yes, we have some bananas

Prominent creationist Ray Comfort once (in)famously commented that the ‘design elements’ that make up a banana, including its so-convenient shape, are evidence for the existence of a Designer. A comment that has been pretty resoundingly debunked – unsurprisingly, since the banana-as-we-know-it is due in large part to the hand of man, selecting for those features […]

Continue reading

azolla & endosymbiosis

There are other photosynthesisers besides Volvox, living in our fishpond. Bigger plants include waterlilies, various sedges, & Elodea. And at this time of year the surface is covered by a carpet of duckweed, but when summer comes the Azolla will tend to take over. Sometimes called ‘water fern’, Azolla contains an endosymbiont, a cyanobacterium (blue-green alga) that lives within […]

Continue reading

the costs of transpiration

One of our first-year bio labs sees our students using potometers to determine how transpiration is affected by things like light, humidity, & wind movement. Those of my readers who are school students may well have done something similar, but for those who arent – a potometer allows you to measure the rate of water […]

Continue reading