The Science Museum of Minnesota is also celebrating Darwin's birthday over this weekend (February 14-16) with family friendly activities in the Community Gallery. On Monday visitors can view biological presentations in the Collections Gallery, and traders at the Collectors' Corner earn 2000 bonus points from Saturday to Monday.
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Charles Darwin: The great naturalist was born 200 hundred years ago.
Courtesy Public DomainToday is the 200th anniversary of the birth of Charles Darwin, one of science’s most revered figures. Special events marking the occasion are planned throughout the world especially in England where he was born on this date (February 12th) in 1809. This year’s also the 150th anniversary of the publication of the famed naturalist’s most important work, On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, a book that revolutionized the science of biology, and one that - despite enormous amounts of evidence in its favor - remains controversial to this day. Born in the town of Shrewsbury, Charles Robert Darwin took after his grandfather Erasmus Darwin and from an early age showed a keen interest in the natural world, particularly geology, botany, and biology. While in college, a professor arranged for Charles to join the surveying expedition of the HMS Beagle to South America. It was during the five-year voyage that Darwin formulated his brilliant theory of evolution through natural selection. He returned to England in 1836 never to venture abroad again, and spent the next two decades writing out his ideas. On the Origin of Species was published on November 24, 1859, and sold out immediately. Five more editions were published during Darwin’s lifetime. He died April 19, 1882.
MORE ABOUT DARWIN
Darwin Online
Darwin Day site
Darwin Bicentennial at London’s Natural History Museum
About Darwin
Voyage of the Beagle (eBook)
Galapagos Islands in peril
Nearly 150 years later, members of the Anglican church push for an apology to Darwin
A British-based website has sprung urging the Anglican church of England to issue a formal apology for the church's treatment of Charles Darwin in the afternmath of his publishing the book "On the Origin of Species." This is a sure-fire topic to generate discussion, so have at it folks.
Think this looks weird?: Creatures you create in Spore will put this trilobite to shame.
Courtesy kevinzimA new computer simulation game based on the theory of evolution is being released today by Electronic Arts, the same company that created the vastly popular SimCity and The Sims. I lost interest in playing video games years ago, but my kids were big fans of the Sims series.
The new game, called Spore, begins with a meteorite delivering the building blocks of life into a primordial planetary ocean. As your life-form eats and grows it acquires DNA points and traits that help it survive. Single-cell organism gradually transform into more complex multi-cellular ones that eventually develop brains, defense mechanisms, and alliances to survive long enough to further evolve - eventually - into advanced civilizations and societies.
When a new generation appears, you’re given access to the game’s Editor, and the ability to add mutations to your creature’s offspring. According to Will Wright the game’s creator the Editor is “roughly a mixture of Mr. Potato Head, an Erector Set, and clay”. Parts can be given more than just one function, so, for example, a tail can be used both as a grasper and stinging weapon if that’s what you want.
Along the way your creature can be designated a predator or prey, whichever strategy proves more useful for it to flourish. It can co-operate with other species, or you can make it competitive and just have it run roughshod over everyone else, and see how that works out for you.
Neil Shubin, a paleontologist at the University of Chicago who studies how evolutionary modifications produce different body plans, was shown the game recently and delighted by it.
“Playing the game you can’t help but feel amazed how, from a few simple rules and instructions, you can get a complex functioning world with bodies, behaviors and whole ecosystems,” he said.
Luckily, (if you haven't already done so on the earlier Spore link) you can also see a great demonstration of the game yourself just by clicking below. The rather extensive demo is given by Will Wright himself.
In the end, I think the idea is to become civilized enough to develop into a society of space colonizers (I suppose so the process can start again).
Some scientists like Shubin love the game, while others aren’t so impressed, complaining it simplifies a very complicated process. But so what? Small mutations over millions of years would take…well, millions of years to play out properly in a more realistic simulation. Do they really want my kids playing computers games more than they already are? I don’t think so.
At least by presenting some of evolution’s grand ideas, Spore just might inspire some gangly, pimple-faced kid to let go of the controller long enough to investigate further the intricacies of the science and natural selection. How could that be bad? But, I have to tell you, after watching the above video demonstration, I’m very eager to try out the game myself.
SOURCES
I'm too sexy for light feathers: Barn swallows with darker chest feathers do better with the ladies than those with lighter feathers, a study shows. On top of that, those that have their feathers darkened increase their production of testosterone.
Courtesy MdfSorry guys, but our perceptions of what makes us manly have taken a severe hit with this new scientific discovery.
Evolutionary biologists working with barn swallows in New Jersey have found that a little extra black make-up applied to the chest feathers of male swallows increases their “hook-ups” with female swallows.
The lighter colored males typically are smaller, less genetically attractive versions of the species and hence their low procreation rate. But as they say, a little dab will do you, and with the help of ink from a marker, life changes for the male swallows.
The researchers actually had done earlier testing that showed the feather coloring change to be an aid for male swallows. But in this latest round of research, they found that maleness-enhancing impacts from the color change. They treated males had increases in the amount of testosterone they produced and even trimmed down in weight.
Full details of the study are available here at the Current Biology website. I just hope that the Hair Club for Men and Grecian Formula yahoos don’t get wind of this new information.
Hyperspeed natural selection observed
in Life Science, Interdependence of Life, Heredity, and Biological Populations Change Over Time
Hypolimnas bolina: Also known as the Great Eggfly or Blue Moon Butterfly. Public domain photo by Comacontro at Wikimedia CommonsScientists have reported witnessing a remarkable and rapid display of evolution through natural selection at work in butterflies in the South Pacific.
Sylvain Charlat and Gregory Hurst along with an international research team stationed in the Samoan Islands observed a huge discrepancy in the ratio of males to females in the Hypolimnas bolina butterfly population. At the beginning of 2006, the scientists noticed that the females on the island of Savii outnumbered the males 99 to 1. It turns out the distorted ratio was caused by the Wolbachia an inherited bacterium which selectively kills the male butterflies before they can hatch. The bacteria are passed down through the mother’s genes.
But by year’s end, Charlat and his colleagues discovered the male population had - within just 10 generations - increased to 39% of the population. The researchers credit the males’ swift recovery to a suppressor gene switching on to counter the bacteria.
"To my knowledge, this is the fastest evolutionary change that has ever been observed," said Charlat, a post-doctoral researcher with joint appointments at the University College London, and University of California, Berkeley. "This study shows that when a population experiences very intense selective pressures, such as an extremely skewed sex ratio, evolution can happen very fast."
Whether the suppressor gene’s appearance was due to a chance mutation within the local population or introduced by migrating Southeast Asian butterflies where it was already present is not yet known. But Charlat and his team hope to pinpoint the cause in the next three years.
"In essence, organisms must evolve or change to stay in the same place, whether it's a predator-prey relationship, or a parasite-host interaction," said Charlat. "In the case of H. bolina, we're witnessing an evolutionary arms race between the parasite and the host. This strengthens the view that parasites can be major drivers in evolution."
Regardless of which route natural selection took, Gregory Hurst the co-author of the study appearing in today’s issue of the journal Science, thinks the end result is still a stunningly rapid evolutionary response to an environmental change.
"We usually think of natural selection as acting slowly, over hundreds or thousands of years," Hurst said. "But the example in this study happened in a blink of the eye, in terms of evolutionary time, and is a remarkable thing to get to observe."
In 2002, Hurst and his colleagues identified Wolbachia as the cause of the lopsided sex ratio. He holds a current post as a reader in ecology and evolution at University College London.
Also known as the Great Eggfly or Blue Moon Butterfly. Public domain photo by Comacontro at Wikimedia Commons
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