What is Natural Selection?
Hurray! There is another video in the “Stated Clearly” collaboration with Bird and Moon Comics explaining evolution! Enjoy. You might also like their earlier video, What is Evolution? »
bug_girl's Posts
Blowing on Bats. For Science.
In Bug Grad School I learned about a crazy group of flies called Hippoboscidae, or louse flies. These flies have adopted an ectoparasitic lifestyle, which means they live on other animals much like a tick or a louse. Most have lost their wings in the evolutionary scrabble to live on fur or feathers. Having only ever seen these preserved in jars, or from engravings, I was very excited to find a vi... »
Planet of the Arthropods
I’m on the radio! Skeptically Speaking asked me to talk a little bit about insect conservation, in order to round out an interview with the author of Rat Island. (I haven’t read the book yet, but it looks pretty fascinating.) I mostly discussed the 2012 report “Spineless”, published by IUCN (The International Union for Conservation of Nature). You might recognize IUCN as au... »
Signs of Spring: Hummingbirds
Finally, signs of spring are beginning to show here in New England. Birds are singing, and hopefully some of our tiny, shiny little migrants will be returning soon. There is a Citizen Science project you can participate in that will help document the migration of hummingbirds in the spring: Starting March 15, 2013, the Audubon Society needs citizen scientists to track, report on, and follow the sp... »
AI: National Day of Unplugging
I’d like to claim there was no post yesterday because we were observing the National Day of Unplugging. Um, did you even know there was a National Day of Unplugging this weekend? “The National Day of Unplugging is a 24 hour period – running from sunset to sunset – and starts on the first Friday in March. The project is an outgrowth of The Sabbath Manifesto, an adaption of our ancestors... »
Spider-Man’s Penis and Science Communication
Last year I wrote a post about Spider-man, and how his anatomy may not be…err, as PG as one might wish. In less than 500 words, I tried to write an entertaining post about how actual spider anatomy is not analogous to Spider-Man the superhero’s anatomy. I did not expect to enrage Fanboys all over the internet quite as much as I did, but over all counted it as a science communication wi... »
Sasquatch Genetics! Or…Not.
You might have seen some news coverage of a Sasquatch genome paper recently: “A team of eleven scientists with expertise in genetics, forensics, pathology, biochemistry, and biophysics has sequenced three whole nuclear genomes from a novel, contemporary species of hominin in North America. The study, “Novel North American Hominins, Next Generation Sequencing of Three Whole Genomes and Associ... »
AI: Tea made of Insect Poop
You might have heard of Kopi Luwak or Cat Poop Coffee, an Indonesian coffee made from beans digested and excreted by civet cats. I love coffee. I mean, I LOVE COFFEE. I would inject it if I could. But…no. No to civet cat poop, for a wide variety of reasons. But insect poop tea? Well, actually, that sounds pretty interesting. I noticed this new publication this week: Xu L., Pan H., Lei Q., Xi... »
