Also by Daniela, of the orb web spider on her porch. That “face” on her abdomen is NOT photoshopped– I can only assume it is one of those “startle” features evolved to give a potential predator a moment’s pause.
Tag: Evolution
“Big Black Nemesis”; or, what is an Altai Falcon anyway?
A while ago, LabRat at Atomic Nerds started a series of posts on the evolution of sex among other things. The first was appropriately called “Shuffling Your Cards: Why Sex?” Since in science we are both mad nerds obsessed with evolutionarily odd strategies like parthenogenesis in local lizards (and the hybridization that may have started …
Florida Cold Snap
Vladimir Beregovoy writes: “My son came for spring break vacations. He told an interesting story about mass mortality among exotics in Florida. They had a prolonged period of unusually temperatures there as far to the south as Florida Key, about 40 Fahrenheit for a few weeks. As a result at least 90% of huge Southeast …
Quotes of the day
“In an 1879 letter to John Fordyce, Darwin wrote: “It seems to me absurd to doubt that a man may be an ardent Theist and an evolutionist.” “..I think the FDA’s war on raw milk in favor of pasteurization is a fitting allegory of American life writ large—all life must be killed before it kills …
Bio shorts
Komodo dragons (and their recently- extrict giant Australian relatives) may actually be venomous. Carl Zimmer directs us to not just one but two galleries of zombie- creating parasites.
New Rabies
I seem to be visible again. Dr Gail Goodman and Teddy Moritz sent this biologically fascinating but scary link to a National Geographic story about a mutated version of rabies in the Flagstaff, Arizona area. It apparently originated in bats, which is not unusual, and has manifested in skunks and foxes. What is frightening is …
What the definition of “Species” is…
Therese, who knows about and studies such things, left a long comment on the last post that I think deserves to be up front. “I’ve got some insight into these questions. I apologize in advance for both these long rants, I’m currently working on some species redescriptions and its not progressing as fast as it …
Jurassic Males?
Carl Zimmer has a fascinating item on the ever- more- blurry line between birds and non- avian Dinosaurs. It seems the Paleognathes– the bird group commonly known as ratites, composed of the big flightless birds like Ostriches and the odd related but flying South American group known as Tinamous– have retained the brooding habits of …
First Dogs?
New candidates for the first dogs? HT Cat Urbigkit. Maybe, though there also may be at least one older claimant. I wonder if DNA supports the multiple origins idea?
Science Links
Darren has been posting a series of utterly weird and alien cetacean skulls. Try here and here and especially here for my favorites, but they are all wonderful. He also weighs in on the “Montauk Monster”. Despite the hysteria I though it was a canid; he convinces me that it is likely another small carnivore. …