I would add that competition will be fierce.
Be prepared to volunteer for any relevant opportunities even if they aren't exactly where you want to end up - e.g. working on a biological project that isn't on charismatic megafauna, getting some media experience that isn't about wildlife.
It looks like Scutigera coleoptrata to me, commonly known as the house centipede.
They are endemic to the med area but has also been spread quite a bit by humans. I used to find them sometimes in Devon where I grew up. They eat other invertebrates and are not dangerous to humans, but I personally find them quite terrifying! Something to do with the way they scuttle and the speed they can move at evokes some kind of primal fear in me!
more info from wikipedia here:
There's some more thoughts on this topic here if you're interested
I agree with Ajna but it is a term used slightly differently in different areas of biology. I have certainly come across biologists who us "phenotype" to mean morphology only but this is - in my view - quite wrong! Increasingly people are referring to the whole multivariate phenotype (i.e. including all traits you can think of and measure/observe) as the phenome.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phenome
As an aside...this means that studying phenotypes can be called phenomics which - if I was a cynic - I might think was simply a way to join the club of new names for biological subjects. We've had genomics, post-genomics, transcriptomics, proteomics, metabalomics, and now phenomics.... I'm hoping ecology will be rebranded as eco-nomics next - just to cause confusion!
They are not very common but do seem to crop up now and again - if you search for images with google you'll see quite lot.
I haven't been able to find out whether suppliers are deliberately producing and releasing white birds for supply to the shooting industry, or whether these are just popping up now and again by chance in naturalised birds. The genetic mechanism is probably a major mutation somewhere that is normally recessive to the wild type colouration but results in white birds in the homozygous state. If so it would be easy to select for white birds (just as we have done in chickens) - maybe they'd be easier to spot for the hunters?
No - they have testes near their kidneys (i.e. in the abdominal cavity) and so scrotum's at all. They do have v odd penises, and generally quite strange reproductive biology by mammalian standards... then again everything about monotremes is odd by mammalian standards!
The wiki page gives quite a lot of detail that loosk pretty accurate to me.
Yes - volunteer to get experience. Hassle your professors and see if they/anyone in their groups could use an extra pair of hands to help with fieldwork over the summer. Be prepared to take anything - even if it is not what you want to do ultimately - and this would include labwork or fieldwork on animals/in places that don't particularly excite you. In fact, for me people often stand out more if they have been willing to put in hard hours on a tedious project - it shows commitment to the science!
Agreed - it's never too late if you have the motivation. You will need to work hard at your first degree though, a 1st or 2.1 is generally required to get into a PhD program so make that your short term goal and then see where you go from there.
We have some great entomologist contributers on here so hopefully someone will recognise this guy and give you an ID.
Do bear in mind though that we are mostly UK based biologists, so few of us have dircet experience with the insect fauna of NC. You might also try posting your photo on a N American site like this just for butterflies and moths (and their caterpillars of course!)
An excellent question, and one to which different people will give different answers. there is a whole area of debate and discussion on what level of biological organisation selection acts on. A useful summary is provided here
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unit_of_selection
In a nutshell, we normally think of selection as operating among individuals within a population. My reading of Darwin is that this is certainly what he had in mind when he wrote the Origin. However there are times when it is more convenient and/or appropriate to think of selection on genes (the "selfish gene" view popularised by Dawkins and others). There are also situations where it is useful to think about selection among groups, populations, or even species. However, these higher levels of selection are more controversial. Or perhaps to be more precise whether selection occuring at these higher levels plays an important part in evolution is more controversial!
Hi Simon,
It's never too late and I'd definitely encourage you to pursue your interests in marine biology. I would be lying if I said that any field of biology was awash with easy to get, well paid jobs though. So do it for love not money! Career prospects are greatly increased by having experience as well as education so if you do decide to go for a degree in marine biology then also look out for any and all opportunities to get experience. this could include working with conservation groups, local aquariums etc etc and may require volunteering.
Good luck!
I'm sure people will have plenty of biological suggestions for you. For evolutionary biology I'd recommend "Almost like a whale" by Steve Jones.
It is also important to make a distinction between inbreeding (mating among relatives) and inbreeding depression (reductions in fitness that arise from inbreeding). In fact a population that is inbred may suffer inbreeding depression because recessives mutations that are bad end up being expressed more (because they end up in the homozygous state). However if these mutations then get selected out of the population an inbred population can become "purged", so that there are few further problems of inbreeding depression.
To give a slightly different perspective... in zoology we usually use the term morphology to mean aspects of shape (or size) that can be assessed from the whole organism - and usually without invasive procedures. For instance the length of a snake or the shape of a deer's antler would be referred to as "morphological" traits. To me "anatomy" more implies the structure and organisation of organs and tissues within the body. However, I suspect this view reflects a rather restricted and limited use view of the term anatomy.
It's a silverfish - some basic info here
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silverfish
In a nutshell they are common and harmless, but are considered household "pests" because they can eat things you might not want them too (e.g. your food, books) although most of the time they will just be eating general dirt i expect (I'm not saying you don't clean... but we all have stuff under teh cooker right?). If you found a couple there are almost certainly more of them of them I'm afraid.
Control options include being nice to other beasties (spiders, centipedes) that you find in your apartment as they'll happily prey on silverfish. A rigorous cleaning program may also help. Finally there are any number of chemical products you can buy that will kill them if that will definitely make you happier.
Sorry that nobody has a good answer to this.
As I'm sure you know the lights will have attracted the fish, probably allowing them to feed as they are visual predators. This is just pure speculation really - but I wonder if they also attracted something bigger than feeds on blue runners. The panicked behaviour, circling and jumping sounds a bit like they were being forced into a bait ball by a predators below. As I say this is just speculation though !
Just to add that our lungs - and those of other tetrapods- are developmentally and ancestrally homologous to swim bladders of bony fish. So the way the structures of our respiratory system have evolved is believed to have been a case of "reusing" (obviously with evolutionary modification) something that did not evolve as a lung.
The crossing of the trachea and oesophagus is thought to be a consequence of this and is sometimes used as a counterpoint to "intelligent design" arguments against evolution. Basically if an engineer was to design an air intake system and a food intake system from scratch then making the ducts cross would not be "intelligent" (particularly if getting water in your air duct, or air in your water duct could "kill" the machine!).
I don't think that there are sturgeon native to the waters around Hawaii. As you say, sturgeon are anadromous (or most are) and so migrate from fresh to saltwater. however, I'm fairly certain none spawn in Hawaii freshwaters and they are not oceanic travellers. So a wild sturgeon that found itself near Maui would - I think - be one that had got badly lost (which is possible of course!)
Perhaps more likely is that either it was a different type of fish - the drying out may have made it appear more sturgeon-like than in life. According to the Star Bulletin there was some sturgeon aquaculture in Hawaii
http://archives.starbulletin.com/2003/0 … index.html
i don't know whether this is still ongoing. i also don't know if they use a saltwater rearing step as in much salmonid farming - if so then escapes are always possible.
I've actually had one follow me the best part of 150 miles... but it was across the English channel. I was on a small boat so the gull could easily keep up and not lose sight of us. Not sure why it followed us as we didn't even feed it till half way across.
If you drove 100 miles I'd be very surprised if it was the same bird!
Hi Jack
Not many of us are too familiar with the SA education system so it may be hard to give you specific advice. I do not think university rankings always capture what is good or bad about an institution but for what it's worth Witwatersrand is certainly viewed as one of the top uni's in SA. However, it doesn't have a particularly high profile internationally. I would speak to your supervisor about this since he/she should be able to give you informed advice. I would also look into the funcing arrangements carefully - in many countries international student fees as higher that for nationals so make sure you can afford to study there.
Finally, if you have already got as far as thinking you might like to study outside Italy, then I would also consider other options than SA. For instance there is a lot of wildlife research conducted in Canadian universities, but you could also look at the US, Australia etc etc if you wanted somewhere English speaking.
I can't think of any particular reason why they would - however if the honeysuckle is in an area with frequent disturbance (e.g. near a garden path with people passing a lot) then they might.
I'm generally in agreement with your friend here in that evolution does not have intent or destiny - it is a process. Evolution involves several processes (mutation, genetic drift) in addition to natural selection and I think sometimes people forget that a lot of variation is actually close to being neutral in terms of its influence on fitness.
As for whether all traits carry an advantage - there is a semantic game to be played here which is basically what do you mean by trait and what level of biological organisation are we talking about? If we are trying to explain major differences among at higher levels - e.g. why do whale limbs look like they do compared to ungualte legs (their closest relatives) then answering in terms of the advantages of flippers/fins makes a lot of sense. However, if you want to know why some people in a human have red hair and others are blonde - the answer is probably not that both offer distinct advantages, but rather that neither is disadvantageous so selection does not remove the variation.
This is a glass half-full half-empty situation really - selection favours variants that confer higher fitness, removes variants that have lower fitness, but does not impact the frequency of variants with (roughly) equal fitness.
I totally agree with David that "rape" is not a useful term outside of the human context.
Having said that if you look across animal species there is a very wide range of reproductive behaviours. Female choice of mating partner is a key component of many mating systems (including our own), but there are also plenty of animals in which female choice is more limited (or non-existant). For instance in many harem holding species males will contest over the "right" to mate with females. The females may then have little choice of partner (but may control if and when the holding male gets to copulate).
There are also plenty of animal species where copulation is essentially forced so that a female chooses neither the partner nor the timing. If you want to observe this yourself have a look at some mallard ducks this spring. This article about male reproductive tactics - and how the females "fight back" may be of interest.
Hi Evan,
Most of the contributors here are UK based and gar are limited to the Americas/Carribean so we may not be able to help much. I think (could be wrong) that the morphology of the gill rakers forms a basis for distinguishing the two genera.
Given the increasing popularity of this group among aquarists posting on a (N American) aquatic site might get you more useful diagnostics for juvenile fish.
Epigenetics is a term that tends to mean rather different things to different people - everything from DNA methylation through to imprintingt, maternal effects and even GxE interactions (when the observed effect of a DNA variant depends on the environment it is expressed in) has been termed "epigenetic". There is increasing interest in all of these phenomena but I don't think people are seeing these as consistent with Lamarckism.
As a caveat to this, there is a growing recognition that non-genetic social inheritance processes play a strong role in how traits (especially behaviours) change through time. Often this process can be Lamarckian in the sense that behaviours acquired in one generation can be passed to the next. Most geneticists I know would not refer to this as epigenetics - but some behavioural scientists I know would.
.. but people often pout or grimace when they frown so I think it could be argued wither way. David's concluding remark seems sensible to me though.
Bottom line is that the claim about taking more muscles to frown than smile is probably (I could be wrong!) pseudo-science that shouldn't be taken literally
I'd disagree slightly with David's summary. The idea of evolution predates Darwin and had been written about by others (perhaps most notably the French naturalist Lamarck). Darwin's insight (together with Wallace) was to recognise the mechanism driving change which he called "natural selection".
Natural selection is fundamental to the modern theory of evolution, but so is genetics which Darwin knew nothing about. So alongside Darwin there are a host of important scientists who can be credited with having made major contributions (e.g., Mendel, Haldane, Wright, Fisher, Watson & Crick etc etc) leading right up to the modern genomics era.
The term "Darwinism" is often used to mean the "theory of evolution." In my view this is not ideal as it (perhaps) implies that evolutionary biologists simply follow Darwin's teachings without questioning them or adding new understanding. It seems a bit like calling physics Newtonism or Einsteinism.
For what it's worth when recuiting PhD students I don't think people will favour a degree form Bristol over one from Imperial or vice versa. Thay are both very goo duniversities. Go with your gut instinct about where you'll be happiest, then work hard and get a good degree!
Hi Helen,
I don't know the answer to this, but the explanation for similar observations given at this RSPB site certainly sounds plausible to me. Assuming this is correct then they may be after grit for their gizzards to help with grinding up edible food items.
I may be wrong (in which case Dave please correct me..) but I thought most of the African and Asiatic lions were in habitat that we'd normally describe as savanna - so a mix of grass and fairly open, dry forest. That's not to say you never find lions in "jungles" (you do) - but "King of the savanna" would be a more accurate moniker based on contemporary distributions at least.
Hi Chris,
The only study on this I've seen is quite old (from the early 1980's) but certainly suggests that intruding males don't always kill the cubs. Sometimes the females will defend their cubs cooperatively and this can be succesful (although it is risky for a female as she could be injured or even killed as well). Also there are documented cases of mothers leaving the pride with their cubs when infanticidal males take over.
Perhaps this is not what you meant, but I am always struck by how much sculpture and painting is recreating biological form (female/male nudes, sculptures of animals, still life paintings of plants etc etc). So I would argue biology is the inspiration for lot of what humans find aesthetically pleasing.
As an aside - I agree with you about maths - but biologists can be very mathematical too. For some reason (likely due to the way the subject are taught at school) people always seem to assume only physicists use equations. I see a lot of aesthetic beauty in many of the mathematical models we use in biology (though sadly not in my own inept efforts...)
I'm a zoologist and I think it's a great profession. So the the simplistic answer is that you can go as far as you want! If you want an academic career where you drive your own research goals then you will ultimately need a PhD, but focus on getting a good degree first and then (assuming you are in the US/Canada) get on a good masters program.
As far as other options, yes I think you could be a game warden with just a first degree. You could also work for a professor as a field researcher, or work in a zoo. I would say that all jobs in zoology are hard to get and competition will be fierce. Who wouldn't rather watch lions in the Serengeti than sit in an office?
My advice would be to get some practical experience which will usually mean seeking out volunteer opportunities. Also, if you want to work with animals then be prepared to work with any animals not just exotic or charismatic ones! When we are recuiting field workers (or volunteers) we look for people with field assistance, not for people who love our study species. This means that volunteering with small scale local projects is usually your best bet for getting involved in bigger things later.
As for double majoring... I'll let someone from the US comment as to whether they think that's a good idea. My advice is always to study what you find interesting - if that's microbiology and zoology and you can handle the workload then great.
If you have goldfish - and you are keeping them in a tank - then this site might give you some useful advice.
http://shoal.in/wiki/2010/12/breeding-g … -aquarium/
If you have a different type of fish then your first job is to find out what, then google the species name for loads of info on sexing and breeding your pets.
Yep - agreed! Just playing devil's advocate really.
However, an interesting question (to which I don't know the answer) is whether the gap between humans and chimps is greater than, for example, the gap between chimps and dogs (or dolphins/squirrels/any animal). The point being that while we perceive a distinction between humans and animals, in cognitive terms it may be that the more important distinctions are between say mammals and other tetrapods, or predators and herbivores, or vertebrates and invertebrates. These kind of patterns would be interesting to know about and might perhaps shed light on the evolution of cognitive abilities.
I agree with all said by David and Corwin but re
>but there's no denying the fact that there is a large gap in cognition between >humans and even chimpanzees.
much may depend on the rearing environment provided. There was a recent study suggesting that - given extra care by human keepers -cognitive abilities of baby chimpanzees exceeded those of same age human infants. Although the difference is reversed in later life, this highlights the fact that we are probably not as superior as we think we are.
The genetic basis of variation among species in their cognitive skills is likely to reflect divergent ecologies that impose different evolutionary selection pressures - see for instance this article comparing bonobos and chimps, while cultural/social inheritance are also hugely important.
http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Ad … ne.0012438
In general research into animal cognition is a massively growing field that brings together biologists and pschologists. Almost on a daily basis people are finding evidence for cognitive skills in animals that are far more advanced than we had assumed until recently.
I agree with Paolo. There is circularity in noting that humans are incredibly successful at the things we are good at.
Human technology is certainly amazing, but on the other hand if lungfish had such cognitive abilities (perhaps they do!) they might think it was pretty pathetic of humans not to be able to breathe above and below water without mechanical assistance.
Broadly speaking all systems of systematics use shared simailarity to group organisms into taxa that can be arranged hierarchically forning "trees". Modern phylogenetic analyses use molecular data (e.g. DNA sequesnce) but morphology was long the dominant source of data (and still is for some groups - particularly of extinct taxa). I'm not aware of trees built on a single gross anatomical structure (e.g. your lung example) but in principle this could be done.
I'm not a systematic biologist but others on here are so will hopefully add more info to my response. In the mean time have a read of the wiki article on systematics and this may answer some of your questions:
Just related to Jessica's point above. I agree that there can be gender bias when picking speakers. However, it's also the case that achieving gender equality in a speaker line-up can be hard even if you are conscious of it.
Having been responsible for inviting speakers for conferences and seminar series, I would say - but don't have data to back it up - that women are on average less likely to accept invitations to speak than men. So for instance, if you want to achieve a 50:50 line-up of speakers you may actually have to invite twice as many women to speak as men. This can be doubly difficult when there are fewer women in the field than men.
Many academic meetings involve being away from home from one or more nights and my unsubstantiated hunch is that women scientists often feel more constrained by other pressures (e.g. childcare) than their male counterparts. I certainly have some childless female colleagues who have complained (albeit slightly tongue-in-cheek) that they have to give too many talks because organisers are conscious of gender imbalance and their female colleagues with childern keep declining invitations!
Male-male mounting behaviour is very common in dogs. In young (uncastrated) males it is often related to hitting sexual maturity when mounting behaviour can be pretty indiscriminate (e.g., yur leg, other dogs, inanimate objects). Often this sort of behaviour is reduced by castration.
However, you are correct that male-male mounting is linked to dominance as well as sexual behaviour. I have an adult (5yr) newfie who will mount smaller male dogs that challenge his dominance status. It's just one way that dogs use to establish and demonstrate dominance.
>Can the past help us to predict about the evolutions future?
To give a slightly different interpretation of the question - if you mean recent past and short term future then yes it certainly can. For instance if we observe the rate of change in a trait being selected (e.g., in a population of livestock, lab population of drosophila) we can estimate how much genetic variation is present in that population. This can then be used to predict how the trait will evolve in responce to future selection. Over the long term the predictive models don't work well (likely because the genetic paramaters we estimate are not stable, and are themselves altered by the selection).
However, in the short term (e.g. a few generations) they work very well. In fact these evolutionary models have been the basis for genetic improvement in all our domestic livestock species for decades.
Some of the fish I work with (a Mexican species of swordtail) have quite a sneaky life history. The males are territorial and - to a first approximation - the bigger guys win the fights and get the girls (although there's a lot of female choice involved too).
However, once the males mature they basically stop growing. This which means that it pays them to mature early (but small) and start mating if there's no other dominant males about. But if there are other males about they stay sexually immature and just keep growing till they are the big enough to do well in competition. During this time they basically look like females, which probably minimises the aggresison they receive. In fact they look so much like females that lots of people think swordtails change sex!
This question is a version of something that a lot of evolutionary ecologists are working on - why aren't traits under apparently strong selection evolving more rapidly. Christopher has outlined a couple of possibilities (lack of genetic variation for size, some currently hidden cost to being big), but there are many more.
One issue that may be important (i.e., we don't know yet!) is that interactions among individuals can radically change our expectations of the way traits evolve. For instance, if two males are fighting it's probably not absolute size that determines the outcome, but relative size. This actually means that a males fitness (e.g. obtained by winning a fight and therefore a mating opportunity) may depend on its own genes (e.g. for size), but also on its opponents genes, and (critically) which males are around it. Some theoretical models suggest that evolutionary rates can be constrained under these circumstances but empirical research into this is really just getting started.
In animal behaviour - and parts of psychology with which it overlaps - "personality" is increasingly being defined as among-individual variation in behaviour that is repeatable across time and context.
While being a bit of a mouthful, what this arguably and simplistically amounts to is the fact that there are consistent differences among individuals in the way they behave. At the moment there is a lot of research going on into what causes this variation in vertebrate animal species but also in some invertebrates. certainly such variation in aspects of personality such as aggressiveness and boldness is well documented in fish species, as well as birds and mammals, but you can show "personality" as defined above in inverts too.
This article in the NY times is a bit old but still quite an interesting read
Hi Tara,
Sorry but I suspect this one is going to be impossible to answer beyond saying that it must have been some type of fish! Possibly some type of small shark with rasping teeth... but this is pure speculation.
Being bitten in the sea by anything is very unusual so I hope it hasn't put you off swimming
Just to add that some species are well known to be polymorphic in chromosome number. This is certainly true in many salmonid fishes (i.e., salmons, trouts and charrs).
I agree with Brent.
Another possibility of course is that the mother has been having a long running affair with a man who is actually BB and he is the real father.
To my knowledge there's basically no real evidence that dock leaves soothe nettle stings at all. That said one should never underestimate the placebo effect and you are probably spot on with the distraction argument too!
If the colour is an artifact of the sunset - how about a young/skinny coyote with a tail injury?
That's a big question and there is so much research its hard to know where to start! Have a look here to get you started..
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Behavioural_genetics
In general terms, yes, it's complicated but statistical genetics approaches provide us with loads of evidence that aspects of behaviour (aggressiveness, mating preference) are heritable (i.e. influenced by genes). Given that knowledge we can then set about trying to pinpoint genes or regions of the genome that contribute to behavioural variation in just the same way as we would any other type of trait (e.g. height).
As for the role of proteins, consider as a thought example, the role of neurotransmitters and hormones in mediating behaviour. For instance an external stimulus that triggers cortisol release may result in fight/flight behaviour. These systems rely on receptor proteins located in cell membranes that bind to the signalling chemicals. Thus, genetic variation can translate in to variation in binding protein structure and therefore function. ultimately this could translate into behavioural variation.
Dave Warburton I'm Biodiversity Officer with an outer London borough. As such, I provide advice to the council and the public about wildlife matters and legislation, as ...
Alastair Wilson I am an evolutionary biologist working at the University of Exeter. My main interest is in trying to understand how genes and environments interact to ...
David Hone I am a biologist and palaeontologist currently holding a lectureship at Queen Mary, University of London. I study on a variety of extinct reptiles - ...
