Posts Tagged ‘species’
“I don’t think academic writing ever was wonderful”*…
Academic writing is famously abstruse. But, Stefan Washietl, founder of Paperpile, reminds us, it isn’t always so. As Rob Beschizza observes…
Stefan Washietl collected the shortest scientific papers. Some are unvarnished mathematical proofs, some are humor to amusing or incisive ends, others are clever-dickery that shoves the conclusion into the abstract. All are wonderful!…
Accessible academia: treat yourself to “The Shortest Papers Ever Published,” from @washietl and @paperpile via @Beschizza in @BoingBoing.
* Stephen Jay Gould
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As we go for the gist, we might send voluminous birthday greetings to Constantine Samuel Rafinesque; he was born on this date in 1783. An autodidact naturalist, traveler, and writer who, in spite of work of variable reliability, substantially expanded knowledge via his extensive travels, collecting, cataloging, and naming huge numbers of plants and some animals. Among these are many new species he is credited with being the first to describe.
Years ahead of Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution, Rafinesque conceived his own ideas. He thought that species had, even within the timeframe of a century, a continuing tendency for varieties to appear that would diverge in their characteristics to the point of forming new species. Accordingly, he was over-enthusiastic at distinguishing what he called new species.
Rafinesque wrote prolifically, and often self-published. His work varied from brilliant insightfulness to carelessness, and raised the eyebrows– and sometimes the ire– of his scientific contemporaries. Indeed, he so incensed John James Audubon with his belief that Audubon has included unnamed species in his sketches of birds, that Audubon pranked him, feeding him sketches of imaginary fish… which Rafinesque believed and included in his writings, where (for 50 years or so) they remained as part of the scientific record.
“For you formed my inward parts; you knitted me together in my mother’s womb. I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made.”*…
DNA is indisputably important to biological development. But, Alfonso Martinez Arias argues, far from being a blueprint for an organism, genes are mere tools used by life’s true expert builders: cells…
… Over the past century, scientists have discovered a material explanation for the source of life, one that needs no divine intervention and provides a thread across eons of time for all beings that exist or have ever existed: deoxyribonucleic acid — DNA. While there is little doubt that genes have something to do with what we are and how we come to be, it is difficult to answer precisely the question of what their exact role in all of this is.
A closer look at how genes work and what they can accomplish, compared to what they are said to achieve, casts doubt on the assertion that the genome in particular contains an “operating manual” for us or any other living creature. When it comes to the creation of organisms, we’ve overlooked — or, more accurately, forgotten — another force. The origin and power of that force are cells.
What makes you and me individual human beings is not a unique set of DNA but instead a unique organization of cells and their activities…
A fascinating essay, adapted from Martinez Arias’ forthcoming book, The Master Builder- How the New Science of the Cell Is Rewriting the Story of Life: “Cells, Not DNA, Are The Master Architects Of Life,” in @NoemaMag.
[Image above: source]
* Psalm 139: 13–14
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As we delve into design, we might send insightful birthday greetings to Ernst Mayr; he was born on this date in 1904. A taxonomist, tropical explorer, ornithologist, philosopher of biology, and historian of science, he is best remembered as one of the 20th century’s leading evolutionary biologists. His work contributed to the conceptual revolution that led to the modern evolutionary synthesis of Mendelian genetics, systematics, and Darwinian evolution, and to the development of the biological species concept.
His theory of peripatric speciation (a more precise form of allopatric speciation which he advanced), based on his work on birds, is still considered a leading mode of speciation, and was the theoretical underpinning for the theory of punctuated equilibrium, proposed by Niles Eldredge and Stephen Jay Gould. Mayr is sometimes credited with inventing modern philosophy of biology, particularly the part related to evolutionary biology, which he distinguished from physics due to evolutionary biology’s introduction of (natural) history into science.
“Various species grouped together according/ To their past beliefs”*…
A page from Constantine Rafinesque’s field notebook
Pranks are meant to be discovered—what’s the point in fooling someone if they never notice they’ve been fooled? But one 19th century prank, sprung by John James Audubon on another naturalist, was so extensive and so well executed that its full scope is only now coming to light.
The prank began when the French naturalist Constantine Rafinesque sought out Audubon on a journey down the Ohio River in 1818. Audubon was years away from publishing Birds in America, but even then he was known among colleagues for his ornithological drawings. Rafinesque was on the hunt for new species—plants in particular—and he imagined that Audubon might have unwittingly included some unnamed specimens in his sketches.
Rafinesque was an extremely enthusiastic namer of species: during his career as a naturalist, he named 2,700 plant genera and 6,700 species, approximately. He was self-taught, and the letter of introduction he handed to Audubon described him as “an odd fish.” When they met, Audubon noted, Rafinesque was wearing a “long loose coat…stained all over with the juice of plants,” a waistcoat “with enormous pockets” and a very long beard. Rafinesque was not known for his social graces; as John Jeremiah Sullivan writes, Audubon is the “only person on record” as actually liking him.
During their visit, though, Audubon fed Rafinesque descriptions of American creatures, including 11 species of fish that never really existed. Rafinesque duly jotted them down in his notebook and later proffered those descriptions as evidence of new species. For 50 or so years, those 11 fish remained in the scientific record as real species, despite their very unusual features, including bulletproof (!) scales.
By the 1870s, the truth about the fish had been discovered. But the fish were only part of Audubon’s prank…
More at “Audubon Made Up At Least 28 Fake Species To Prank A Rival.”
* Don Van Vliet (Captain Beefheart), “Bills Corpse,” Trout Mask Replica
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As we tease each other with taxonomy, we might recall that it was on this date in 2009 that a man riding his horse across the Golden Gate Bridge from Marin to San Francisco was stopped by the California Highway Patrol. The CHP, which judged the horse a danger to pedestrians and bicyclists who use the walkway and a distraction to drivers– who did indeed slow to a crawl– had the rider dismount and walk his mount back to the Marin side.
The offending equestrian returning to the Marin Headlands
Bye bye…
From Annalee Newitz at io9, “A History of Mass Extinctions on Earth.”
click on the image above, or here, for an enlarged version
As Annalee suggests,
It’s hard to decide whether this is a pessimistic chart or an optimistic one. Life always manages to find a way, even when there is a serious destruction of the planet.
To that point, note that the line graph in the middle charts “body counts”– how many species survived, which in some cases is nearly zero.
As we get in touch with our inner cockroach, we might wish Alles Gute zum Geburtstag to Austrian/German climate research pioneer Eduard Brückner; he was born on this date in 1862. By analyzing direct and indirect observations of climatic fluctuations, he discovered (1887) the 35-year Brückner climatic cycle of swings between damp-cold and warm-dry conditions. He considered the impact of climate change on the balance of power between nations and its economic significance in agricultural productivity, emigration, river transportation and the spreading of diseases. And perhaps most relevantly to the issues we face today, he initiated scientific debate on whether climate change should be interpreted as a natural function of the Earth system, or whether it was influenced by man’s activities (e.g., in his time, deforestation).
Brückner (source)
The miracle(s) of life…
The Barnados Threadsnake (Leptotyphlops carlae)
In the last issue of The New Yorker, Elizabeth Kolbert’s “The Sixth Extinction?” sounds an alarm. Observing that of the many species that have existed on earth, more than ninety-nine per cent have disappeared, and that these extinctions have tended to come in waves– five of which were especially broad– she ponders the possibility that we are at the lip of the sixth great wave of species disappearance.
While there’s every reason to worry that Kolbert is right, one notes that new species are uncovered every year– even in periods of relative decline in diversity. Indeed, Wired provides a nifty catalogue of “10 Strange Species Discovered Last Year.”
The forces of life and variety fight back!
As we celebrate the creative impulse (in all of it forms and products), we might recall that it was on this date in 1919 that Arthur Eddington confirmed Einstein’s light-bending prediction– a part of The Theory of General Relativity– using photos of a solar eclipse. Eddington’s paper the following year was the “debut” of Einstein’s theoretical work in most of the English-speaking world (and occasioned an urban legend: when a reporter supposedly suggested that “only three people understand relativity,” Eddington was supposed to have jokingly replied “Oh, who’s the third?”)
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