I know from spending time with the Bio scholarship students at Hamilton Girls High that xenotransplantation is an issue that some of you might have discussed. It seems that ERV is also interested – not surprising given her focus on endogenous retroviruses. In her latest post, she says: Why the hell was I interested in […]
Continue readingTag: new science stories
a three-way symbiosis
Here’s a really interesting story that I picked up on while reading ERV’s blog. We hear about 2-way symbioses/mutualisms (fungus+alga & fungus+cyanobacterium in lichens, & the mycorrhizal relationship between plants & fungi) – but here’s something special: a three-way symbiosis between a fungus, a grass – & a virus (Marquez et al., 2008).
Continue readinga new voyage for the beagle
The Beagle Project aims to build a replica of HMS Beagle and retrace Darwin’s famous voyage. The intention is that this will inspire global audiences through unique public engagement and learning programmes, and original scientific research in evolutionary biology, biodiversity and climate change. I think it’s great! I’ve been keeping half an eye on the website, […]
Continue readinglife in the cambrian
I first read Stephen Jay Gould’s book, Wonderful Life, not long after it was first published in 1989. The book centres on the Burgess Shale, a wonderfully rich source of of different fossils (a Lagerstätte) from the Cambrian, around 530 million years ago. The Burgess Shale is unusual in that it contains an array of soft-bodied […]
Continue readingmating systems in takahe
Takahe (Porphyrio hochstetteri) are one of the world’s most endangered birds. There are only around 120 still surviving in Fiordland, although a few more now live on predator-free islands off the New Zealand coast. (If you go to Tiritiri Matangi Island in the Hauraki Gulf you’ll be bound to see them.) But while the birds […]
Continue readingthe joys of essay-marking (no, seriously)
One of the benefits of reading (& marking) students’ essays is that you find a whole pile of new papers that are worth reading. (I expect them to go to the scientific literature for information & examples, and support for their ideas, & I will confess to getting just a leetle tetchy when they don’t….) […]
Continue readingfish fingers, anyone?
Fish with fingers, whales with legs – the sub-title of Carl Zimmer’s 1998 book on the evolution of amphibians & whales – seems even more apt with the announcement of a new fossil find: a fish whose pectoral fins contained bones homologous to tetrapod fingers (Boisvert et al. 2008).
Continue readingkiwi conservation & ancient DNA
I think I first woke up to the potential of ancient DNA (aDNA) research when I was part of the team developing the Evolution for Teaching website. My friend Dave Lambert, who was then with the Allan Wilson Centre at Massey (Albany) was working with aDNA to study microevolution in Adelie penguins in Antarctica, and […]
Continue readingapparent beneficial effect of Bt-cotton crops
Way back in 2004, the first of the ‘new’ Scholarship exams asked students to: Compare and contrast the ecological and evolutionary outcomes of releasing herbicide tolerant and insect resistant GM plants. It’s an interesting question. I suspect that a lot of the answers would have focused on the potential negative environmental effects of releasing these GM […]
Continue readingculture in chimpanzees
When Jane Goodall observed chimpanzees making tools, it became clear that here was yet another example of the continuum between humans and non-human primates. Use and manufacture of tools was not something that distinguished humans from their close relatives, & chimps could be said to have a form of culture. Now here’s a paper that […]
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