Is this a trick question? No. While the majority of plants are free-living autotrophs, some are parasites on other plants (think mistletoe, for example). And while the seeds of many of these parasitic plants won't germinate unless they are in contact with host plant tissue, this isn't true of dodder (Cuscuta species). Dodder actively seeks out […]
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Ants, drugs & aphid slaves
I was browsing SciTech Daily Review (always a good source of breaking science stories) when this headline caught my eye: Ants drug their aphid slaves. What a tantalising title! It led me to a just-published article (T.H.Oliver et al. 2007) looking at how ants control the aphids that they 'farm'.
Continue readingMagnetism & navigation – in bacteria
Last week I was doing a session with some local Schol Bio students & we were talking about navigation & migration. One of the cues animals use to navigate round their world is magnetism – more specifically, sensitivity to the Earth's magnetic field. We agreed that we'd heard about some birds (e.g. pigeons) using magnetic cues, […]
Continue readingOur feathered friends?
This one isn't strictly curriculum-related – but it's such a neat bit of palaeontological detective work, I thought it was worth sharing 🙂
Continue readingHomo erectus – more variable than first thought
Perhaps the best-known fossil of Homo erectus is the one known as the Nariokotome boy (or Turkana boy) – a boy who, when he died at around 9 years old, already stood nearly 160cm tall. Members of this tall, long-legged species are generally regarded as being the first of our genus to move out of Africa […]
Continue readingGene targeting technique wins a Nobel Prize
Just a quick link to an article this time – the 2007 Nobel Prize for Physiology/Medicine has been awarded to the scientists who developed the technique of gene targeting. This has allowed scientists to 'knock out' single genes, & by doing this to work out their function. My favourite science blogger, Orac, has just posted […]
Continue readingNew paper on floresiensis
Ever since the 'hobbits' (Homo floresiensis) were discovered in 2003, on the Indonesian island of Flores, there has been an on-going debate about their exact relationship with our own species. One interpretation of the fossils sees them as members of our own species, with the most complete individual (LB1) having suffered from microcephaly (ie an abnormally small […]
Continue readingDiet and your genes
Modern molecular biology has allowed us to look ever more closely into the genetic changes associated with human evolution. A recent research project used this technology to examine a possible relationship between diet and genome.
Continue readingmarathon man, part deux
Possession of an Achilles tendon is only one of the things that sets humans up for endurance running. Bramble & Lieberman (2004) note that long-distance running requires a whole suite of adaptations for skeletal strength, stabilisation, thermoregulation, and energetics. I'll summarise some of their comments here.
Continue readingmarathon man?
I was looking through the SciTech Daily website (a good place to go for new reading in a whole range of science areas) when I saw the link to an article on the evolution of running in Homo. Followed it, read the article – & thought, this is really interesting.
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