Welcome to the Carnival of Evolution #18!
First off – big news here at the Carnival. As you can see, my edition is late again. I can’t seem to find the time to keep up online anymore (thanks alot starfish gene cloning). Thus it is with both disappointment and excitement that I am turning over administration [...]

I’m back!!!
Oh…you never realized I was gone?
Ah well, that’s ok, because I AM back – back from a stressful few months of wondering where I would end up, how I would feed my babies (i.e. cats) and their baby-momma (my wife – yeah that does sound rather gross), and several dozen unknowns also thrown into [...]

“Only a handful have ever been found before. But none like her. Her name is Lyuba. A 1-month-old baby mammoth, she walked the tundra about 40,000 years ago and then died mysteriously. Discovered by a reindeer herder, she miraculously re-appeared on a riverbank in northwestern Siberia in 2007. She is the most perfectly preserved woolly [...]

I owe the following example of evolutionary adaptation to the always amazing evolutionary and developmental biologist Dr. Sean B. Carroll, from his lecture “Making of the Fittest” for the Darwin College – Darwin Lecture Series, available at iTunes U (I highly recommend everyone give it a listen).

Imagine that you are a fish – exothermic and [...]

I am a fossil collector.
Ever since I was a small child I have been collecting fossils.  In fact, I can trace my own fascination with biology directly to my discovery that the very house in which I lived (actually a trailer back then), was set upon land literally made of these long dead and formerly [...]

Just a couple of quick notes to my fellow developmental biologists out there:
First, due to my recent post, Science Blogging: The Future of Science Communication & Why You Should be a Part of it, I was reminded through my comments at Larry Moran’s reaction post at Sandwalk that I haven’t met very many developmental biologist [...]

What’s better than children singing? Children singing about science. And to take it once step better, give all the little kiddies British accents.
Apparently these videos have been around for quite some time, but I somehow missed them. Thus I’m guessing that some of you may have missed them as well.
The following are a couple of [...]

There’s one particular event of every summer in the South that I always await with great anticipation: the emergence of the millions of annual Dog Day cicadas (Tibicen canicularis).
It’s not just the event itself that I love. The cicadas are certainly wonders in themselves; but for me, they are more than just insects of the [...]

Here is an awesome NGC video I saw a while back. I dug it up because it goes along nicely with our ongoing conversation on Medical Research in Animal Models, including discussions of self-awareness in animals.
Be sure to check out the sequence starting at 1:50, which shows the different responses between monkeys, apes, and humans [...]

This weekend I heard an incredibly interesting story on NPR’s This American Life titled “Almost Human Resources” (Act 3). The story was all about the issues surrounding chimpanzees in the human world surpassing their usefulness and how we should care for them. Apparently this now includes retirement homes with TVs.
This story, along with a recent [...]

If you haven’t read my piece on Flatfish Eyes & Recapitulation Theory, you should check it out. For those of you who have read it, I updated it with the following AMAZING morph animations of flatfish development that I somehow missed before (much thanks to Adrian Thysse, FCD of Evolving Complexity for pointing these out [...]

Earlier this week, thanks to the wonderful science & nature Twitter community, I followed a link from someone now forgotten to an article entitled “7 Symbiotic Wonders of the Aerial World.”
Therein, in symbiotic relationship number one, sat a photograph that I found utterly astonishing:
According to the WebEcoist website which published this list of “symbiotic wonders.”
“It [...]

Heart the size of a Mini Cooper.
Mouth big enough to hold 100 people.
Longer than a basketball court.
Weighing as much as 25 large elephants.
It is the largest creature ever to inhabit the earth.
But we know precious little about it.
Yes, I am now an advertising pawn of big media. But it’s a particular medium that I have [...]

Most biologists at one time or another in their training have learned of the 19th century theory expounded upon by Ernst Haeckel called “Recapitulation Theory“.
The theory’s thesis: “Ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny.” Don’t worry – it’s not as complicated as the biological jargon might imply.
The idea boils down to a simple one – one that seemed to [...]

“In the gloom it came along the branches towards me, its round, hypnotic eyes blazing, its spoon-like ears turning to and fro like radar dishes, its white whiskers twitching and moving like sensors; its black hands, with their thin fingers, the third seeming terribly elongated, tapping delicately on the branches as it moved along.”
- Gerald [...]

Though we are nearing the end of the “official” Darwin Day celebration, considering Charles Darwin’s 200th birthday and the 150th anniversary of the publication of The Origin of Species, 2009 is sure to be the Year of Darwin. In fact, a slew of events will be filling the entire month of February and there are [...]

Happy 200th birthday, Charles Darwin!
Happy 200th birthday, Abraham Lincoln!
Happy 150th anniversary, On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life!
And here’s to a happy Darwin Day and upcoming Valentine’s Day to everyone else.
As a part of my own contribution to the Blog for [...]

Welcome back to the Carnival of Evolution – the place where the sideshow freaks of nature, the genetic mutants of the Tree of Life, run the show. Yes – we are all mutants, each of us with our own mutant powers, whether that be gripping plastic electronic mice with opposable thumbs or using specialized spiny [...]

Do you love invertebrates as much as I?
If so, make your way now over to the resurrected Circus of the Spineless, a blog carnival devoted to the world of invertebrates, hosted this 35th edition by Kevin Zelnio of The Other 95% and Deep Sea News.
And to my old ecology/zoology professor, Dr. Matt Moran – thank [...]

I will be hosting the next biweekly installment of the Carnival of Evolution #8 (a blog carnival devoted to…well…you can figure it out) here at biochemicalsoul.
You can submit your own articles that either directly or indirectly deal with Evolution by using this handy form.
If you would also like to host, check out the CoE mothership [...]

Appalled.
That’s the nicest word I can think of to define my feelings about the vote for California’s Proposition 8, which bans marriage between homosexual humans.
As has been discussed all over the digital tubes since last night’s election, the turn against gay marriage was largely funded by the hate and bigotry of the Mormons. I can’t [...]

In a cool new study in PLoS Genetics, through artificial selection researchers have allowed fruit flies (Drosophila) to evolve tolerance to normally lethal low levels of Oxygen.
To many scientists, this type of research will not be seen as that impressive, as a general finding. Artificial selection has been occurring for millennia, and it is the [...]

Do you suffer from premature ejaculation (or more accurately does your wife, girlfriend, boyfriend, hookup, or porn film director suffer from your problem)?
If so, you can probably blame your parents, or their parents, or their parents… you get the picture – it seems to be genetic.
For an entertaining rundown of this current bit of fascinating [...]

Today  I read of another huge snake finding in Florida that got me thinking once again about invasive species and evolution, as did the original story from earlier this year in which I learned of the invasion.1
Over the past eight years, a population of Burmese pythons has been exploding in the Florida everglades. As of [...]

I just got home and happened to look up into the corner of my porch today, when what do I see but a Northern Black Widow (Latrodectus variolus) tending her egg case above my steps.
I have seen hundreds of black widows at my house (see some really cool closeups in my previous post on black [...]