mermaid's Tale. Relates to an article in BBC News.
Bulgarian archaeologists have discovered two medieval skeletons pierced through the chest with iron rods probably due to pagan belief in vampires.
Holly Dunsworth (8 June June) Evolution reduces the meaning of life to survival and reproduction... Is that bad? The Mermaid's Tale.
Holly induces meaning back into the ostensible reduction.
David Winter (17 June) How some snails became red-blooded. The Atavism.
On the evolution of a novel hemoglobin in one group of snails.
Kathy Orlinsky (23 June) Crayfish have teeth like us? The Stochastic Scientist. Relates to an article in Nature Communications.
Reports about a crayfish with enamel-like coating of its mandibles, in other words, a convergence in solid body (bio)chemistry.
John Hawks (25 June) Neandertal similarity in the HapMap samples. John Hawks Weblog.
John releases findings from the 1000 Genomes Project, gained with his Ph.D. student Aaron Sams, and explains them.

Miscellaneous

Workshop with tools adapted for the making of mouse traps. Postcard from Neroth, Germany.

Andrew Hendry (5 June) Team Pizones IMAX 3D. Eco-Evo Evo-Eco.
Reports about a filming adventure featuring Darwin finches.
Anne Buchanan (13 June) Extremophile microbes - evidence of one of the fundamental principles of life. The Mermaid's Tale. Relates to an article in Journal of Geophysical Research Biogeosciences.
Microbial life found in high altitude volcanic soil.
David Hembry (19 June) What’s changed in evolution and ecology since I started my Ph.D. Nothing in Biology Makes Sense.
Jeremy Fox (21 June) Darwin’s Origin of Species: notes for your reading group. Oikos Blog.
Good advice on how to read The Origin, and which one, in a group.
Zen Faulkes (27 June) Adaptive radiation: driven by circumstances or inner potential? NeuroDojo. Relates to an article in Nature.
A study in cilchid fishes finds correlates of radiation.
Chris Reynolds (28 June) Observations on Heyes' paper "The evolution of human cognition. Trapped in the Box. Relates to an article in Philosophical Transactions B.
On human cognition after evolutionary psychology has been found wanting.
Bradly Alicea (June) Evolutionary systems biology. Synthetic Daisies.
Recently posted notes on an evolution-related course module for advanced students in the quantitative sciences (taught in 2009 and 2010 at Michigan State University.

Sources or Acknowledgements

Jean Jones (1786) Muscipula.

Thanks to David Drummond and Jozef Mičieta, mayor of Veľké Rovné.

Drummond D. (2005) Mouse traps. A Quick Scamper through their Long History. North American Trap Collectors Association, Galloway, OH.
Gibson W.H. (1881) Camp Life in the Woods and the Tricks of Trapping and Trap Making. Harper & Brothers, New York.
Hamilton W.D. (1975) Innate Social Aptitudes of Man: an Approach from Evolutionary Genetics. In: Fox R. (ed.) ASA Studies 4: Biosocial Anthropology, pp. 133-153. Malaby Press, London. Reprinted in Narrow Roads of Gene Land, vol. 1, pp.329-351.
Neroth, is a German village that became a centre of mouse trap makers and peddlers after Theodor Kläs (*1802) learned the trade during peregrinations and taught it back home after his return in the 1830s. Mausefallenmuseum.
Mellan C. (1598-1688) La Sourcière. The Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Tanner M. (1694) Societas Jesu Apostolorum Imitatrix ... [previously hard to get, now online].
Veľké Rovné lies in the region of Slovakia that used to be a cetre of tinkerers. Some have developed their craft into an art as can be seen at the museum in the castle of Žilina.