Here's another paper on coevolution – this one a bit closer to home. It suggests a coevolutionary relationship between a weta species and the characteristics of many fleshy fruits of NZ plants (Burns, 2006).
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a quote to think about
I think it was Thomas Edison who said, Genius is 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration. In other words, success (in any field) requires a lot of hard work. (True also of preparing for Scholarship exams.) Now here's another science-relevant quote…
Continue readingan overview of how we see ourselves
Here's something for your reading list: an excellent extended essay on how our view of human evolution, & of our place in the world, has changed over time. Enjoy!
Continue readingHappy Darwin Day
Oops! I forgot… but anyway, Happy Darwin Day for the 9th of February. Charles Darwin would have been 199 years old. Next year's the 200th anniversary of his birth & also the 150th anniversary of the publication of The Origin of Species; I'll have to organise some birthday celebrations 🙂
Continue readingwhat is it with cockroaches?
I know you may read this & think I'm a bit odd… But anyway – just after the L3 exam I was talking with a student & she said, why did there have to be cockroaches in a question? My answer: why not? They're just another animal (even if many people don't like them much) […]
Continue readinggiant fish extinctions
I mean, extinctions of giant fish, not giant extinctions of fish! This is about a paper that I read last year & put aside as a 'general interest' topic for when I was looking for something to write about.
Continue readingcool cephalopods
Ages ago I saw an item on TV about cuttlefish – one of the neat things I took away from it was how cuttlefish and other cephalopods (octopus & squid) use colour to communicate, and how precise their control of skin coloration is. And I would tell my students about it, but I didn't have […]
Continue readingcoevolution of bats & flowers
One of the questions in the 2007 90717 paper was on an example of coevolution in bats & flowers. I had a look at the original reference and it's such a neat example, I thought you might be interested in hearing a bit more detail about it.
Continue readingthat milk ad on youtube
Back to the dinosaur/caveman milk ad. (If you followed the link you may have found & watched a whole bunch of similar ads. All quite funny – I like the dino trying to wipe squashed caveman off its foot, in the one I linked to! – but all based on a (sadly) fairly common misconception […]
Continue readingpossible interruption to service
I'm going to be off-campus for the next month – in fact, I'll be out of NZ & travelling in Europe 🙂 While I intend to post an item a couple of times a week while I'm away, when I can get to a computer (no, really! I do!), there might be the occasional lapse. […]
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