Two new books on animal behavior

September 4, 2011 • 4:08 am

Today’s new New York Times has two book  reviews of note.  The first book was written by one of our own readers, Marlene Zuk, a professor at the University of California at Riverside.  Marlene comments here on issues of animal behavior, and her new book, Sex on Six Legs: Lessons on Life, Love and Language From the Insect World, is reviewed favorably by science writer Elizabeth Royte:

In “Sex on Six Legs,” the biologist Marlene Zuk argues that insects — because they are both unlike us and, in surprising ways, like us — provide excellent fodder for studying the relative value of inheritance versus environment, the evolution of personality, the definition of language and the downside of growing bigger brains. . . .

. . . Over nine consistently delightful chapters, Zuk pulls focus between the intriguing daily habits of ants, bees, grasshoppers, cockroaches and crickets (to name just a few of her subjects) and the broader questions that drive evolutionary biology and ecology. Why did evolution take different paths to get to similar places (parental care, for example)? What maintains diversity, if natural selection rewards only the most successful strategies and behavior? If insects with poppy-seed-size brains can learn and remember, make and communicate group decisions and understand when it’s a good idea to kill their embryonic offspring (and perhaps eat them), you’ve got to ask: What’s our own coconut-size brain

Good for Marlene! Maybe we’ll have her over here some day to answer insect queries.

The second book, Willpower: Discovering the Greatest Human Strength, by Roy Baumeister and John Tierney, doesn’t fare quite so well, but the review is generally positive, and worth reading because it’s written by our atheist confrère Steve Pinker, who always lards his writings with wit and things au courant:

Readers of “Willpower” are treated to triumphs of self-control, like the singer Amanda Palmer (in her first career as a living statue) and the endurance artist David Blaine, along with crash scenes like Oprah Winfrey’s yo-yoing weight and Eliot Spitzer’s hotel-room entertainment. The disasters reveal a limitation of the muscle metaphor: certain evolutionarily prepared drives seem to withstand even the most bulked-up powers of will. The authors note that people with the highest levels of self-control are only slightly better than average at controlling their weight, and they describe disturbing experiments that confirm the old saying “When the penis stands up, the brains get buried” (it sounds better in Yiddish). [JAC: Can any Yiddish speaker provide the original?]

The authors appeal to evolutionary biology to explain these anomalies, and elsewhere bring up ideas from neuroscience and economics. But the visits are perfunctory, and the authors offer no systematic account of the trade-offs the brain must make among goals that differ in their likelihood of success, their time horizons and their evolutionary impact. The old joke about the man in front of a firing squad who refuses the customary last cigarette because he’s trying to quit reminds us that deferring a reward does not always make sense, and economists and evolutionists have developed theories that predict the optimal delay of gratification in a given environment. Also unexplored is a fascinating literature in neuroscience on the role of the prefrontal cortex in inhibiting impulses. In general, the authors tilt their presentation toward human interest rather than science, apart from Baumeister’s own studies.

Nor do Baumeister and Tierney worry enough that their theory, without some precision about the relevant time spans, can be stretched to explain anything: when people resist one temptation but not another, it’s because their egos have been fatigued by exercise; when they resist temptations across the board, it’s because their egos has been strengthened by exercise.

Nonetheless, “Willpower” is an immensely rewarding book, filled with ingenious research, wise advice and insightful reflections on the human condition. And now that I’ve finished this review, I can turn my e-mail back on, spend no more than 30 minutes replying and go out to enjoy this late summer day.

So that’s why he hasn’t answered my email . . .

Miscellaneous items on science and atheism from the Guardian

September 3, 2011 • 12:33 pm

Matthew Cobb has kindly scanned a page from today’s paper issue of the Guardian Review—stuff that doesn’t appear online.  There are three items of interest below (click to enlarge page):

1.  An unfunny cartoon on the relationship between science and faith

2.  A letter from Dr. David Hay of Aberdeen on James Wood’s Guardian Piece about the clash between atheism and religious fundamentalism (I think the piece Hay is referring to is not “God, Interrupted,” which appeared in the New Yorker in 2001, but an August 27 piece called “The New Atheism“; more on that piece tomorrow). Hay defends the “more nuanced” (read: “accommodationist”) view of the debate, and asserts that “recent empirical investigations  in genetics and neurophysiology” support the idea that religious and spiritual awareness evolved as a product of natural selection acting on our ancestors.  I’m not aware of that research, and doubt that it says what Hay claims.

3. Most interesting to me, in view of the debate about the importance of epigenetics in evolution, is a letter from my friends and colleagues Deborah and Brian Charlesworth (professors at Edinburgh) about Peter Forbes’ defense of epigenetics in the Guardian, a piece that I wrote about in detail two weeks ago.  The Charlesworths, I’m pleased to see, agree that the epigenetics “revolution” is highly overblown, arguing that epigenetic marks on genes are themselves genetically controlled, that there’s little evidence that inherited epigenetic marks have been of much importance in evolution, and that the whole idea hardly overturns our notions of the importance of “conventional” genetics.

University of North Carolina chorus expels gay singer

September 3, 2011 • 9:06 am

This seems clearly illegal, but also shows how religion is like an abusive partner.  The World on Campus reports that a Christian a capella chorus at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill—”Psalm 100″—expelled Will Thomason, an openly gay student, just for being gay.   Weirdly enough, University policy seems to support the group’s right to discriminate in this way:

Psalm 100, whose mission is “to spread the joy of the Lord through song,” operates under a constitution based on Biblical standards, and the group concluded that Thomason’s views on the group’s constitution did not match up with its standards.

The university’s official policy seems to support the group’s ability to expel a member based on religious belief. It says: “Student organizations that select their members on the basis of commitment to a set of beliefs (e.g., religious or political beliefs) may limit membership and participation in the organization to students who…support the organization’s goals and agree with its beliefs.” However, the same policy says a student cannot be excluded from membership based on “sexual orientation.”

Templeton [Blake Templeton, the group’s director] said the university approved Psalm 100’s original constitution, which allows its decisions to be made based on the Bible. And he stressed that it was Thomason’s disagreement with the group’s constitution, not his sexual orientation, that got him kicked out.

As if “disagreement with the group’s constitution” were not the same thing as being gay! That’s a distinction without a difference.

But this is the most disgusting part:

Blake Templeton, general director of the group, said the decision was tough, especially because so many people thought it was done out of hatred.

“That’s so far from the truth,” he said. “I want the power of God’s love to be so, so clear.”

Templeton stressed that the group made its decision out of love for Thomason, not hate.

Right. Just like an abusive spouse:  “I’m going to hurt you, but only because I love you.”

If you want to voice your objections, Winston Crisp, UNC’s Vice Chancellor for Student Affairs, is conducting an investigation, and you can email him at  wbcrisp@email.unc.edu   Here’s a sample email if you are too lazy or busy to write your own, but of course it’s better if you be original.  But sending something is better than sending nothing, and all of it will send a message to the UNC administration:

_______

Dear Chancellor Crisp,

I am writing to protest the expulsion of UNC student Will Thomason from the “Psalm 100” chorus simply because he was gay.  While UNC’s policy appears to support the chorus’s right to expel members based on religious belief (a policy that I disagree with as well), it does NOT support the right to expel members based on sexual orientation.  As I’m sure you’ll agree, that policy is not only illegal, but highly immoral.  What could someone’s sexual orientation possibly have to do with his ability to sing?

Some Christian sects may still hold on to their archaic notions of sexuality, but society has moved on, increasingly recognizing that gays are neither immoral, mentally ill, nor aberrant.  I am sure that UNC agrees with that view as well, and hope that your investigation of the issue will lead to Thomason’s reinstatement in the chorus.

Thanks very much.

Hitchens on Rick Perry

September 3, 2011 • 6:03 am

In his latest column at Slate, Christopher Hitchens ponders the religious beliefs, religious pandering, and antiscientific attitudes of Texas governor Rick Perry.

. . . religion in politics is more like an insurance policy than a true act of faith. Professing allegiance to it seldom does you any harm, at least in Republican primary season, and can do you some good. It’s a question of prudence.

I’d add that so long as professing allegiance to God is not really, really extreme, and is limited to Christianity, it never does a politician any harm.  Those disgusted liberals are more than counterbalanced by conservatives and accommodationists who don’t see faith as a flaw.

. . . As usual, though, there is some built-in wiggle room. In 2006 he said that he believed the Bible to be inerrant. He also said that those who did not accept Jesus Christ as their personal savior would be going to hell. Pressed a little on the sheer wickedness and stupidity of that last claim, the governor did allow that he himself wasn’t omniscient enough to be sure on such doctrinal matters. He tells us that he is a “firm believer” in the “intelligent design” formulation that is creationism’s latest rhetorical disguise, adding that the “design” could be biblical or could have involved something more complex, but is attributable to the same divine author in any event. Whether he chooses to avail himself of the wiggles or not, Perry can be reasonably sure that the voting base of the theocratic right has picked up his intended message . . .

Hitchens wonders whether Perry really believes the stuff he says, or is simply hustling votes.

. . . And this is what one always wants to know about candidates who flourish the Good Book or who presume to talk about hell and damnation. Do they, themselves, in their heart of hearts, truly believe it? Is there any evidence, if it comes to that, that Perry has ever studied the theory of evolution for long enough to be able to state roughly what it says? And how much textual and hermeneutic work did he do before deciding on the “inerrancy” of Jewish and Christian scripture? It should, of course, be the sincere believers and devout faithful who ask him, and themselves, these questions. But somehow, it never is. The risks of hypocrisy seem forever invisible to the politicized Christians, for whom sufficient proof of faith consists of loud and unambiguous declarations. I am always surprised that more is not heard from sincere religious believers, who have the most to lose if faith becomes a matter of poll-time dogma and lung power.

Of course Perry doesn’t know enough about evolution to pronounce on its validity.  I doubt that, for instance, whether he could give a good example of a putative transitional form in the fossil record.  I am surprised, though, that Hitchens thinks that asking those hard questions is the purview of religious people.  After all, Hitchens was one of the New Atheists who claimed that moderate faiths are also poisonous, as they enable more virulent forms of religion.  Why would “sincere religious believers”, then, have anything to lose if politicians loudly proclaim their faith at election time?  In many senses religious people, fundamentalist or liberal, are all in the same boat to Wooville.

Caturday felid: you’re playing WHAT?

September 3, 2011 • 5:42 am

I don’t know this piece, but ten to one a reader will identify it within an hour.

The only possible caption is this: “Srsly, she’s going to continue playing when I am sitting on her lap? Is the piano more important than rubbing my belly? Or my noms? WHEN WILL MY NEEDS BE MET, DAMMIT?!!$#*&(

We had nearly thirty entries in the cat scan contest (meaning that the prize will be an autographed hardback of WEIT), and some of them are hilarious.  Samples will be posted—and the winner announced—this week.

Where does religion come from?

September 2, 2011 • 7:37 am

Robert Bellah, a sociologist at the University of California at Berkeley, has written a new book called Religion in Human Evolution: From the Paleolithic to the Axial Age.  There are many blurbs on the Amazon page, as well as this description of the contents:

Religion in Human Evolution is a work of extraordinary ambition—a wide-ranging, nuanced probing of our biological past to discover the kinds of lives that human beings have most often imagined were worth living. It offers what is frequently seen as a forbidden theory of the origin of religion that goes deep into evolution, especially but not exclusively cultural evolution.

How did our early ancestors transcend the quotidian demands of everyday existence to embrace an alternative reality that called into question the very meaning of their daily struggle? Robert Bellah, one of the leading sociologists of our time, identifies a range of cultural capacities, such as communal dancing, storytelling, and theorizing, whose emergence made this religious development possible. Deploying the latest findings in biology, cognitive science, and evolutionary psychology, he traces the expansion of these cultural capacities from the Paleolithic to the Axial Age (roughly, the first millennium BCE), when individuals and groups in the Old World challenged the norms and beliefs of class societies ruled by kings and aristocracies. These religious prophets and renouncers never succeeded in founding their alternative utopias, but they left a heritage of criticism that would not be quenched.

And in the latest Atlantic, there’s a shortish interview with Bellah: “Where does religion come from?”  Sadly, it’s not very enlightening about Bellah’s views, except to say that he sees religion as emanating from some sort of human penchant for drama (the “play instinct,” with a double meaning):

Play is a very elusive idea because it comes in so many forms. It’s hard entirely to put them all under one category. Johan Huizinga’s work was a great help to me, because he makes a strong argument that ritual emerges out of play. I’m a practicing Episcopalian and they call Sunday School “holy play,” which seems to me a little bit cuckoo but there’s some sense to it; in a sense what we’re doing in the liturgy is a kind of play, a profound play. . .

. . . The idea of utopia is always a kind of play, because we know it’s not real–it’s just what we can imagine. But it has the serious possibility of saying, “Look, the world the way it is didn’t have to be that way. It could be different.” And that’s something I think becomes more possible after the Axial Age. With ancient Australian traditions daily life and mythic life are so closely embedded in each other that you really can’t think of anything being any different.

The good thing is that he emphasizes the diversity of religion: many faiths, for example, don’t accept the idea of an afterlife (afterlife also plays an insignificant role in many forms of Judaism), so one can’t say that religion arose to counteract our knowledge of mortality.  Or maybe it did, but has since changed as it spread throughout human societies.

I’ve read a fair bit about the origins of religion, and, as you probably know, there are a diversity of theories.  There’s Pascal Boyer’s theory that religion comes from our evolved tendency to attribute conscious “agency” to things, even inanimate ones, D. S. Wilson’s idea that religions arose via a form of group selection (he’s not clear whether it’s genetic or cultural evolution) favoring those societies whose faiths made them more cohensive, individual selection for belief, theories that religion coopts our tendency to obey our elders, Freud’s theory that religion is an illusion based on fantasies and wish fulfillment, and, of course, religiously-based theories saying that our religious tendencies were actually instilled in us by God.  It’s my view that although some of these theories make sense (Boyer’s in particular), we have no empirical or scientific way to discriminate among them—except to eliminate the last one.  A theory that makes sense isn’t necessarily a theory that is right.  And I can’t see a resolution of this issue any time soon.  The origin of religion may be one of those questions forever beyond our ken.

Bellah, a self-described “practicing Episcopalian,” also has a theory about atheists:

And for those who are atheists, I think there are two kinds of atheism. There’s one kind that says, “Give me a break, I don’t care about that whole thing. It doesn’t mean anything to me.” But there are also people who don’t believe in God but have deep moral commitments and have very strong views on what is good and what is evil and who even may devote themselves to good causes. Atheism per se certainly doesn’t mean that people are antisocial. It just means they have found other symbols. The traditional religious symbols have lost their meaning to them but they still believe in social good, etc.

That’s just bizarre: atheists who have strong beliefs about what’s moral and good and those who don’t?  I don’t know any of the latter, and if you’re going to divide atheists that way, well, you could divide religious people along the same axis.  And is “social good” really a “symbol” equivalent to God?

None of this makes me want to read his book.

Pre-caturday video treats

September 2, 2011 • 3:14 am

by Matthew Cobb

OK, Jerry’s back in town later on today, so this is my last chance to litter his blog (hehe) with videos! Today we have two cat videos and some amazing acrobatic skills from a human. You can decide what the link with evolution is, if any.

Spaghetti western cat vs dog:

 

Cat bully and box:

 

Amazing acrobat:

Anole genome published!

September 1, 2011 • 10:06 am

by Greg Mayer

As some WEIT readers know, I am a specialist on lizards of the genus Anolis, and the genome sequence of the green anole, Anolis carolinensis, is in press in Nature in a paper by Jennifer Alfoldi, Federica Di Palma, and a cast of thousands (well, dozens). An advance copy has been posted online, along with a brief news item. The publication of the anole genome is a landmark event in comparative genomics, because it is the first reptile to be completely sequenced, as well as a landmark in anole studies

Anolis carolinensis: "You want to do what to my genome?"
Anole ecomorphs, showing characteristic size, station, and morphology. Each of these has evolved two or more times independently in the Greater Antilles. From Losos, 2009, based on E.E. Williams.

Anoles are a group of nearly 400 species found the southeastern U.S., throughout the West Indies, Mexico, Central and South America. Besides being species rich, they are diverse in ecology, behavior, morphology and physiology. Although the modal anole is an arboreal insectivore, some are terrestrial, some are aquatic, some eat fruit and small vertebrates, some live in deserts, and some live in rainforests. They also achieve high local species richness– up to a dozen or more species living in a small area– and very high abundance: James “Skip” Lazell, an eminent anolologist, likes to say that the anoles aren’t really common unless you can catch ten without moving your feet. Perhaps the most striking evolutionary phenomenon in anoles is community- wide convergence: on the islands of the Greater Antilles, whole suites of sympatric lizards have evolved independently, but each suite contains species of characteristic morphology and behavior associated with particular stations in the habitat (each characteristic type being called an ecomorph).

Anole Annals, your source for the latest information on Anolis lizards, is providing a lot of coverage of the event, with a guide to many of the genome-related posts by Jon Losos here, the  announcement of the advance posting by Rich Glor here (see also here), several posts on early genome results here, here, here, here, and here, and my own contribution, on the history of the study of anoles, here.

One of the first results of most interest to me has been the development of primers that allow sequencing of many genes for comparative phylogenetic studies. The tree below from Alfoldi et al., based on these new sequences, confirms a number of things we already knew, but also resolves a number of difficulties in anole phylogeny and biogeography.

Relationships of anoles, from Alfoldi, et al. 2011.The green anole itself, Anolis carolinensis, is the most widespread, and perhaps only native, species of anole in the United States. It is a member of an originally Cuban species group that has dispersed widely to surrounding islands as well as the main. Rich Glor has a review of carolinensis‘s origins at Anole Annals.  The story of how carolinensis was chosen to be the first reptile sequenced, mentioned in my post, is detailed by Jon Losos.

Dispersal of the Anolis carolinensis group, from Glor, Losos & Larson, 2005.

______________________________________________________________

Alfoldi, Jessica, Federica Di Palma, Manfred Grabherr, Christina Williams, Lesheng Kong, Evan Mauceli, Pamela Russell, Craig B. Lowe, Richard Glor, Jacob D. Jaffe, David A. Ray, Stephane Boissinot, Andrew M. Shedlock, Christopher Botka, Todd A. Castoe, John K. Colbourne, Matthew K. Fujita, Ricardo Godinez Moreno, Boudewijn F. ten Hallers, David Haussler, Andreas Heger David Heiman, Daniel E. Janes, Jeremy Johnson, Pieter J. de Jong, Maxim Y. Koriabine, Peter Novick, Marcia Lara, Chris L. Organ, Sally E. Peach, Steven Poe, David D. Pollock, Kevin de Queiroz, Thomas Sanger, Steve Searle, Jeremy D. Smith, Zachary Smith, Ross Swofford, Jason Turner-Maier, Juli Wade, Sarah Young, Amonida Zadissa, Scott V. Edwards, Travis C. Glenn, Christopher J. Schneider, Jonathan B. Losos, Eric S. Lander, Matthew Breen, Chris P. Ponting & Kerstin Lindblad-Toh.2011. The genome of the green anole lizard and a comparative analysis with birds and mammals. Nature in press. (advance post)

Glor, R.E., J.B. Losos, and A. Larson. 2005. Out of Cuba: overwater dispersal and speciation among lizards in the Anolis carolinensis subgroup.Molecular Ecology 14:2419-2432. (pdf)

Losos, J.B. 2009. Lizards in an Evolutionary Tree: Ecology and Adaptive Radiation of Anoles, University of California Press, Berkeley. (publisher)