Old Weblog - September 2005

Some of the great apes - chimps, gorillas, and orangutans - could be extinct in the wild within a human generation, a new assessment concludes. Human settlement, logging, mining and disease mean that orangutans in parts of Indonesia may lose half of their habitat within five years.
One side can be wrong (Guardian: 01-Sep-05)
Accepting 'intelligent design' in science classrooms would have disastrous consequences, warn Richard Dawkins and Jerry Coyne
Scientists are only now starting to recognise the astonishing size reached by pterosaurs, the flying reptiles that lived at the time of the dinosaurs. New discoveries in the Americas suggest some had wingspans of 18m (60ft). But there was nothing ugly about the way they moved through the air, according to expert Dr David Martill, of the University of Portsmouth. Their ability to utilise air currents, thermals and ground effects would astonish aeroplane designers, he said.
University scientists say they have found strong proof that the human brain is still evolving. By comparing modern man with our ancestors of 37,000 years ago, the Chicago team discovered big changes in two genes linked to brain size.
In recent weeks, a satirical attack on the teaching of Creationism in American schools has become the world's fastest growing 'religion'. The Noodly Saviour looked at the furore He had created and pronounced it good, writes James Langton.
Robert Heinsohn, professor of evolutionary biology at the Australian National University, explains.
…But sometimes female birds are more colourful than the males, and there is an evolutionary explanation for that too.
A tweak of God's knobs (Guardian: 13-Sep-05)
…Imagine if the values of one or two of nature's fundamental constants were slightly different, say the strengths of forces that hold atoms together. One consequence might be that the Earth's oceans would regularly freeze. Water - essential for life - is unique in being lighter as a solid than as a liquid. So ice sheets float and form an insulating layer that stops the deeper waters freezing. If water was more conventional then the primordial oceans would never have stayed liquid for long enough for life to evolve. But then of course we would not be here to ponder our good fortune.
Maybe I'm missing the point, but I could never understand all the fuss about the anthropic principle: it seems so bleeding obvious to me, it hardly warrants comment, let alone controversy.
Female greater horseshoe bats share male mates with their mothers and grandmothers, Nature magazine reports. This serves to bind families together, but avoids the dangers of inbreeding.
Improved technologies for extracting genetic material from fossils may help us find out more about our ancient ancestors. Scientists in Israel have just developed a new technique to retrieve better quality, less contaminated DNA from very old remains, including human bones. It could aid the study of the evolution and migration of early modern humans, as well as extinct populations such as our close relatives, the Neanderthals.
The price of saving the world's frogs, toads and salamanders from oblivion will top $400m (£220m) over five years. This is the estimated cost of a global action plan drawn up during an expert summit in Washington DC, and backed by the UN's biodiversity agency IUCN. The money would pay for the protection of habitats, for disease prevention and captive-breeding projects, and for the ability to respond to emergencies. About a third of all amphibian species are at a high risk of extinction.
Scientists have examined the genes of "whale lice" to track whale evolution. The small parasitic crustaceans were taken off right whales, which have been driven to the brink of extinction in some waters by commercial hunting. The genetics of the lice reveal their hosts split into three species 5-6 million years ago, and these were all equally abundant before whaling began.
What a wonderful experiment!
Darwin’s Rottweiler (Discover: Sep-05)
It was a very Richard Dawkins moment. About 10 minutes into an interview, as he sat in the airy living room of his Oxford home, casually attired in a T-shirt with a dinosaur emblazoned on its front and in midtalk about The Ancestor’s Tale, his book about evolution that some regard as his magnum opus, Dawkins had suddenly interrupted the conversation, risen to his feet, and stalked off to look up a very British word he had just used.
Magazine confers knighthood on Richard Dawkins!
The Wars Over Evolution (The New York Review of Books: Sep-05)
Evolution book reviews by Richard Lewontin.
The term "endangered species" typically conjures up images of charismatic animals—tigers, pandas, orangutans, whales, condors. But a new study says that the vast majority of species on the verge of extinction is in fact humble insects. The study estimates that up to 44,000 bugs of all varieties could have been wiped off the face of the Earth during the last 600 years. And hundreds of thousands more insect species could be lost over the next 50 years.
Scientists are to present new evidence that the tiny human species dubbed "The Hobbit" may not be what it seems. The researchers say their findings strongly support an idea that the 1m- (3ft-) tall female skeleton from Indonesia is a diseased modern human.
Wildlife on Earth has never looked so bountiful. Scientists believe that 2005 could be a record year for the discovery of new creatures. A total of 20,000 new species, from beetles to dolphins, and from monkeys to birds, are expected to be uncovered by zoologists.
When scientists announced last month they had determined the exact order of all 3 billion bits of genetic code that go into making a chimpanzee, it was no surprise that the sequence was more than 96 percent identical to the human genome. Charles Darwin had deduced more than a century ago that chimps were among humans' closest cousins. But decoding chimpanzees' DNA allowed scientists to do more than just refine their estimates of how similar humans and chimps are. It let them put the very theory of evolution to some tough new tests.
Mariners over the centuries have reported surreal, nocturnal displays of glowing sea surfaces stretching outwards to the horizon. Little is known about these "milky seas" other than that they are probably caused by luminous bacteria. But the first satellite detection of this strange phenomenon in the Indian Ocean may now aid future research.
Charles Darwin saw luminous seas when he was on board HMS Beagle.
The first ever pictures of a live giant squid in its natural environment have been snapped in deep water off Japan. Working with a cheap camera and a fishing boat, the two Japanese researchers have succeeded where millions of dollars and international film crews have failed.
DNA from museum samples of extinct animals is providing unexpected information on the extent and effect of the Ice Age as well as the path of species evolution, according to a report by scientists from Yale University, the Smithsonian Institute and the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology.
A sharp increase in the Earth’s atmospheric oxygen levels about 50 million years ago was responsible for the rise of the large mammals, a new study claims. "We argue that the rise in oxygen content allowed mammals to become very, very large—mammals like 12-foot-tall sloths and huge sabre-toothed cats," says Paul Falkowski at Rutgers University in New Jersey, US, who led the study. Higher oxygen levels means animals can grow larger and still maintain the supply of oxygen to their muscles.
Gorillas have been seen for the first time using simple tools to perform tasks in the wild, researchers say. Scientists observed gorillas in a remote Congolese forest using sticks to test the depth of muddy water and to cross swampy areas.