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’s a short and not-so-sweet article from the New York Post, and the headline speaks for itself. (The student’s name is Olivia Krolczyk.) Note that the article use the word “alleges” because it’s reporting a student’s assertion, though that assertion is backed up with a purported screenshot of the professor’s comments.
The professor apparently gave Krolczyk a grade of zero out of 100, which is half of the total course grade. Note, though, that the University says it’s going to have her failed essay re-graded by someone else, so Olivia will probably come out all right. (The professor, referred to as “she” in the video below, also offered to re-grade Krolczyk’s exam if she ditched “biological woman,” but I somehow think that Olivia, who seems to have guts, wouldn’t do that!)
What this shows is that you can be penalized for using a completely non-offensive term: “biological woman”. In fact, Krolczyk could have just said “woman”, which really means “biological woman,” and used “trans women” for biological males who identify as women. But there is absolutely nothing I can see to justify the professor—in Women’s Gender Studies, of course—failing this essay. And because the University of Cincinnati isa public college, this kind of extreme penalty may be a violation of Crolczyk’s freedom of expression, or constitute viewpoint discrimination.
Click the headline to read the piece:
From the article:
A sophomore at the University of Cincinnati claims that her professor gave her a zero on a college project for using the term “biological women.”
Olivia Krolczyk, 20, said the professor for her Women’s Gender Studies in Pop Culture class failed her for using the “exclusionary” term despite admitting that she submitted a “solid proposal,” the student told The Post.
The course instructed students to pick a topic related to feminism, with Krolczyk choosing to research the changes female athletes have experienced throughout history and the rights and opportunities they have been awarded and fought for in athletics.
The chemistry major said her project ended by sharing how “these rights and opportunities are being threatened by allowing men to compete in women’s sports.”
Now that last sentence is definitely an ideologically incorrect claim!
Krolczyk didn’t name the professor for fear of retribution. Here’s a photo of the professor’s comments; it appears again in the Tik Tok video below, apparently with the zero grade (or perhaps the professor’s name) blacked out:
Seriously, the term “biological woman” is exclusionary? Exclusionary of what? Yes, if you just say “woman”, most people save gender activists would assume that the term doesn’t include trans women, but the words “biological woman” are accurate and unambiguous. The professor doesn’t like it because it’s also “heteronormative”! I sure wouldn’t want to take a class from that prof, who is ramming her sex and gender ideology down the students’ throats—to the point of penalizing them if they don’t use ideologically correct language.
More from the piece:
The undergrad — who competed in cross-country and track throughout high school and the beginning of her college career before transferring to the University of Cincinnati — said she followed the professor’s instructions to a tee [sic], including using three sources from the class and formatting the paper to the teacher’s requirements.
“The directions for the assignment in which I received a zero on specifically state, ‘This exercise is developmental. Thoughtful proposals submitted on time will receive full credit.’ I turned in my assignment on time and I can guarantee 100% that my proposal was extremely thoughtful,” she insisted.
Krolczyk also said she had contacted the university’s Gender Equality office, which told her it would have a different professor review and grade her work — but she has yet to see her grade change nearly two weeks later.
She gets in one general comment about the incursion of ideology into college courses:
Krolczyk said she decided to speak out because she feels “the issue is not being taken seriously” by the university.
“Standing up for free speech in education is more important. If we as a student body take action instead of conforming to the professor’s ideology, we can hopefully start changing our universities back to a place where stating simple biology isn’t punished and conflicting opinions are encouraged,” she told The Post.
. . .Krolczkyk said political ideologies being injected into universities is turning young Americans off wanting to go.
“There are more and more people avoiding college, or finding the cheapest possible options simply because universities are losing their respect as educators and are building the reputation as indoctrinators of ‘wokeness,’” she said.
It would be great if she were supported by faculty and fellow students at her university, but that doesn’t seem likely!
Here’s Olivia’s Tik Tok video complaining about her treatment:
Today’s batch of large format black-and-white plant photos come from reader Christopher Moss, whose captions and IDs are indented. You can enlarge the photos by clicking on them.
Since you have expanded the definition of wildlife, I thought I send along some plant studies. They are all taken on film, indoors, and the medium format photos (the first four) used a strobe. All are taken on Ilford XP2 Super film, which is a black and white film made with the same chemistry as a colour film. It was produced when black & white developing at the High Street chemist had disappeared, and is usually developed in the same CD-4 process as colour films. I have found a way to develop it with (I think) superior results in traditional B&W chemicals.
Good morning on the Cruelest Day: Tuesday, June 6, 2023, and National Gingerbread Day. The cookies are fine, but give me a warm gingerbread cake with a scoop of vanilla ice cream melting over it.
It’s also the D-Day Invasion Anniversary and the anniversary of my late parents.
And there’s a new Google Doodle today, the winner of the annual national contest representing an idea. This year’s theme was “I am grateful for. . . ” and was won by Rebecca Wu, who was grateful for her sisters. Click the link to see her statement. Rebecca won a $30,000 college scholarship and a $50,000 technology package for her school.
Here she is with her sisters:
Readers are welcome to mark notable events, births, or deaths on this by consulting the June 6 Wikipedia page.
Da Nooz:
*Last weekend’s gun toll in Chicago: 9 dead, 37 people shot but survived. Brandon Johnson, our new mayor, promised to reduce crime, but he has a reputation for being soft on crime. He says that his plan to cut crime needs more time to work.
Ukrainian forces stepped up their artillery strikes and ground assaults in a flurry of offensive military activity that by Monday was raging along multiple sectors of the front line, American and Russian officials said.
Ukraine has remained silent about military operations after months of preparing for a major counteroffensive in the war. But the American officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said the surge in attacks was a possible indication that Kyiv’s long-planned counteroffensive against Russian forces had begun.
The officials based their assessment in part on information from U.S. military satellites, which detected an uptick in action from Ukrainian military positions. The satellites have infrared capabilities to track artillery fire and missile launches.
One difficulty in determining the exact start of a counteroffensive, beyond Ukraine’s operational security measures, is that the fighting could well begin with feints or diversions that are hard to decipher.
. . . The reported Ukrainian attacks were taking place to the east of where many analysts expected the counteroffensive to start. But even starting in that eastern area would allow Ukraine to try to accomplish the same goal: heading south toward the Sea of Azov and cutting the “land bridge” that connects Russian-occupied Crimea to Russia.
It would be lovely if Ukraine got Crimea back, but I’m not sure that even the Crimeans want that now. Good luck to Ukraine, but they really need to fix their uniforms (see next item):
Since Russia began its invasion of Ukraine last year, the Ukrainian government and NATO allies have posted, then quietly deleted, three seemingly innocuous photographs from their social media feeds: a soldier standing in a group, another resting in a trench and an emergency worker posing in front of a truck.
In each photograph, Ukrainians in uniform wore patches featuring symbols that were made notorious by Nazi Germany and have since become part of the iconography of far-right hate groups.
The photographs, and their deletions, highlight the Ukrainian military’s complicated relationship with Nazi imagery, a relationship forged under both Soviet and German occupation during World War II.
That relationship has become especially delicate because President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia has falsely declared Ukraine to be a Nazi state, a claim he has used to justify his illegal invasion.
But here’s the explanation:
Ukraine has worked for years through legislation and military restructuring to contain a fringe far-right movement whose members proudly wear symbols steeped in Nazi history and espouse views hostile to leftists, L.G.B.T.Q. movements and ethnic minorities. But some members of these groups have been fighting Russia since the Kremlin illegally annexed part of the Crimea region of Ukraine in 2014 and are now part of the broader military structure. Some are regarded as national heroes, even as the far-right remains marginalized politically.
The iconography of these groups, including a skull-and-crossbones patch worn by concentration camp guards and a symbol known as the Black Sun, now appears with some regularity on the uniforms of soldiers fighting on the front line, including soldiers who say the imagery symbolizes Ukrainian sovereignty and pride, not Nazism.
. . . So far, the imagery has not eroded international support for the war. It has, however, left diplomats, Western journalists and advocacy groups in a difficult position: Calling attention to the iconography risks playing into Russian propaganda. Saying nothing allows it to spread.
And one exmple (circle is mine):
In April, Ukraine’s Defense Ministry posted a photograph on its Twitter account of a soldier wearing a patch featuring a skull and crossbones known as the Totenkopf, or Death’s Head. The specific symbol in the picture was made notorious by a Nazi unit that committed war crimes and guarded concentration camps during World War II.
The patch in the photograph sets the Totenkopf atop a Ukrainian flag with a small No. 6 below. That patch is the official merchandise of Death in June, a British neo-folk band that the Southern Poverty Law Center has said produces “hate speech” that “exploits themes and images of fascism and Nazism.”
The solution: if you’re courting the world’s good will, it’s not good optics to use a symbol that the SS used in World War II:
The Nazi Totenkopf
*It’s clearly a NYT day: here’s new op-ed. “I’m in high school. I hope affirmative action is rejected, and replaced with something stronger.” Stronger? What could that be? Well, the author is Sofia Lam, an Asian American, and she’s concerned about all people, regardless of ethnicity, that are denied the chance to go to college because of socioeconomic deprivation. She has a good solution of how to advance the deprived when the Supreme Court strikes down affirmative action:
Properly measuring a student’s achievement requires assessing the obstacles surmounted to attain it.
Our race-based system of preference, however, doesn’t seem to work this way. Underprivileged white and Asian American kids, including some living just a few miles from my house, do not benefit from affirmative action. How fair is a system that seems to give an affluent African American student an advantage over an underprivileged white or Asian American one, simply on the basis of skin color?
If the current policy is struck down, colleges seeking to maintain a diverse student body will be compelled to focus on socioeconomic status instead of race. Doing so can result in racial diversity, but in a fairer way.
Of course we’ll still be faced with the problem of how much to lower the merit-based entry bar to admit the socioeconomically deprived, but somehow it seems fairer to put all people who lacked opportunity on the same scale rather than give preference to those with specified ethnicities.
* According to Wikipedia, the Benin Bronzes are
. . . a group of several thousand metal plaques and sculptures that decorated the royal palace of the Kingdom of Benin, in what is now Edo State, Nigeria. Collectively, the objects form the best examples of Benin art and were created from the thirteenth century by artists of the Edo people. The plaques, which in the Edo language are called Ama, depict scenes or represent themes in the history of the Kingdom. Apart from the plaques, other sculptures in brass or bronze include portrait heads, jewelry, and smaller pieces.
Many of them are gorgeous (see here), but hundreds were looted by the British at the end of the 19th century and now reside in the British Museum and othere European museums. They were clearly looted and belong to Nigeria. And museums were getting ready to give them back. Now, according to the NYT, “The repatriation of the Benin bronzes to Nigeria has hit a snag.” What’s the snag?
After years of ignored pleas and stonewalled requests, deals were finally coming together to return some of Africa’s most prized treasures to the continent.
The Smithsonian Institution, the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the German government announced they were returning scores of sculptures, plaques and ornaments, known as the Benin Bronzes, that British soldiers had plundered in 1897 from Benin City, in what is now Nigeria but was once the center of a kingdom. Plans were underway for a glittering new museum designed by the British Ghanaian architect David Adjaye to showcase and protect the returned treasures.
But that plan has run aground since Nigeria’s outgoing president announced he had transferred ownership of the looted items to a direct descendant of the ruler they had been stolen from. At a moment when museums worldwide are trying to come to grips with contested artifacts in their collections, this development underscores how complex restitution efforts can be.
The confusion began in March, when President Muhammadu Buhari of Nigeria, who left office on Monday, issued a declaration handing over the artifacts — which include decorated brass plaques, carved ivory statues and ceremonial masks — to Ewuare II, the current oba, or ceremonial king, of Benin. It decreed that any returned artifacts “may be kept within the palace of the oba,” or in any location that he considers secure.
In other words, they are private property of the king, and that doesn’t seem right. But the oba says this:
The oba wants the bronzes displayed in museums in Nigeria and around the world, a representative of the royal family said, but the passing of the treasures into private hands spread anxiety among some museums that are negotiating returns of looted items to Nigeria.
Some museums are having thoughts about giving them back, though many others are saying they don’t care if they’re the king’s property so long as they go back to Nigeria. I guess I take the middle ground. They clearly should be returned to Nigeria, but, as with discussions of the Elgin Marbles, this should be done with the proviso that they belong to the country as a whole and should be exhibited to all in a museum. This should be part of a written agreement. It’s good that they’re going back, though!
Hanssen, 79, was found unresponsive at the supermax prison in Florence, Colo., about 6:55 a.m., according to a news release from the Justice Department. Medical staff tried and failed to save Hanssen, the release stated.
The former FBI agent was sentenced to life in prison for espionage in 2002. His actions were so damaging that two decades later the FBI has a webpage explaining what Hanssen did and how they uncovered his ruse.
Hanssen was arrested Feb. 18, 2001, for spying on behalf of Russia and the former Soviet Union, according to the FBI. He used the alias “Ramon Garcia” with his Russian handlers, with whom he exchanged highly classified national security information for $1.4 million in cash and diamonds.
“The information he delivered compromised numerous human sources, counterintelligence techniques, investigations, dozens of classified U.S. government documents, and technical operations of extraordinary importance and value,” the FBI said.
Hansen was an FBI analyst who wanted the money from spying. Arrested in 2001, he spent his entire period of incarceration in the Florence prison—a tough go of it. Here’s his mug shot taken on the day he was arrested:
Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili wants to be an icon now: her smile is like that of the Mona Lisa.
“I hope one day we will dance on your grave.” This quote is from an Iranian woman who is driving and playing music while passing the grave of the ayatollah who prohibited millions of women from dancing and singing. Now she wishes that the Islamic Republic will fall one day, and… pic.twitter.com/53uBN9tld1
Barry didn’t know this about the Godfather, and neither did I:
The Godfather's famous cat-in-lap scene was entirely unscripted. A stray cat randomly wandered onto the set, so Francis Ford Coppola grabbed it and put it in Marlon Brando's lap without a word. pic.twitter.com/vOoxUFMKw1
From the Auschwitz Memorial, mother and 8-year-old daughter gassed upon arrival:
6 June 1936 | A Czech Jewish girl, Eva Steindlerová, was born.
She was deported to #Auschwitz from #Theresienstadt Ghetto on 16 October 1944 with her mother Gertruda. They were both most probably murdered in a gas chamber after the selection. pic.twitter.com/J7T6KvH5bv
— Auschwitz Memorial (@AuschwitzMuseum) June 6, 2023
Tweets from Dr. Cobb. The first one is ineffably sweet, but be sure you put the sound up:
Watch this shy rescue cat start reaching his paw out to tap the shelter staff whenever he wants pets 🥺💞 pic.twitter.com/pgQpCZOQQm
This is lovely to see but not super rare: I’ve seen something similar:
Caught a thunderstorm on video while flying from New York to Vancouver yesterday and it's the most incredible thing I've ever seen in my entire life. pic.twitter.com/nQPun0YMqo
Several readers sent me a link to this article because they saw me quoted in it; I’d missed it even though I subscribe to the Free Press. It’s a pretty fair and dispassionate description of the fight in the bird community to rename birds named after bad people like Audubon (who had slaves)—or even rename all birds (and, yes, all animals) that are named after any human.
I’ve written about this several times, and while I recognize that some names are offensive, I tend to be wary of the issue, as is my friend Doug Futuyma quoted below. I think it’s better to contextualize history rather than erase it, for you can re-contextualize but you can’t un-erase.
But one thing I can’t countenance (nor can science countenance) is the argument that the Latin binomials, or “scientific names” of organisms, should be changed. This is really a moot point, for the International Commission for Zoological Nomenclature (ICZN) has already ruled that scientific names of animals, for the sake of clarity in the literature, cannot be changed. The equivalent botanical organization hasn’t yet issued a diktat.
One thing I do question, though, is whether all this effort in changing names will actually do anything to improve relationships between ethnic groups, fix American society, or even bring minorities flocking into bird groups. To me it seems like performative wokeness rather than a genuine effort to improve society. It avoids doing substantive work by doing easy stuff: just changing names of animals.
You can read the piece, I hope, by clicking on the link below.
A few quotes for your edification. Note that people on both sides are quoted in the article.
Chuck Almdale, a 76-year-old birder, is against any name changes:
Almdale, in Los Angeles, made it clear he was against the change both nationally and locally at his 800-strong Santa Monica Bay Audubon Society, postingabout name changes on his chapter’s blog. His local club didn’t even take the debate to a vote, he told me.
“We decided not to judge Audubon by modern standards,” Almdale said.
He says the division isn’t red versus blue. It’s far-left versus center-left. And it’s more generational than racial.
“I’m basically a progressive,” says Almdale, who drives a Prius, voted for Hillary and Biden, and calls himself a Never Trumper. “I’m old, I’m white, I’m a man. So what? I’m angry. Audubon’s known for birds, for helping and enjoying them. If we change, what are we?”
He calls the battle over language a “divider” and “propaganda.”
Like many birders, he’s obsessed with names, particularly McCown’s longspur, a rare ground-feeder that lives in the grasslands of the Great Plains and was named after the man who first discovered it: Confederate soldier John McCown. “It’s a hard bird to find,” Almdale says, adding that McCown was “a frontier ornithologist.” No one knows what his beliefs were, Almdale says. But after petitions and a fierceonline campaign, the American Ornithological Society officially renamed McCown’s longspur to the thick-billed longspur in 2020.
Today there are 155 North American bird names on a change list that “represent colonialism,” according to two ornithologists who started the list in 2020. That includes Hammond’s flycatcher, named after William Alexander Hammond, a U.S. surgeon general, and Townsend’s warbler, named after John Kirk Townsend, a Quaker naturalist who hailed from a family of abolitionists. The work of both men, according to a Washington Post op-ed written by the change list authors, led to the desecration of Native American graves.
“We cannot subjectively decide—especially if the adjudicators are White—that some names can be retained because they are associated with less abhorrent pasts than others,” the ornithologists Gabriel Foley and Jordan Rutter argued in their piece. “We must remove all eponymous names. The stench of colonialism has saturated each of its participants, and the honor inherent within their names must be revoked.”
But Almdale says the whole controversy is overblown. “They want to change the name of that bird or of Audubon simply because they don’t like that person. That’s a stupid reason to change a name,” he says, nudging a dead catfish at the water’s edge.
Christian Cooper is the black birder who, three years ago, was the subject of national headlines when a white woman called the cops when she felt threatened by his presence. He’s in favor of name changes, but sees both sides of the issue. He does, however, feel that retaining the name “Audubon Society”, which the national society and most of its branches are doing, will drive away minorities:
Christian tells me over the phone that the entire Central Park incident was “nonsense,” exaggerated by reporters. But he didn’t blow off the debate over Audubon’s name change for his local NYC chapter, which has around 10,000 members. In March, he and other board members voted that the group should rebrand, but “we haven’t announced what the new name will be because we don’t know yet.” He said a new brand will help preserve the group’s future as more people become aware of their namesake’s past.
“They’ll find out,” Cooper said. “Most people think Audubon is some German highway. But people will find out. When they do, and they hear that national decided not to change the name, they’ll walk.”
. . . “I passionately feel both sides because I’ve been a lifelong birder and lifelong Audubon member. To me, Audubon means the protection of birds and their habitat. That’s Audubon. Then as a black person, you find this out, and oh no, that’s got to go. It was very much a wrestling match for me as far as what side to fall on.”
My friend Doug Futuyma, an emeritus professor of evolution at Stony Brook, whose name I suggested to the author of this piece, is on the fence:
“This is huge and it goes way beyond Audubon,” says Douglas Futuyma, 81, a retired Stony Brook University professor and lifelong birder who recently chased a yellow-throated warbler through Manhattan with Christian Cooper. He isn’t sure what’s right, but worries “Are we going to delete history? Will we close the great paintings in the Met because they objectify the female body? Will Audubon lose effectiveness as the face for conservation?”
Another proponent of name change:
Glenn Nelson disagrees with Almdale that the Audubon Society should live and let live. The 65-year-old Japanese American is a former journalist who became the Seattle chapter’s community director last year, and led the successful push to change its name.
“I woke up one morning, turned to my wife, and said the Audubon name harms marginalized communities, consequences be damned,” Nelson said.
I disagree with Nelson, and so I weighed in:
Nelson admits “we’ve had members and donors stop giving us money,” but he wouldn’t share specifics, saying that his crusade “makes me a villain to a lot of people.”
A handful of local members I spoke to don’t entirely dispute that characterization of Nelson, but feared saying so on the record. Jerry Coyne—an evolutionary biologist and the author of Why Evolution is True, who penned a blog post about Audubon’s name controversy—isn’t so shy. Speaking about Nelson, he said, “He’s pretending to do something to foster racial equity. In reality, he’s making himself feel good and promoting his virtues by saying he’s creating a safe space for all ethnicities, which he’s not doing because he’s turning others off.”
But Nelson, the father of two women, said he doesn’t care. “I’m doing this for me, for my daughters,” by railing against the “white supremacist framework built into the DNA of the outdoors.”
Umm. . . “white supremacist framework built into the DNA of the outdoors”? What does he mean? First of all, nobody prevents any member of any minority group from enjoying the outdoors: hiking, camping, visiting National Parks, and so on. If Nelson’s saying that there are some bigots in outdoors organizations, well, that’s entirely possible. But if he’s saying, which seems likely, that structural racism is pervasive among outdoorspeople (and how could that be?), if he’s arguing that “white supremacy is built into groups promoting the outdoors and conservation,” then he’s dead wrong.
After I reread what Nelson said, I don’t feel so bad about being willing to go on the record. Anyway, I’ve gone on the record about this issue several times before.
Aposematic coloration, often called “warning coloration”, is the presence of bright or conspicuous colors or patterns in animals that are toxic, noxious, dangerous, or poisonous to predators. Here’s an example from Wikipedia, the granular poison frog (Oophaga granulifera). Like many dendrobatid frogs, this has a number of poison alkaloids in its skin, and they have been used in Central and South America to tip arrows or darts, which can kill mammals. Any predator that tried to eat one of these would probably be dead, or at least very ill.
My own frog, Atelopus coynei, looks conspicuous too [but see Lou Jost’s comment below], and may be toxic, but I don’t think people know anything about that:
Atelopus coynei. Photo: Jordy Salazar/EcoMinga
But of course far more animals than amphibians are aposematic. The skunk advertises its toxicity with a pair of conspicuous stripes. Many insects, like ladybugs and some leipidopterans, are also aposematic and toxic, including at least one bird species: see here for a Google image search of aposematic animals.
The colors and patterns, as the name implies, gives their bearers an evolutionary advantage over their presumably camouflaged ancestors, for predators will deliberately avoid the pattern, usually because they’ve learned to recognize and stay away from it because of previous unpleasant experiences. (The avoidance can also be evolved rather than learned, as you’ll see if you think about it. Even if eating one of these kills you, individual predators having less of a propensity to attack the pattern would be favored.) Usually, however, learning is involved.
But to get that advantage, the aposematic species has to be sufficiently numerous to afford predators a chance to learn and then avoid the next aposematic animal. And this creates an evolutionary problem.
We are pretty sure that aposematic species evolved from camouflaged ones. To get the warning coloration started, there have to be mutations in the camouflaged population that produce individuals with bright colors and patterns, at least in incipient form.
And that’s the rub: the first mutant individual stands a higher chance of being attacked and killed than do cryptic individuals. Even if it’s toxic, it may still get killed or injured by being attacked for being a novel, conspicuous creature. So how does the adaptation ever spread through the population from a rare initial state?
Previously, as described in the excellent Nature News & Views summary by Tim Caro below (click to read), we had a few answers:
1.) The trait could evolved by kin selection in gregarious animals. While the first mutant individual might be attacked, it might be part of a group of relatives that share that aposematic mutation. Assuming the predator learns to avoid the pattern after killing or hurting the first individual, it would avoid its similarly-colored kin, and that is a form of kin selection on the color/pattern genes that could make them spread.
2.) The trait could have evolved from a state that was conspicuous but not as conspicuous as the animals above. But this runs into the same problem as #1!
3.) The attacked aposematic mutant could avoid being killed by the predator because it smells or tastes bad, or is injured only slightly. If the predator learns from one experience (and some do), then that individual would henceforth be protected from predation, perhaps giving the mutant color/pattern gene an advantage. This seems somewhat likely, and could be tested by exposing naive predators to aposematic prey.
4.) Predators might avoid novel colors or patterns in general since the hunters have a search image for edible species. As Caro says, there’s some evidence for this, too.
But now, in his summary of the original paper, Caro describes a fifth hypothesis that is described in the Science paper below that. The authors test this interesting hypothesis using phylogenetic data, and it seems to be supported.
Click the original Science paper below to read about the novel hypothesis for the evolution of aposematism. The authors test it in amphibians, but may hold for other creatures as well. You can also find the pdf here , and the reference is at the bottom.
Again, I’ll try to be brief, but may not succeed. The authors’ hypothesis, which is very clever, is that full aposematic coloration may have evolved, at least in amphibians from an earlier state where it wasn’t clearly visible to predators. This could involve the colors/patterns starting their evolution on the BOTTOM (ventral) side of the animal, which wouldn’t draw attention until the animal was attacked, at which point it could flash its pattern and possibly startle the predator (the predator could also learn from a brief encounter that the prey was toxic). And the bottom-colored state could itself be of two types: small patches on the ventral surface (PV) or a fully colored ventral surface (FV). This is in contrast to an animal that is fully colored all over its body.
Once the predator started learning what the color/pattern means from the animals that had it on their belly, then the color could evolve to cover the animal, making it fully aposematic.
But how do you test this hypothesis? Well, you could see if predators learn to avoid toxic amphibians that had color patches painted on their belly, but there are few amphibians that are toxic and lack aposematic coloration. No, the authors tested their hypothesis by doing phylogenetic reconstruction: they used living species and their known family tree to deduce what the color/pattern of the ancestors were. This kind of reconstruction, which makes sense if you have enough data, is increasingly used to study evolution.
And so Loeffler-Henry et al. did a big reconstruction of the evolutionary history of amphibians, many of whom were aposematically colored. They used 1106 species, putting each in one of five evolutionary categories:
species cryptic (camouflaged; “cry” in photo below)
species PV (ventral side partly aposematic)
species FV (ventral side fully aposematic)
species fully aposematic all over its body (“conspicuous” or “con” in photo below)
species polymorphic (some individuals are aposematic, others not). There aren’t many of these, and I won’t go into why they are supposed to exist.
Here’s a photo from the paper showing four of the five states (a polymorphic species isn’t shown):
Part of paper’s caption: Cry: cryptic; PV (partially conspicuous venter): cryptic dorsum with conspicuous color present as small patches on normally hidden body parts; FV (fully conspicuous venter): cryptic dorsum with conspicuous colors fully covered on the venter; Con: conspicuous
And here’s the reconstruction of the phylogeny showing the position in the family tree of each of the five states. Click to enlarge:
(From paper): Fig. 2. Ancestral state estimation of each color state (N = 1106 species) in frogs and salamanders. Pie charts at each node show the probabilities of ancestral states. The ancestral state of frogs and salamanders is likely to be cryptic coloration. The hidden color signals (PV and FV) are widespread and have evolved multiple times in different lineages. PV: cryptic dorsum with conspicuous color present as small patches on normally hidden body parts; FV: cryptic dorsum with conspicuous colors fully covered on the venter. See table S11 for photo credits.
There’s a pie diagram at each node of the tree showing the probability that that ancestor had one of the five states scored. I won’t go into the methods for deriving probabilities (in truth, I don’t understand them); but her are the salient points:
1.) Ancestors tend to be cryptic (camouflaged; gray dots), with the possible exception of some salamanders. This comports with the evolutionary view that aposematic coloration was not an ancestral condition but evolved as a defensive adaptation to deter predators.
2.) Full aposematism—the orange state—didn’t appear until later in amphibians, and
3.) . . . it did so generally going through an intermediate state of aposematic coloration on the belly (purple and red species)
4.) The preponderance of purple circles earlier than red ones suggests that the condition of full ventral coloration was preceded in time by the evolution of partial ventral coloration: patches of color that could be flashed but are still less conspicuous to predators than fully belly coloration. This suggestion is supported by statistical analysis of the likelihood of the models, but I’ll skip that.
Now this is an analysis of amphibians, but could apply equally well to other species. In fact, many butterflies that have warning coloration have it on their rear wings, which are covered up when they’re resting. It’s only when they fly, or when a predator startles them, that the aposematic coloration is revealed. Here’s an example: an aposematic butterfly from Ray Cannon’s Nature Notes. It’s the common birdwing(Troides helena), known to be very poisonous since the larvae feed on plants containing toxic aristolochic acids.
(from site): Altinote dicaeus callianira – its distinct pattern advertises its unpalatability. Photo: Adrian Hoskins
For a long time the evolution of aposematic coloration posed the problem of what evolutionists call an “adaptive valley”: how do you get from one adaptive state (toxic but camouflaged) to a presumably more adapted state (toxic and brightly colored), when the intermediate evolutionary stage (the first mutant individual) was at a disadvantage: mired in an adaptive valley? This could not occur by natural selecction since selection cannot favor the less adapted (here, “less avoided”) individuals.
The authors propose a solution to this: an adaptive valley wasn’t crossed because the intermediate state—ventral coloration—did confer a selective advantage on the first mutant individuals.
The authors end the paper by suggesting that their scenario could apply to many species; and it well could:
. . . macroevolutionary studies on animal coloration should take into account these underappreciated hidden signals, which are both common and widespread across the animal kingdom, to advance our understanding of the evolution of antipredator defenses. Indeed, many animal taxa such as snakes, fishes, and a variety of arthropods (see fig. S12 for example groups) include species that are cryptic, are aposematic, and have hidden conspicuous signals. We therefore encourage follow-up studies in other taxa to evaluate the generality of the stepping-stone hypothesis as a route to aposematism.
Please send in your good wildlife photos, folks. The tank is dropping at a disturbing rate.
Today we’ll feature the second half of Daniel Shockes’s photos from Africa (part 1 is here). His narration is indented, and you can click on the photos to enlarge them. Here’s his original introduction:
Here are photos from our trip to Africa. Started in Livingstone Zambia, traveled through Zimbabwe, and into Botswana.
Male Lion after a kill. This group had just taken down a baby elephant and was methodically eating it. I do have pictures of them eating the carcass but even dispassionate scientific readers might find it a bit disturbing. Happy to share more if you want (also have great video):
It’s the top o’ the work week: Monday, June 5, 2023, and National Ketchup Day. Once proposed by the Reagan administration as vegetable for school lunches, it was rejected. Now it’s a condiment, and the only acceptable brand (as my father taught me) is this one:
Readers are welcome to mark notable events, births, or deaths on this by consulting the June 5 Wikipedia page.
Da Nooz:
*The NYT discusses the issue of Biden’s age in a piece called “The complicated reality of being America’s oldest President.” You’d think there would be nothing more to say about this, but I suppose Biden’s tripping over a sandbag last week reactivated concerns about his health.” Here’s that video:
An except:
The two Joe Bidens coexist in the same octogenarian president: Sharp and wise at critical moments, the product of decades of seasoning, able to rise to the occasion even in the dead of night to confront a dangerous world. Yet a little slower, a little softer, a little harder of hearing, a little more tentative in his walk, a little more prone to occasional lapses of memory in ways that feel familiar to anyone who has reached their ninth decade or has a parent who has.
The complicated reality of America’s oldest president was encapsulated on Thursday as Congress approved a bipartisan deal he brokered to avoid a national default. Even Speaker Kevin McCarthy testified that Mr. Biden had been “very professional, very smart, very tough” during their talks. Yet just before the voting got underway, Mr. Biden tripped over a sandbag at the Air Force Academy commencement, plunging to the ground. The video went viral, his supporters cringed and his critics pounced.
Anyone can trip at any age, but for an 80-year-old president, it inevitably raises unwelcome questions. If it were anyone else, the signs of age might not be notable. But Mr. Biden is the chief executive of the world’s most powerful nation and has just embarked on a campaign asking voters to keep him in the White House until age 86, drawing more attention to an issue that polls show troubles most Americans and is the source of enormous anxiety among party leaders.
The conclusion: he’s still copacetic
The portrait that emerges from months of interviews with dozens of current and former officials and others who have spent time with him lies somewhere between the partisan cartoon of an addled and easily manipulated fogy promoted by Republicans and the image spread by his staff of a president in aviator shades commanding the world stage and governing with vigor.
It is one of a man who has slowed with age in ways that are more pronounced than just the graying hair common to most recent presidents during their time in office. Mr. Biden sometimes mangles his words and looks older than he used to because of his stiff gait and thinning voice.
Yet people who deal with him regularly, including some of his adversaries, say he remains sharp and commanding in private meetings. Diplomats share stories of trips to places like Ukraine, Japan, Egypt, Cambodia and Indonesia in which he often outlasts younger colleagues. Democratic lawmakers point to a long list of accomplishments as proof that he still gets the job done.
But Americans haven’t grasped it.
Polls indicate the president’s age is a top concern of Americans, including Democrats. During a recent New York Times focus group, several voters who supported Mr. Biden in 2020 expressed worry, with one saying: “I’ve just seen the blank stare at times, when he’s either giving a speech or addressing a crowd. It seems like he loses his train of thought.”
I have to say that I share their fears. I like Joe, and think he’s done a good job, but he’s an aging war horse. And, Ceiling Cat forbid, should anything happen to him, we’ll get Kamala Harris as President
*Speaking of politics, the Wall Street Journal news section analyzes why Biden’s poll numbers are still quite low for someone that, after all, has come through with bipartisan deals (and I add that he’s done a good job with the Ukrainian situation). The article praises him for the debt-ceiling deal, for reducing illegal immigration (this is yet to be seen!), and helped enact at least some restrictions on guns, not to mention the good job he’s done in Ukraine. So what’s the problem?
So far, voters don’t appear to be rewarding Biden for his deal-making prowess.
His approval ratings are hovering around 41%, according to the FiveThirtyEight.com poll average—and have barely budged despite those policy wins. Many voters have cited concerns about his performance at the age of 80, and they got a fresh reminder of that issue Thursday when he tripped and fell at the end of a commencement ceremony at the Air Force Academy.
“It disappoints me actually that those successes are not accruing to the president,” said Rep. Dean Phillips (D., Minn.) Some factors are specific to this president, he said, pointing to Biden’s advanced age and the White House’s light domestic travel schedule.
Phillips said the White House faces structural problems in touting centrist wins, including what he called “multibillion-dollar entertainment machines” that have grown up on the left and the right to foment anger and resentment. The polarized political atmosphere, he said, makes it more complicated to generate respect for political leaders. “It’s one of the grave risks to American discourse and our system of self governance,” Phillips said.
This is true: politicians on both the Left and Right keep beefing about the deal and demonizing each other, and Biden’s successes are ignored. But I’m more scared of the public’s failure to appreciate his successes than I am of his advancing age, though both play into the hands of Trump.
*This has been a horrific season of climbing Mount Everest, with 12 climbers dying and five more missing. The prime climbing season is short—from March through May—and a record number of permits (478) were issued this year. They really need to cut back on the crowds, which themselves cause accidents, and institute some kind of lottery system. But the Nepali government gets a lot of dosh from Everest climbers:
There are two types of guiding services usually offered for Mount Everest expeditions: all-inclusive or logistics only.
Logistics-only guides offer the bare minimum and are best suited for experienced mountaineers who are willing to take on Everest on the mountain’s own terms. Very few people are cut out for this type of expedition. Most climbers who choose the logistics-only option to climb will spend between $32,000 and $60,000 depending on the types of expenses they incur along the way.
By law, every foreign climber in Nepal is required to hire a local Sherpa guide. A logistics-only option means that climbers must arrive at Everest Base Camp (EBC) on their own and would later hire a local company to provide all the necessary camping and cooking gear as well as support staff for the summit ascent.
However, most climbers will opt to avoid all the headaches and paperwork involved in a logistics-only climb and instead opt to pay for an all-inclusive expedition. These expeditions cost anywhere from $40,000 to $100,000, depending on the service.
Gelje Sherpa was on his way to the top of the world’s highest mountain when he spotted the climber clinging to the rope.
They were in the “death zone,” an area near the summit of Mount Everest where temperatures are extremely low and where there isn’t enough oxygen to breathe unaided for more than a few minutes.
The climber, from Malaysia, had “nothing” and was “about to die,” the 30-year-old Nepali mountain guide told CNN’s Anderson Cooper in an interview Thursday. “No one was helping him, no friends, no oxygen, no sherpas with him, no guides – so this is quite dangerous for him.”
. . .Gelje – Nepali sherpas traditionally go by their first names – was guiding a client to the 8,849-meter (29,032 feet) summit when he made a decision: they would abandon their journey in a bid to save the Malaysian climber.
It was a near-impossible task: Gelje had to strap the climber to his back and carry him down 600 meters (1,900 feet) for about six hours before another guide joined the rescue, Reuters reported.
They then took turns carrying the climber, wrapped in a sleeping mat, sometimes having to drag him through the snow, before reaching a helicopter that carried them down to base camp.
The rescue, which took place on May 18, was “massively difficult,” Gelje told CNN. The sherpa has previously carried out more than 55 rescues, some very long operations, but said this was the “hardest in my life.”
But the climber is okay, and the Sherpa is a hero. There’s video of the rescue:
*I have my doubts about certain types of “gender-affirming care for adolescents,” but the state of Florida (yes, Florida, of course) has made some reprehensible laws about medical care for transsexual adults.
The new law that bans gender-affirming care for minors also mandates that adult patients seeking trans health care sign an informed consent form. It also requires a physician to oversee any health care related to transitioning, and for people to see that doctor in person. Those rules have proven particularly onerous because many people received care from nurse practitioners and used telehealth. The law also made it a crime to violate the new requirements.
Another new law that allows doctors and pharmacists to refuse to treat transgender people further limits their options.
“For trans adults, it’s devastating,” said Kate Steinle, chief clinical officer at FOLX Health, which provides gender-affirming care to trans adults through telemedicine. Her company decided to open in-person clinics and hire more physicians licensed in Florida in order to continue to provide care to patients who have already enrolled, even though that represents a major change to the company’s business model.
Eli has been seeing a physician for years and therefore still has access to care. But SPEKTRUM Health Inc., the Orlando clinic that prescribed Lucas hormone replacement therapy, has stopped providing gender-affirming care.
“There are a lot of people looking for care that we’re no longer legally able to provide,” said Lana Dunn, SPEKTRUM Health’s chief operating officer.
. . . The law also contains language that she said could scare off doctors who would be otherwise willing to treat trans patients, such as a 20-year statute of limitations to sue over care they provide.
Voluntary suspension of care, requirements to see physicians in person rather than nurse practitioners, the ban on tele-health, pharmacists no longer required to provide prescribed medication—I see no rationale for stopping these things for adults who have already transitioned. And Florida, with the second highest number of transgender adults in the U.S. (nearly 95,000 people), is also the only state in America that prohibits this kind of care. If anything is real transphobia, this is, for what’s the purpose except to punish people who have already transitioned?
In 1908, D.C. socialite Preston Gibson bet Senators fan John Biddle $500 that Charles “Gabby” Street, Senators pitcher Walter Johnson’s personal catcher, could catch a baseball dropped from the top of the Washington Monument. Not wanting to risk a fine — or worse — Gibson secured a permit from the superintendent of public buildings and grounds, and he turned Street’s attempt into a public spectacle. Senators shortstop George McBride and outfielder Bob Ganley attended, along with a photographer from The Post.
On Aug. 21, with a crowd of spectators gathered below, Gibson rolled 10 balls down a wooden chute and out the window of the monument, but they all bounced off the obelisk’s side or landed too close to the base for Street to get in position to make a catch. Gibson ditched the chute and started throwing the baseballs instead.
“The thirteenth ball was the lucky number, for this Street got under and held tightly in his great mitt,” The Post reported. “… The speed at which it traveled was about an eighth as fast as a rifle bullet, and if it had not been for the very scientific way in which Street caught the ball it would undoubtedly have broken his arm. As it was, it almost carried him to the ground, so great was its impact, and those who stood in the window of the Monument heard a report like the shot of a pistol when it struck his glove.”
These appear to be the records:
On April 1, 1930, Chicago Cubs catcher Gabby Hartnett caught a baseball dropped from a Goodyear blimp flying an estimated 800 feet above Los Angeles. In 1938, Cleveland Indians catchers Frankie Pytlak and Hank Helf each snagged a ball thrown by rookie third baseman Ken Keltner from the top of Cleveland’s Terminal Tower, about 708 feet above the city’s public square.
Don’t try this at home!
Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili is again afflicted with Weltschmerz, and looks very sad:
Hili: The world is in a state of constant war.
A: But it doesn’t concern you.
Hili: How so? I’m fighting for peace and quiet and I’m constantly disturbed by somebody
In Polish:
Hili: Świat jest w stanie wiecznej wojny.
Ja: Ale ciebie to nie dotyczy.
Hili: Jak to nie? Walczę o święty spokój i ciągle mi przeszkadzają.
And a photo of Szaron:
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From David:
A B. Kliban cartoon from Stash Krod (Kliban must have been a real character!):
From Masih. I believe these are scenes during the 1979 Iranian revolution when women were afraid that the hijab would become mandatory. Here’s the Google translation:
Khomeini’s first enemy from day one were women. That’s why he started suppressing them in the first step and enforced hijab. Women resisted but remained alone. Finally, the mandatory hijab became a law. Now, however, with women challenging it, the foundations of Khomeini’s government have been shaken. #Woman_Freedom_Life.
The group of women is shouting “Freedom.”
نخستین دشمن خمینی از روز نخست زنان بودند. برای همین در اولین قدم شروع به سرکوب آنان و اعمال حجاب اجباری کرد. زنان مقاومت کردند اما تنها ماندند. نهایتا حجاب اجباری تبدیل به قانون شد .حالا اما با به چالش کشیدن آن توسط زنان، پایههای حکومت خمینی به لرزه درآمده است.#زن_زندگى_آزادىpic.twitter.com/EIIunG9wai
From the Auschwitz Memorial. a 13-year-old girl gassed upon arrival:
5 June 1931 | A French Jewish girl, Madeleine Driay, was born in Paris.
She arrived at #Auschwitz on 2 June 1944 in a transport of 1,000 Jews deported from Drancy. She as among 627 of them murdered in a gas chamber after the selection. pic.twitter.com/nxMAAufxyZ
— Auschwitz Memorial (@AuschwitzMuseum) June 4, 2023
Tweets from Dr. Cobb. The first one shows his atheist credentials:
I read this book recently and highly recommend it! It's great if you're interested in folklore, history, Japanese culture, Japanese language/writing, art, and/or cats. https://t.co/WGzgtlsZWxpic.twitter.com/cp1sveIini
