Once upon a time, a long time ago when I was a high school student, I remember being taught about human evolution as a fairly linear, straightforward narrative. OK, there were those ‘robust’ australopiths (aka Paranthropus) on a dead-end side branch, but otherwise species followed species – beginning around 14 million years ago with Ramapithecus (or Sivapithecus) – until you […]
Continue readingTag: scholarship biology
Algae & isopods – a unique symbiosis
When I set essays for my first-year students to write during the semester, I try to give them a scientific paper on each topic to start them off. This means that I need to do some extra bedtime reading as I need to select those papers carefully. Today’s post is based on one of those: […]
Continue readingbats and exam questions
The third question in last year’s Schol Bio paper was about bats – specifically, the ecology, behaviour, and evolution of New Zealand’s only two extant native land mammals, the lesser short-tailed bat & the long-tailed bat (Mystacina tuberculata & Chalinolobus tuberculata respectively). The long-tailed bat is a relatively new immigrant, arriving from Australia ‘just’ a […]
Continue reading“killer neandertals” – does this one really stack up?
I spent yesterday up in Auckland, running a schol bio preparation day. (And thanks to Mike, Cindy, BEANZ & the Auckland Science Teachers Association) for setting it up.) I do enjoy these sessions (& hopefully the students do too!) as I like the interactions with students & they always ask nice, challenging questions. Anyway, after we’d finished the […]
Continue readingyes, 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 readinga good example of thinking critically
One of my regular readers wrote to me today, about an advert that she’d stumbled across recently. I asked if I could reproduce it here (changing some names) as it’s a very good example of someone thinking critically about claims made for a particular product.
Continue readingfurther ruminations on writing an essay
This post’s triggered by the fact that I’ve just spent several hours reading through draft essays that students have asked me to check for them. I definitely don’t go through & correct every last thing, but I do identify areas that need work, & I’ll give examples of how to improve things. For example, I’ll […]
Continue readingthe great tree of life
This one’s for both teachers & students (& of course, anyone else interested in evolution and evolutionary trees): the Evolutionary Genealogy website 🙂 It’s a site that "seeks to promote the teaching and acceptance of the biological theory of evolution by emphasizing one of its great lessons: that life on Earth is one big extended […]
Continue readingpreparing for scholarship exams
It’s that time of year again, & I’m working on my resources for the sessions I’ll be giving (in Hamilton on September 19th) & over in Hawkes Bay in October) on preparing for the Scholarship Biology exams. By now many of you will have made the decision to sit these exams, & I hope I’ll […]
Continue readinga genetic window on marsupial evolution
I suspect that many people, asked where you’d find marsupials, would answer ‘Australia’ & leave it at that. But while we may be most familiar with Skippy & his ilk, those pouched mammals across the Tasman have close cousins half a world away – in South America.
Continue reading