Valentine's Day and Sexual Selection

Though a teeny bit late for Valentine's Day, I received this link to a NY Times piece speculating about the mechanisms of sexual reproduction in dinosaurs.

Darwin Day

Today is Charles Darwin's 199th birthday! Though next year (his 200th) will be cause for more celebration, I am planning to pay modest homage to Darwin by posting this link to the Darwin Day website, which includes information about his life and scientific contributions, and by continuing our timely discussion of natural selection in my Evolution class. When I was a graduate student, each February 12th I was in charge of procuring the "Happy Birthday, Chuck" cake that we all shared at our philosophy of biology discussion group. Though we're not conducting that elaborate of a celebration here, I have wished my fellow biologists here at Rockhurst Happy Darwin Day. Btw, Abraham Lincoln was born on the same day, (February 12, 1809), so I wish all of you a Happy Darwin-Lincoln Day!

Artificial Selection and M&Ms

Today in my Evolution course I began my expanded discussion of the crux of adaptive evolution, natural selection. In introducing the details of natural selection I began, as Darwin did in On the Origin of Species, by likening the mechanism to that of artificial selection. In the former, the ever-changing environment "selects" who will survive and reproduce, while in the latter, human preference is the arbitrator of what characters are passed on to the next generation. So I thought it appropriate when today I received a link to a post about M&M fitness. It's pretty entertaining, so read it if you get a chance!

New Mammal!

I am always pleased to hear about the discovery (rather than the extinction) of a new plant or animal, and the identification of a new mammal is quite remarkable. Recently, scientists found a new species of elephant shrew, which are neither elephants nor shrews. These 16 species of small mammals actually comprise their own Mammalian Order, the Macroscelidea. That means that they are so different from other mammals that they are the taxonomic (classification) equivalent of carnivores (Order Carnivora), insectivores (Order Insectivora), or primates (Order Primates). So this is a huge find!