Buy Not Exactly Rocket Science: The Book

I moved to ScienceBlogs earlier this year. If you want to catch up on what you missed, buy my new book and get 80 of the best blog posts from the last year. From Mexican-waving bees to snow-making bacteria, from the neuroscience of jazz to the psychology of voting, the book covers some of the coolest, most exciting and most ground-breaking discoveries from 2008. Click the image for more.

Update your links

Hi all,

This is a quick reminder for anyone still subscribing to the old feed to update your feed-readers. I’ve now moved to ScienceBlogs and I’d hate to lose any readers along the way. I’m sticking to the original mission statement and if anything, I’m writing even more than before.

Here are the new details:

URL: http://scienceblogs.com/notrocketscience/

Feed: http://feeds.feedburner.com/scienceblogs/notrocketscience

And a wee taster of some of the new material so far:

• How sharks, penguins and bacteria find food in the big, wide ocean
• Immune snakes outrun toxic newts in evolutionary arms races
• Punishing slackers and do-gooders
• The machine that identifies images from brain activity alone
• Moths remember what they learn as caterpillars?
• What happens in the brain of an improvising jazz musician?
• Snow-making bacteria are everywhere
• Communicating chimps and talking humans show activity in same part of the brain
• Japanese moths hit by male-killing virus
• Effects of invading island rats ripple across land and sea

This blog has moved!

Not Exactly Rocket Science has transformed and rolled out! I’m now live at ScienceBlogs and hopefully all of you will join me on the new site.

You’ll need to update your bookmarks and/or feed readers.

URL: http://scienceblogs.com/notrocketscience/

Feed: http://feeds.feedburner.com/scienceblogs/notrocketscience

“Begin PHASE TWO!” – I’m moving to ScienceBlogs…

So, I have some really exciting news – this blog is evolving. After 18 excellent months at WordPress, I am packing up and moving over to ScienceBlogs, a collection of some of the best, er… science blogs on the Interweb.

I want to assure current readers that the blog is not going to change, (well, except in look). Even though the blog will have some academic neighbours, my mission statement of making science interesting and fun to as many people as possible remains the same and the pitch of the writing won’t change.

I still have full freedom to write about whatever I like and if anything, I’m hoping that the scrutiny of a tight community of experienced bloggers, many of whom are hardcore scientists, will push me to ensure an even higher level of accuracy in what I’m putting out.

So for the moment a massive round of thanks to everyone who continues to read and support this blog. The growing traffic and the generally positive comments from people are really gratifying and I’m really excited about the next step.

In a couple of weeks, the new blog should be ready, I’ll post up the new URL, raise my hands in the air, say “Begin Phase Two!” and cackle maniacally.

Tiny molecules drove the evolution of the vertebrates

The spinal column that runs down your back is an identity badge that signifies your membership among the vertebrates – animals with backbones. Vertebrates have arguably the most complex bodies and genomes of any animal group and certainly, our lineage has come a long way from its last common ancestor.

The closest evolutionary cousins of the vertebrates are simple aquatic creatures such as the jawless lancelets and the sac-like, immobile sea squirts. How did these simple body plans diversify into the vast array of sophisticated forms wielded by today’s fish, amphibians, reptiles and mammals?

Gene number

Many scientists have suggested that the answer lies in the number of our genes. At three different points, the vertebrate genome (its full suite of genes) experienced a massive jump in size as huge chunks of genes – possibly the entire lot – were duplicated. The first of these coincided with the origins of the group itself and the second happened alongside the rise of the first jawed fish, setting them and their descendants aside from more ancient jawless forms like the lampreys.

So far, there seems to be a tidy connection between gene number and complexity, but the third round of duplication is a bit of a stumbling block. It happened at some point during the evolution of the bony fishes and while this group proceeded to radiate into a multitude of different shapes, their basic body plan stayed essentially the same. No big jump in complexity there.

Indeed, as the full genome sequences of more and more species are revealed, it’s becoming clear that the basic genetic toolkit that controls the development of animal bodies is remarkably consistent across the kingdom. Even the genome of a sea anemone, one of the simplest and most ancient animals on Earth, is strikingly similar to that of vertebrates.

In this light, it’s looking increasingly unlikely that the advent of new genes can account for the large rise in vertebrate complexity. Now, Alysha Heimberg and colleagues from Dartmouth College have proposed a new theory, centred around tiny molecules called microRNAs.

Testing, not studying, makes for strong long-term memories

It’s a familiar scene – the wee hours of the morning are ticking away and your head is bent over a stack of notes, desperately trying to cram as much knowledge into your head before the test in the morning.

Because of the way our education system works, this process of hard studying has become almost synonymous with the act of learning, and the inevitable tests and exams that bookend this ordeal merely assess how much information has stuck.

But a new study reveals that the tests themselves do more good for our ability to learn that the many hours before them spent relentlessly poring over notes and textbook. The act of repeatedly retrieving and using learned information drives memories into long-term storage, while repetitive revision produced almost no benefits.

Earliest bat shows flight developed before echolocation

Their heads and bodies of bats have amassed an extraordinary array of adaptations that have make them lords of the night sky. Today, the thousand-plus types of bats make up a fifth of living mammal species. Richard Dawkins once described the evolution of bats as “one of the most enthralling stories in all natural history” and as of this week, the story has a clearer beginning.

The success of bats hinges on two key abilities: their mastery of flight, a feat matched only by birds and insects; and echolocation, the ability to navigate their way through pitch-blackness by timing the reflections of high-pitched squeaks. For evolutionary scientists, the big question has always been: which came first?

The ‘clawed bat’

Until now, fossil bats haven’t provided any clues for all of them show signs of both echolocation and flight. But a stunning new fossil, discovered by Nancy Simmons from the American Museum of Natural History is an exception and it provides a categorical answer to the long-running debate – the earliest bats could fly but could not echolocate.

The new creature hails from the Green River in Wyoming and is known as Onychonycteris, meaning “clawed bat”. Its fossils date back to about 52.5 million years ago and by comparing it to other prehistoric bats, Simmons found that it is the most ancient member of this lineage so far discovered. It acts as a ‘missing link’ in bat evolution, much like the famous Archaeopteryx hinted that birds may have evolved from dinosaurs.

Third cousin couples have the most children and grandchildren

Marriage between closely related cousins is a heavy taboo in many cultures and its critics often cite the higher risk of genetic diseases associated with inbreeding. That risk is certainly apparent for very close relatives, but a new study from Iceland shows that very distant relatives don’t have it easy either. In the long run, they have just as few children and grandchildren as closely related ones.

Shuffling the genetic deck

Sex chromosomes aside, every person has two copies of each gene, one inherited from their father and one by their mother. Not every gene will be in correct working order, but there’s a good chance that a faulty copy will be offset by a functional one from the other parent.

However, if two parents are closely related, there’s a higher-than-average chance that they will already share some of the same genes and a similarly increased chance that their child will receive two defective copies. That can be very bad news indeed and in cases where important genes are affected, the results can include miscarriage, birth defects or early death.

Sex, then, is a shuffling of their genetic deck and theoretically the more closely related the partners are, the greater the chance that their child will be dealt a dud hand. And yet, some studies have found that some closely related couples actually do better than distant relatives in terms of the number of children they manage to raise. This trend is certainly unexpected and the big question is whether it is the result of biology or money.

Ed vs. Gravity

For the next week, you’ll hear tumbleweeds blowing through this blog as I will be on holiday. I’m going to Whistler, Vancouver, where I will be sticking two flimsy strips of wood to my feet and throwing myself down a mountain at high speed. I see it as a challenge to both cold and gravity.

I’ll be writing a few things while I’m there so expect some good stuff the week after. For the moment, feel free to scour the Site Index for oldies-but-goodies or have a look at my Review of 2007 for more focused recommendations.

A word about comments: This blog’s comments policy are set so that anyone who’s had a comment previously approved can post more, but any newbies have to be moderated first. If you’ve never commented here before and your comment doesn’t show up until next week, that’s why.

New languages evolve in rapid bursts

The birth of new languages is accompanied by a burst of rapid evolution consisting of large changes in vocabulary that are followed by long periods of relatively slower change.

Languages are often compared to living species because of the way in which they diverge into new tongues over time in an ever-growing linguistic tree. Some critics have claimed that this comparison is a superficial one, a nice metaphor but nothing more.

But the new study by Quentin Atkinson, now at the University of Oxford, suggests that languages evolve at a similar stop-and-start pace, which uncannily echoes a long-standing theory in biology, known as ‘punctuated equilibrium’. The theory’s followers claim that life on Earth also evolved at an uneven pace, full of rapid bursts and slow periods.

Famously championed by the late Stephen Jay Gould, the punctuated equilibrium theory suggests that most species change very little over time and big evolutionary changes are concentrated at rare moments where new species branch off from existing lineages. Together with colleagues from the US and New Zealand, Atkinson found similar patterns in three of the worlds’ largest families of languages.

Malawi cichlids – how aggressive males create diversity

Certain groups of animals show a remarkable capacity for quickly evolving into new species to seize control of unexploited niches in the environment. And among these ecological opportunists, there are few better examples than the cichlids, a group of freshwater fishes that are one of the most varied group of back-boned animals on the planet.

In the words of Edward O. Wilson, the entire lineage seems “poised to expand.” The Great Lakes of Africa – Tanganyika, Malawi and Victoria – swarm with a multitude of different species; Lake Malawi alone houses over 500 that live nowhere else in the world.

All of these forms arose from a common ancestor in a remarkably short span of time. Now, a new study suggests that this explosive burst of diversity has been partly fuelled by rivalry between hostile males.

Michael Pauers of the Medical College of Wisconsin found that male cichlids have no time for other males that look like them and will bite, butt and threaten those who bear the same colour scheme. In doing so, they encourage diversity in the lake since mutant males with different tints are less likely to be set upon by territorial defenders.

Colour-changing chameleons evolved to stand out, not blend in

Chameleons aren’t exactly known for being showy. Indeed, they are so synonymous with blending in that we use the term ‘social chameleon’ to refer to people who are at home in any social setting. But new research suggests that this reputation needs a rethink. The chameleon’s ability to change colour evolved not to blend in, but to stand out.

Chameleons are a group of small lizards that are almost synonymous with camouflage. Common folklore has it that their vaunted ability to change their skin colour allows them to go undetected in a variety of environments.

Certainly, their default colours match their surroundings well. But Devi Stuart-Fox and Adnan Moussalli from South Africa have found that the changing hues they are best known for evolved for communication not disguise. They allow chameleons to make themselves incredibly but temporarily noticeable to mates and rivals, while remaining inconspicuous for the rest of the time.