This Week in Evolution

I've just agreed to give a talk in January at the Applied Evolution Summit: a small group of experts meeting at an island research station near the Great Barrier Reef to apply evolutionary biology to critical problems in human health, agriculture, fisheries, etc. It might surprise some evolution denialists to learn that pornography, abortion, atheism and "death panels" are not on the agenda, just science. Of course, when we talk about how global warming is affecting the coral reefs critical to some fish, we may need to go look!

I'm going to try really hard to finish my book before the meeting, which will keep me quite busy until then. I don't teach regular classes -- as an adjunct professor, I'm paid only from our grants -- but reading proposals for a grant panel, writing a paper on "spiteful solar tracking" in alfalfa for Evolutionary Applications, and helping my hard-working and brilliant grad students with methods and manuscripts can't wait until my book is done. So I may be posting only sporadically for a while.

Posted by R. Ford Denison at 7:40 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

I usually approve genuine comments within a day, while deleting Viagra ads and such. Recently, however, recently the server seems to be losing comments while reporting that they are being held for my approval. I thought the problem had been fixed, but it seems to have reappeared. I have complained, so maybe it will be fixed. You can always send me an email instead.

Update: looks like my spam filter was set too high. Also, not enough genuine readers are commenting!

Posted by R. Ford Denison at 9:55 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I hope to welcome one or possibly two new graduate students in autumn 2010. Here's the summary I wrote for the Ecology, Evolution and Behavior web page:

Research inspired by W.D. Hamilton's ideas, often using microcosms and noncharismatic microfauna: evolution of cooperation and conflict in legume-rhizobium symbiosis (New Phytologist 2009), longevity-vs.-reproduction tradeoff as a possible explanation for hormesis etc. (PLoS One 2009), and agricultural implications of past and ongoing natural selection (Q. Rev. Biol. 2003 and forthcoming book).

Posted by R. Ford Denison at 3:21 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

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Until this is fixed, if you want to send me a comment via email, I can attach it to the related post.

Posted by R. Ford Denison at 7:32 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

My NSF grant will run out soon, so I get to spend the year in which we celebrate the 200th anniversary of Darwin's birth and the 150th anniversary of The Origin of Species as an amateur scientist, like Darwin himself. I'm not as smart or as rich as he was, but I do have imaginative and hard-working students and much better equipment.

I'm working on two grant proposals and several papers while dreaming of getting back to writing my book, so no detailed paper analysis this week. But Nature is highlighting 15 major papers on evolution they have published in the last few years.

Posted by R. Ford Denison at 5:11 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

This is a kilometerstone of sorts: my 100th post! Also, cumulative visits passed 10,000 this week. I know some blogs get more hits than that in only one day, but I used to spend hours preparing a lecture for 25 students, so I guess it's worthwhile to write a blog post for 10,000/100=100 readers. My readership trend over months seems to be slightly downward, however; I hope that's due to other blogs are getting better and readers having limited time, rather than my posts getting worse. Maybe I should be spending the time on my research or my Darwinian Agriculture book instead.

I recently wrote about mimicry in butterflies, then saw an interesting paper on how natural selection and migration affect mimicry in snakes. Selection and migration ("gene flow") are two of the four main processes responsible for evolutionary changes in the frequency of alternative genes in populations; the other two are the random ("drift") processes that can have a big effect in small populations but get smoothed out in large populations and, of course, mutation.

Selection and gene flow often act in opposite directions, because animals migrating into an area (or seeds or pollen blowing in) tend to be less well adapted to their new home, relative to animals or plants that have been evolving there. This general rule held up in this week's paper, as evident from the title: "Selection overrides gene flow to break down maladaptive mimicry", written by George Harper and David Pfenning and published in Nature.

Continue reading "100th post: reversing evolution II: mimicry in snakes" »

Posted by R. Ford Denison at 6:37 PM | Permalink | Comments (14)

I'm sure I could make more money doing something else, but this made my day. That and getting another rhizobium paper accepted by Proceedings of the Royal Society. Would it be greedy to go for the top three?

Posted by R. Ford Denison at 8:33 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

John Dennehy, the Evilutionary Biologist, has tried to live up to his name by "tagging" me and seven others. He doesn't seem that evil to me, but I like his blog. I'm supposed to post eight "random" facts about myself...

Continue reading "Tagged" »

Posted by R. Ford Denison at 5:26 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Visitors per day: 42 (one of my favorite numbers)
Longest visit: 52 minutes
Only 26% use Internet Explorer (obviously a sophisticated bunch!)
Leading source of incoming links: Terry Tao’s “What’s new� math site (wow!) and Carl Zimmer's "The Loom"
Second-most-common language: Usually Portuguese (equal numbers from Portugal and Brazil) or Finnish
Islands: Islas Canarias (Spain), Iceland, Ireland, UK, New Zealand (both islands), Honshu (Japan), Dominican Republic, Australia? Kama`ainas too busy with real surfing?
Under-represented continents: Africa (cradle of human evolution) and Antarctica
Favorite compliment: "er zu einer wirklich raren Spezies gehört: ein Science Blog (fast) ausschließlich über Science (*gasp*)"

Posted by R. Ford Denison at 6:35 PM | Permalink | Comments (12)

I reserve my blog-given right to delete off-topic comments -- except in this Troll Refuge. "Comments" whose only purpose is to link to a commercial or crackpot site will generally be deleted everywhere. This is a free service to people who may not realize they are crackpots.

Comments immune from deletion outside the Troll Refuge are either:
1) comments on the particular paper-of-the-week, or
2) suggestions for papers to discuss that meet the criteria in my first post.

"But", you may say, "I've got this great proof that evolution is all wrong! This scientist said something that could be interpreted as inconsistent with some aspect of evolutionary theory! That proves that both versions of the creation story in Genesis (cattle and trees created before and after humans) are literally true, doesn't it?"

If the scientist said it in a peer-reviewed paper published in the last month and containing new data, you can suggest it as a paper of the week. Otherwise, post your proof here in the Troll Refuge.

The comments section for this entry is also the place to whine about censorship, or to complain about my failure to delete someone else's comment that you think is off-topic. Off-topic comments attached to other entries are subject to deletion, or, if particularly amusing, transfer to this troll refuge, possibly with appropriate editing. Trolls repeatedly posting outside the refuge will be banished.

Troll hunters are welcome in the refuge, too. This may seem cruel, but we need to keep the population below carrying capacity. However, no firearms will be allowed, only sticks and stones. And words, of course.

Posted by R. Ford Denison at 3:50 PM | Permalink | Comments (9)

In general, I don't want to waste time responding to tired old creationist criticisms of evolutionary theory that have already been refuted elsewhere (such as here or here) -- criticisms backed by new data would be another story -- but I do need to address one issue that could undermine my ability to find a paper to discuss each week. Some creationists have suggested that scientists are increasingly rejecting evolution. Actually they've been saying this for a long time. Is my paper pipeline drying up?

Continue reading "Evolution triumphs over photosynthesis" »

Posted by R. Ford Denison at 11:52 PM | Permalink | Comments (6)

A member of the audience at a recent Cafe Scientifique on "Understanding Evolution" complained that the speakers spent more time talking about the political battle with fundamentalists who don't want evolution taught in schools -- this is especially a problem in the US and Turkey -- rather than discussing new discoveries in evolutionary biology. The theory of evolution is the cornerstone of biology, in the same sense that the germ theory of disease is a cornerstone of medicine, so I agree that increasing the amount and quality of coverage of evolution is a critical educational goal.

But I also sympathized with the audience member who wanted to hear more about science and less about politics and religion. It's not that hard to find out about new discoveries in evolutionary biology if you have access to a university library or even just a good internet connection. But I liked the name, "This Week in Evolution", and nobody seemed to be using it!

Each week, I plan to discuss a scientific paper that meets the following criteria:
1) published during the previous month;
2) about some aspect of evolution;
3) published after peer review in a journal with a citation impact of at least 1.0 (i.e., no third-tier journals);
4) containing significant amounts of data, not just mathematical modeling or discussion.

Continue reading "What's new in evolution? Lots!" »

Posted by R. Ford Denison at 8:18 PM | Permalink | Comments (4)