Friday links round

• Vintage plant genetic resources videos

• Wrong on the Internet: Bogus USA Spider Chart

• Riroriro

• Testing the utility of trait databases

• When Are Nomads Not Really Nomads? (Efe Pygmy Ethnoarchaeology)

• Please don’t smoke the tomatoes!

• The relationships among fame, impact and research quality

• Botanical Wednesday: Twisty

• Quotes of choice

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Freeday picks

• Staple Fruits of the World

• Does Your Genealogy Reveal Amazing Anthropological Stories?. The illustrative graph is by far the most interesting things I’ve met over the latest weeks.

• I’m still here: back online after a year without the internet

• Carnival of Evolution #59: A letter from the Doctor

Academia:

• What is academic success? A legitimate answer.

• False models are useful BECAUSE they’re false. Though you knew it already, right?

• Spring (And Scientific Fraud) Is Busting Out All Over. Scaring!

• Navigating the complexities of authorship: Part 2 -author order

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Friday peak

Links for the weekend:

• The new bird flu: Is it serious?

• When does human life begin? (with a really good case comparing as to when it ends)

• Anthocharis cardamines!

• God and evolution 1 & God and evolution 2: The problem of creation

• Tingletongue won’t trouble Life Savers

• Dr Francis Seow discusses his love for stick insects in Berita Minggu

Academia:

Heated & passionate

• E. O. Wilson vs. math (UPDATEDx16 & corrected; no further updates)

• R. A. Fisher vs. E. O. Wilson on math in biology. Would have done a quote of the week!

• A calm and balanced case for math in biology (UPDATED)

How to keep up with scientific litterature, and its obligate tragedy of the common

• Selective journals vs. social networks: alternative ways of filtering the literature, or po-tay-to, po-tah-to?

• Navigating the complexities of authorship: Part 1 –inclusion

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It’s friday, free picks:

My gather this week:

• Food security is hard & Food security is not about scarcity

• These bugs rock! & New Peacock Spider Video! . These spiders rock!

• The Range of Lotus & Indian Lotus Flower

• Elk of the Pennsylvania Wilds – Part 1

• The midwest anting season is imminent

• Today’s lab – water ferns. More Salvinia…

• Pictures Considered #2. The E. coli Chromosome Caught in the Act of Replicating & A Tree of Life

• Bird of the Day: Malabar Parakeet (Nagarhole National Park, Karnataka)

• Sabah, Borneo

Academia (but still worthwile!):

• Ecologists need to do a better job of prediction – Part IV – quantifying prediction quality. Just go read the whole series, there are points worth!

• Lab meetings: the publication process

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Bioquote: The alchemy of science…

The quote this week:

Just as the alchemist yearned for a formula that would turn lead into gold, so the modern biologist longs for a conceptual framework that will make any data set coruscate with revelations. The framework described here falls considerably short of such expectations, but then, modern chemistry has not fulfilled the alchemists’ most ardent dreams.
S. J. Arnold (1983, p. 357).

From the following paper:

J. G. Kingsolver and R. B. Huey (2003). Introduction: The Evolution of Morphology, Performance, and Fitness. Integr. Comp. Biol. 43 (3): 361-366. doi: 10.1093/icb/43.3.361

is also the introduction from a special issue covering many interesting aspects of measuring natural selection. Seems like it is mostly open access, so I can link for you to go & pick on these various examples.

Then we can discuss the relevance of introducing path analyses to the study of natural selection in the wild: was it gold? I’d tend to think it was.

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Heterostyly

Enjoy this video worth a word of the week section. Go to vimeo to comment there and compliment the author too!

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Latest Carnival of Evolution

Carnival of Evolution, March 2013.

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Picks two

• Micro algae lamps

• Exploring the history of botany (ht Agri).

• Academic ambivalence: why do we want to join the academic pipeline?

• The birds and the bees and the microbes

• Project Steve’s 10th Anniversary. Wow, already?!?

• Peli can-do

• Can You Spot the Animals?

• Discussing the average man

And wouldn’t be good enough for the week-end?

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Picks otw

Oh, I didn’t have had time to read much this week, but there are still good reads around:

• Nothing Changes When You Add Sex. A very interesting take on sex education.

• Featured Guest Photo: A Spectacular Case of Mimicry. Cincidella.

• Reflections on Darwin’s Origin of Species.

• A “Deep Human History” of Polyandry.
• Herbarium fun and games.
• Proving and Quantifying Sexism.

• Genes mix faster than stories.

Still raining? Good!

 

 

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Les Scorpions, Amblypyges et Solifuges de l’île de Saint-­Barthélémy (Antilles françaises)

English readers: this is a link to a French document about Arachnids from Saint Barthélémy (Antilles, Caribees). There are a few really nice pictures there (!pdf!). You may go for these even if you don’t read French…

Un petit lien vers le catalogue du même nom (attention c’est un document pdf!):

Les Scorpions, Amblypyges et Solifuges de l’île de Saint-­‐Barthélemy (Antilles françaises) Version 1.2 (février 2013). Karl Questel.

Pas beaucoup d’espèces bien sûr, on est en milieu insulaire et une île pas trop grande non plus. De belles photos à la fin!

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