Why Evolution is True is a blog written by Jerry Coyne, centered on evolution and biology but also dealing with diverse topics like politics, culture, and cats.
Reader Rodger Atkin sent a lovely dragonfly photo from Thailand, which may be a mimic. Though I know of no mimetic dragonflies, I don’t know much about Odonata, and Rodger asks readers if they know anything about this one. His notes: This was taken in my yard in Thailand. I have never seen markings like those … Continue reading Readers’ wildlife photos
A few days before I regretfully left New Zealand, reader Gayle Ferguson took me on an all-day expedition to Tiritiri Matangi Island, a small (2.2 km² [1 square mile] reserve located on an island only about 3 km from the shore. Here’s where it is. It is a reserve that was denuded by farming and … Continue reading Wildlife and other photos from New Zealand: Tiritiri Matangi Reserve
by Matthew Cobb All tetrapods have kneecaps, although it appears that they evolved more than once. Even tuatara have kneecaps (it was long thought they did not). And here’s a kneet biomechanics demonstration of why they are so useful, and what you can and can’t do without them. https://twitter.com/PainSci/status/702601079792410624/photo/1
by Greg Mayer The tuatara has long been of interest to us here at WEIT, where we refer to it as Earth’s Only Extant Non-Squamate Lepidosaur*. We’ve been especially interested in the tuatara’s third, or parietal, eye, and our most recent post on it, which included a very nice color image of a longitudinal section … Continue reading The tuatara’s third eye
JAC: My post on the tuatara parietal eye was short and, for some readers, not informative enough. Where did it come from? What does it look like? (By mistake I published a picture of an iguana and not a tuatara.) Greg answers some of the many questions that have surely been tormenting many of you … Continue reading The tuatara’s parietal eye
If you’re a biologist–at least one with an interest in natural history–you’ll know that the lizard-like tuatara of New Zealand (Sphenodon punctatus) is a rare and evolutionarily unusual beast. Like many New Zealand endemics, it’s highly threatened. The tuatara is the only species in the order Rhynchocephalia; to show you how unusual it is to have an … Continue reading Rare footage: a baby tuatara enters the world
Wellcome Images, a famous and extensive source of medical and biological imagery, held a contest for the best biological/medical photos of 2014, and you can see the twenty winning images in a slideshow at the link just above. I’ll show just four, with one of them having an accompanying video. I prefer the non-medical ones, but by … Continue reading Wellcome Image Awards for 2015
by Greg Mayer We’ve had occasion to celebrate the completion of reptile genome projects before here at WEIT (including the first, the Anole Genome, and the recent turtle genomes), so it is especially notable that one of our favorite animals, the Earth’s Only Extant Non-Squamate Lepidosaur*, is now the subject on an ongoing sequencing project … Continue reading The Tuatara Genome Project
