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.
Here are two of many I snapped in the Galapagos in early April, ’05. Both are mating poses – part of the mating dance in the case of the blue-footed booby (Sula nebouxii] (have also seen it written bubi?) and the magnificent frigatebird [Fregata magnificens] trying to attract the females circling (way) overhead with that spectacular inflatable red pouch.
No claims to being a professional photographer, by the way!
That’ll impress her!
Finally, reader Karen Welsh shows us the aftermath of an ice storm two years ago in Canada:
If you’re really desperate for wildlife photos – these are not of life but certainly it was wild! Toronto was hit by an ice storm two years ago that coated the city in thick ice that didn’t melt for days. Hundreds of thousands were without hydro (Canadian term for power) for days, even weeks. And the city lost about 20% of her tree canopy. But in the meantime it certainly was beautiful. That’s a clock tower not a church spire in case you’re wondering.
It’s cold here, but colder in Poland, where the Vistula is freezing over near Dobrzyn. Hili can’t tolerate being out in the cold very long, even when she’s allowed to go out, which is rare. There are, I hear, constant battles between Malgorzata and Hili for the cat’s “right” to go out, and when the cat wins she’s back again within an hour. You can see her frustration in both her words and her eyes:
Hili: Not only hard frost but snow as well.
A: It’s winter.
Hili: Winter is not cat-friendly.
In Polish:
Hili: Nie tylko mróz, ale i śnieg.
Ja: To jest zima.
Hili: Zima nie jest przyjazna dla kotów.
And in Montreal, reader Ann-Marie Cournoyer found a secular squirrel:
Remember the world’s saddest raccoon from yesterday? Given a big hunk of cotton candy (known as “candy floss” to Brits), it tried to wash it in a puddle, where it instantly dissolved. Result: one puzzled and flummoxed raccoon. I’m pleased to give this update, though:
We’ll finish up today with two light items. First, another find by Matthew Cobb: an amazing and complex wooden sculpture of a hummingbird sipping from a flower. Apparently it’s anatomically correct:
And if you want to make one (proceed at your own risk), you can read about the sculpture and buy the plans (for $99!) here. You can either crank it or power it with a motor. Being ham-handed about these things, I’d just prefer to buy one or get one as a gift!
This year marks the 100th anniversary of the journal Genetics, still the premier journal of genetical research in the world. I subscribed to it for decades until e-journals became common, and was proud to have published in it a few times (its peer review was notoriously tough).
For the year 2016, the editors decided to reprint 24 of the most influential papers published in the journal over the last century, and solicit people to write commentaries on them.(Two commentaries per month.) I think that’s a great way to mark the anniversary.
Here’s the first issue of 2016, much of it available free online (click on the screenshot for the contents). The cartoon cover is a first for the journal, depicting the first paper in the journal’s first issue, a classic paper—by Calvin Bridges—whose title is at the lower right:
Illustration depicting Calvin Bridges′ seminal 1916 paper, published in GENETICS. Featuring karyotypes found in the original paper as well as pachytenes and Drosophila melanogaster. Bridges pioneered the use of Drosophila melanogaster as a model organism in genetics. Cover illustration created by Alex Cagan (Max Planck Institute), who says he wanted to capture the sense of excitement and discovery Bridges must have felt at the time. He also describes the karyotypes as a natural form of calligraphy.
Bridges (1889-1938) is still a legend in fly genetics: brilliant, unorthodox, and wickedly handsome—a great favorite with the ladies.
The issue starts off with an essay by editor-in-chief Mark Johnston, “A new century of Genetics,” giving a short but lively history of the journal. Then there are the two “classic” papers, and I was honored to be asked to give the commentary on one of them. That paper was published in 1936 by my academic grandfather, Theodosius Dobzhansky, the Ph.D. advisor of Dick Lewontin, my own Ph.D. advisor. It was one of the first attempts to genetically dissect the reproductive barriers between species. (In fact, for most evolutionist those reproductive barriers are what constitute different species.) Click on the screenshot below to see the paper.
I won’t go into detail about what Dobzhansky did except to say that he used genetically marked chromosomes to cross two species, and then used the markers to figure out which chromosomes carried genes making the hybrid males sterile. In that era you had to use chromosomes marked with visible mutations, causing changes in traits like eye color, body color, or wing shape, so you were limited by the number of chromosome regions you could study (too many mutants kills a fly or makes it weak). Now, with molecular markers, the number of potential chromosome sites to study in this way is in the hundreds of thousands.
Below from the paper is a figure that we call a “Doby-gram” (Dobzhansky was known as “Doby” or “Dodek” to his students and friends), showing the effect of chromosomal constitution on the fertility (estimated as testis length) of backcross males. The white chromosomes are from the fruit flyDrosophila pseudoobscura, and the black from its sister species D. persimilis (then known as “race B” of D. pseudoobscura). You can see that every chromosome has an effect, but that of the X chromosome is HUGE. This is the famous “X effect” that my students and I studied, and the reason for it is now pretty well known. Note the crude hand-drawn graph with wobbly lines, typical of those days. Such a figure would never be accepted for publication in today’s journals.
Why is the paper important? Well, I’ll refer you to my very short precis, which you can get for free by clicking the screenshot below:
I’m pleased that so many of the 24 papers chosen as classics are in evolutionary genetics, and I’ll have the chance to write a commentary (with colleagues) for another of them before the year is out.
In its commentary this week, L’Osservatore Romano, the newspaper of the Vatican state, said it’s not impressed.
“This episode isn’t something new because, behind the deceitful flag of an uncompromising secularism, the French magazine once again forgets what religious leaders of different beliefs have been repeating for a long time to reject violence in the name of religion.
“Using God to justify hatred is an authentic blasphemy, as Pope Francis repeatedly said.”
Except when it’s hatred of gays. And who is the Pope to say what an “authentic blasphemy” is for Muslims? For many Muslims, an “authentic blasphemy” involves drawing satirical pictures of Islam,or even mocking Islam. Further, many religious leaders have promoted violence in the name of God, including the Church when it had universal political power. Does Pope Francis deny that all over the Middle East, people are using God to justify murder?
Finally, the very idea of blasphemy is ridiculous, implying that some speech about God is off limits.
The commentary added: “In Charlie Hebdo’s choice, there is the sad paradox of a world which is more and more sensitive about being politically correct, almost to the point of ridicule, yet does not wish to acknowledge or to respect believers’ faith in God, regardless of the religion.”
I’ll acknowledge believers’ faith in God,but I won’t respect it.
A brief report at Pew Research shows at least one statistic of interest to nonbelievers: American Millennials (people born after 1980) have shown a big drop in only the last five years in how favorably they view religion and its effects. As they report (see graph below):
Younger generations tend to have more-positive views than their elders of a number of institutions that play a big part in American society. But for some institutions – such as churches and the news media – Millennials’ opinions have become markedly more negative in the past five years.
Since 2010, Millennials’ rating of churches and other religious organizations has dipped 18 percentage points: 55% now say churches have a positive impact on the country compared with five years ago, when nearly three-quarters (73%) said this. Views among older generations have changed little over this time period. As a result, older generations are now more likely than Millennials – who are much less likely than their elders to be religious – to view religious organizations positively.
As Pew noted, the views of older age groups about religion didn’t change much, but the approval rating of “silents” actually rose 7%, as one might expect given that older Americans are more religious. There are also data on falling respect for news media and rising respect for banks, labor unions, businesses, and large corporations, but you can go to the report to see those “trends”.
Pew defines generation X as those now between 35 and 50, Boomers between ages 51 to 70, and Silents as those older than 70. Here are the data:
That comports with a Pew study from December showing that many more Millennials than older folks see Christmas as a cultural than as a religious holiday:
What does it mean? To me, an increasing secularization of America as fewer young people buy into established faith. It’s especially heartening that only a little more than half of Millennials see churches and religious organizations as having a positive effect on the U.S., and that the drop over the last five years was so large .
