Last year’s Schol Bio paper had a question about allelopathy. The context centred on Black Walnuts (Juglans nigra). These are large deciduous trees with an extensive root system – and they release an allelopathic chemical called juglone, which has a number of toxic effects on a range of other plant species. This ability to kill […]
Continue readingMonth: June 2009
interesting readings on human evolution
Those of you who came to the WEB days a few weeks ago (WEB = Waikato Experience of Biology, for those who didn’t) might remember me saying that the human family tree is quite a complex thing. Not only is it a branching tree, rather than the linear model of early palaeoanthropologists, but our understanding of […]
Continue readinga biodiversity storeroom
Via SciTechDaily – a trip through a library of mammalian biodiversity! This is a video tour through a ‘bone room’ & a ‘skins room’ belonging to the Museum of Vertebrate Zoology at the University of California at Berkley. It looks like a fascinating place to visit (although the sight of the skins & furs was […]
Continue readingquestions about speciation
A friend of mine, a secondary bio teacher, sent me through a couple of questions from students that she thought might be useful for a blog piece. And I agreed, so here they are: How do scientists know when a species finishes and a new one is formed? and Are there different species in between […]
Continue readingthe median is not the message – statistics & cancer
I’ve just been talking with a very dear friend who was diagnosed with cancer not so long ago. She was telling me the various things she was doing to stay positive as she begins her treatment, & I remembered an inspirational article I first read years ago, by Stephen Jay Gould. (As you might have gathered, […]
Continue readingsometimes life just sucks
And this is one of those times. Because over the weekend I did what is probably the hardest thing I’ve ever had to do – I made the decision to end my beloved dog’s life.
Continue readinghow to read a scientific paper
This follows on from my previous post on finding papers in the first place 🙂 Reading a paper is a bit of an art, in some ways, & going by my own experience something we’re almost expected to pick up by osmosis. Well, I guess that’s not completely true – at the Hons/Masters level, you’re […]
Continue readingfinding suitable references
The other day I was talking with a friend who happens to be a high school bio teacher, & she said that it could be quite difficult for her students to do their research on the ‘contemporary issue’ (AS 90714). Not least because of the difficulty of getting hold of peer-reviewed articles on a student’s […]
Continue readingspeciation in the here-&-now
One of the arguments commonly levelled against the idea of speciation is that we can never see it happening. That argument is simply incorrect, & some time soon I guess I should at least give you some links to evidence that supports my statement. But in the meantime, I’ve just come across another apparent example […]
Continue readinghyenas & homo erectus
When you’re studying human evolution (AS 90719), one of the fossil hominins you’ll learn about is Homo erectus. These days this designation includes fossils that were placed in separate taxa, such as H. pekinensis ("Peking man") & "Java man" (named Pithecanthropus erectus by its discoverer, Eugene Dubois, but now recognised as the first H.erectus fossil to be described). The […]
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