It wasn’t all koala-spotting on our trip across the ditch (the Tasman Sea, for those readers not familiar with New Zild as it is spoken, lol). Apart from the glories of Melbourne (lovely old buildings, the stunning King Tut exhibition in Melbourne Museum, floral Doc Marten boots mmmmmm – & of course the restaurants of […]
Continue readingTag: animal diversity
if pharyngeal slits turn into gills, why don’t humans have gills?
It seems that Intelligent Design advocates have challenged PZ Myers to answer ’10+1′ questions about evolutionary biology, while he’s on an upcoming visit to Glasgow. PZ’s published the list here. One in particular caught my eye, because it mentioned lungs (the subject of a recent post of my own), so I thought I’d have a […]
Continue readingthe sarcastic fringeheads
Wouldn’t that make a great name for a band? Rather to my surprise, I’ve discovered that ‘sarcastic fringeheads’ are actually…
Continue readingtalking about exaptations
During a lecture to our second-year evolutionary biology class I introduced the concept of exaptations: features that have evolved in one environmental context but which have been co-opted to fill a different role in a changed environment. This was in the context of swim bladders/lungs, which I’ll talk about in a minute, but right now […]
Continue readinganother lovely biological image
Grant & I have something of an ongoing friendly competition to come up with stunning & unusual biological images. Here,via PZ (as usual!) & The Node is my latest offering: It’s a confocal microscope image of a squid embryo. The reddish areas are neural tissue (mmmm, braaaainzz) & each of those fluorescent green speckles is a tuft […]
Continue readingwaiter, there’s a fish in my cucumber!
My sea cucumber, that is. I was going to write something full of snark about the current brouhaha around predictions that the world is going to end on May 21st. But Darcy has beaten me to it! So instead (from the Echinoblog, and via PZ) I offer you… [drumroll]… the sea cucumber with fish residing in its nether […]
Continue reading‘darwin’s dilemma’ – id in nz
A little while ago Ken alerted me to an Intelligent Design website that appeared to be set up to provide ID ‘resources’ to teachers & others who might be interested. Today I found time to wander over & have a look at what was on offer (not much, at the moment). The site’s owner is […]
Continue readingquirks of human anatomy
I’ve just started browsing through a book with the promising title, Quirks of human anatomy: an evo-devo look at the human body. (Held, 2009). (The Science librarian does a great job of sifting through new titles & running them past the various departments in our Faculty to see what people would like to see added to […]
Continue readingthe improbability of an eye
Because I seem to have very little time on my hands at the moment, I thought I would re-post something I wrote very early on in my blogging career – it hasn’t dated & in fact is quite relevant to a more recent post on ‘intelligent design’ creationism The camera-type eye of humans (& in […]
Continue readingpesky little hoppers
With the new house came a long drive lined with agapanthus. My mother would have said, "the dreaded agapanthus", & she wouldn’t have been far wrong. I don’t like the things very much; they spread very vigorously & I tend to view them as a weed. (I see from Te Ara that Biosecurity New Zealand was […]
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