Speciation soon to come.

This week's, or more precisely last week's, evolution story is about the chestnut-bellied monarchs (Monarcha castaneiventris), small insectivorous birds. A paper last year in the August edition of the American Naturalist found that due to a single point mutation an ecological speciation event may have occurred.

In the southeastern Soloman Islands the chestnut-bellied monarch has two distinct subspecies populations. One, M. c. megarhynchus, has a... well chestnut colored belly. The second, M. c. ugiensis has a black colored belly. As it turns out they seem to leave each other alone. The hypothesis of this paper is that this is due to a change in plumage color, and this simple change is what causes the two subspecies to not see each other as sexual partners. Not just that, but they don't even see each other as rivals.

During their experiments, if the findings showed that there was statistically more aggression shown towards those that had the same coloration than those with different coloration, then this would indicate that the two do not see each other as reproductive rivals. If this is true, then it would follow that the two populations do not interbreed with each other. As it so happens, this is what they found.

All of this would show that the hypothesis is correct in that, the main reason for the lack of interbreeding is due to their plumage. Looking into the genetics of this problem they could only find one difference, that one was in the melancortin-1 gene. This gene is responsible for the production of melanin, which gives skin or feathers a darker color.                                    

So in all they found that a split in populations may just be due to a single mutation at the right point in the genome. Yet another example of rapid evolution that can cause expedient speciation. EVOLUTION, IT'S FASCINATING!

Original Paper - Plumage Color Used in Species Recognition
Bridged Description - Catching Speciation in the Act

The Whole Xmas Bundle!

So before getting through all the other posts I promised, this one will be about all the cool neato thangs I gots this year. So here goes the list of things:

First I'll mention the sticking stuffers, one of which I spend way too much time with. So got two classic card games; Uno and Phase 10. Played uno a lot as a child so I expect to play it more with roommates and friends. Phase 10 is more of a rummy-type game. For the most part you get the same card set as one would get with uno, but you have to get a certain list of cards for each "phase". That's the main gist of it.

Along with the cards I got a new fidget... These darn toys always get me hooked so easily. All you do with them, is well... fidget, but you can do some really cool things with them. This one is merely a set of 216 magnetic balls. OH THE MADNESS! Because you can separate them all you can make some fun structures, which to describe would be way to difficult due to the dimensionality of them. When I get back to the dorms I'll take some pictures of things I've made. DONT YOU SEE THE POSSIBILITY FOR MADNESS!!



ON TO THE GIFTS:

16 TOOL MULTI-TOOL!!! THAT'S RIGHT 16!!! A mini saw, good knife, multiple screwdrivers, pliers, scissors, and a filer. But seriously, A SAW! Clearly it's not gonna be big enough to like cut a tree down, but that doesn't stop me from considering it, just for the hell of it. So much fun to just flip through.

STOMP ROCKETS! These aren't you're silly kiddy stomp rockets either. No no no, these have FLAMES ON THEM. That alone makes these for ages 16 and up. A few flames made a 10 year old toy become a 16 year old toy, hells yeah. I have yet to try them, but the claim is that they can reach 40 stories.... haha so silly.

<-No those are the wimpy rockets..YES THOSE ONES, WITH THE FLAMES!->

Not much for gaming this year, only got GOLDENEYE for the Wii. The remake of a classic game for N64 that practically created the first person shooter genre of gaming. I'm still going through the original, but in regards to that finally got through Control in 7:04, which means I got INFINITE AMMO CHEAT. AHHH SO DIFFICULT. STUPID NATALIA KEPT DYING! STOP STANDING IN THE MIDDLE OF THE ROOM, IT'S NOT HARD!

MOVIE!! What movie you ask? Only INCEPTION, in BLU-RAY and dvd, but BLU-RAY! I did see it before, but seriously it's INCEPTION, GOOD MOVIE!!

....

I knew I was forgetting something, had to go get it out from after the cleaning. SPHERE CHAIR!! Not quite a papasan chair, still damn comfy. It's like a perfect college chair; easy to move, really soft, rather large (all the better to sleep in), and has a good head rest! I saw the small version and it had NO HEAD SUPPORT. Sitting in the small one I felt like an infant that can't hold it's head up. Sitting in a lounge chair you want to rest your head. NO, YOU DON'T GET TO. HOLD YOU'RE HEAD UP WHILE YOU LOUNGE. Stupid small chair...

Yes that thing on the left. It is amazing. Won't go to school this year, next year though in an apartment. OMFG ITS GETTING FOGGY OUTSIDE! I CAN'T SEE MY NEIGHBORS!

Now to books. TWO OF THEM. NOT ONE, NOT THREE, TWO!! Lowly Origins by Jonathon Kingdon.. hehe Kingdon like kingdom, but with an n... So it sets itself up as a book exploring the "When, Where, and Why our ancestors first stood up." I'm really slow at reading, so still working on Bill Bryson.... I'll get there... eventually... maybe... next year.

Ah yes the other book. This is will be a lot o fun given my past experience with putting the opossum skeleton together. What you didn't hear about that? WELL I'LL GET TO IT SOME OTHER TIME! Besides, it keeps falling apart, making me mad. It wants to be set up, but gravity says NO, THOSE LEGS WANT OFF!! So gravity rips of it's legs, and then gives it scoliosis, and rips the pelvis in half. I'ts not a pretty sight. I never thought an untenable force could make something look like road kill... ANYWAYS BACK TO THE POINT! I want to do more of these skeletons, but I have to go out and find them IN THE WILD OOO YEAH! TOTALLY HARD CORE THAT WAY. The book will help in identification of them, at least when I find just bones.

Finally, SUGAR. Yes sugar. That magical substance that can make anyone seem like they're on crack or speed, and still be legal. Classic Lindt chocolate, some sugared popcorn (?), and Moose Munch.... Yes that's right pieces of moose with sugar on it... wellll ok, more like some chocolate snacks that look more like reese's cups. But they have popcorn, caramel, and nuts instead of peanut butter. Kinda strange, but that's what crazy grandma is like.

AND SOCKS. NICE BIG WOOL SOCKS! SO COMFY, SO WARM, SO WOOLY, SO SOCKY. THE LABEL HAS YOSEMITE ON IT, THEY JUST GOT EVEN BETTER!

I FORGOT ABOUT MY MOCCASINS. Been wearing them all day, I forgot I had them on. But nice cozy innards for warmth and utter softness.

Podarcis sicula, a case for rapid evolution.

This week's science comes from a few years ago, so some may have heard about this already. Podarcis sicula, or the Italian Wall-Lizard, was the focus of a study that started nearly 40 years ago. Between 1971 and 2000 no one was allowed to the island, so study could not be conducted. When they went back they were in for a surprise. The result of this study shows us why we must keep in mind both biological and environmental definitions of a "species". In a short, 36 year, timespan (approx. 30 generations of this species) the introduced population have evolved a cecal valve in their intestines. Keep reading to find why this blows my mind!

So to get a feel of this experiment, the main species in this study P. sicula, come from a small island Pod Kopiste (0.09 km^2) in the south Adriatic Sea. Five mating pairs from this ancestral population were placed on the island of Pod Mrcaru (0.03 km^2), where P. melisellensis lived. After 36 years the endemic species was extirpated and P. sicula became common. Keep in mind the size of these islands as this is very important for later analysis.

Further P. sicula was primarily insectivorous with less than 10% of it's diet being vegetation.

Using mitochondrial DNA they were able to determine that the two populations are indeed still the same species. However this is mitochondrial DNA, not cellular DNA.

After 36 years on Pod Mrcaru, the study found that the lizards now have a diet consisting of about 35% vegetation in the winter, to over 60% in the summer. Along with this was the finding of heads that were longer, deeper, and all around larger with more jaw muscle for extra chomping power. If you didn't know, these are very large changes in and among themselves. Evidence of evolution, I would think so! (Recall evolution is the change in allele frequencies over time.)

What huge new trait came about though? The existence of cecal valves, structures in the gut used to slow the progression of food for better absorption. Why so important? Cecal valves are present in <1% of all known squamates! Let me repeat that for full understanding, less than 80 of all known lizards and snakes have this structure. This wouldn't be too interesting if it weren't for the fact that it isn't present in the Pod Kopiste population nor is it present elsewhere in the genus. This is an entirely new structure! Because of the incredibly low frequency of these valves in other lizards and utter lack of them in amphibians, it is a safe conclusion to say that these structures are not ancestral.

What does this all mean though? Simply, evolution can occur even faster than previously suspected. With a simple selective pressure, changes occurred within the life span of a human. Typically this is seen in insects or bacterium, but now it has been seen in vertebrates. If only they could have seen this development in action!

Remember I said to keep in mind of the size of the island? With that small of an island, genes get passed around very quickly within the population, this means that there is fast genetic flow. So when a positive trait occurs, it can get through the population in a relatively short amount of time.

Original paper -> Rapid large-scale evolutionary divergence.

I so bad!!

Some may think I haven't had much to say these last few days. But that's just because I'm lazy. I do in fact have things to talk about. So soon I, hopefully, will come out with a few more things to talk about. I have to do the weekly science thing. Recently seen 2, I felt, rather good movies so should talk about those. More on my childhood (mostly games), and finally somethings about high school life. Tonight I may not get to them, I'll try, but no guarantees. I mean come on, I have four I just promised, I'll get there. OH also one on traditions. This one was merely a information post so that it doesn't seem like I forgot

Battle for the Red Squirrel

I tend not to like watching the news with my parents for many reasons, mainly the politics irk me. Today was different for a few minutes though. The only thing I had to hear was, "An Invasion of Britain, by Animals." Just to e it picky, first of it isn't much of an invasion when they have already taken over. Secondly, animals implies multiple species, when it's just one, the Eastern Grey Squirrel, Sciurus carolinensis. This conquer occurred because S. carolinensis carries a disease, to which it is immune, that the Eurasian Red Squirrel (Sciurus vulgaris) is not immune to. (Why call it vulgaris? It's cuter than the grey squirrel.)

What is the cure to this ecological disaster? Well over the pond they have found an answer. Eat them. That's right, the cure for bringing back S. vulgaris to it's natural habitat is to eat its cousin S. carolinensis. Apparently the meat of the grey squirrel is sweet, like a cross between lamb and duck due to its diet of nuts and berries, and because they're all free range, it's very lean meat. So to all of those vegetarians who are against killing, well this is killing for a purpose, so eat up. It's even been endorsed by the future King of England!

This kind of story reminds me of my high school senior bio teacher's shirt. On it was a picture of numerous endangered animals, and underneath it said, "For every animal you don't eat, I'll eat 3." He was very big on meat consumption. Long story short, I want to try this morsel.

Evidence of Evolution of the Week.

After coming back home, I'm ready once again to give some fun research recently discovered FOR SCIENCE! Ever heard of genomic "fault" zones? I sure hadn't. Until igoogle came up with a few articles on it, so I decided to check it out. As it turns out, in the mammalian genome there are parts that go through a "birth and death" process. This was discovered by a group of bioinformatics researchers at UC San Diego, and was published on November 30, 2010 in the journal Genome Biology.

"The genomic architecture of every species on Earth changes on the evolutionary time scale and humans are not an exception. What will be the next big change in the human genome remains unknown, but our approach could be useful in determining where in the human genome those changes may occur," said Pavel Pevzner, a UC San Diego computer science professor.

Previous studies have shown that there are fragile regions in the genome, which are prone to changing, or "genomic earthquakes." More surprisingly though, as found in this paper, is that these fault zones are moving throughout the genome, meaning that fault zones have a limited evolutionary lifespan. Because these fault zones are isolated to a general area, we can search the human genome for spots of recent activity and see how these spots have effected our evolution. Not only that, but we can make predictions as to what may occur in our, or other mammals, future evolution! (So when people say we can't make predictions, that's complete bull as now we can make more precise predictions on the genomic level and not just phylogenetic level.) With this new insight, the scientists are hopeful that they later may make predictions, based on chromosomal rearrangements, to help cancer diagnosis and treatment.

If you feel like an intrepid young warrior, you may try to tackle the paper. Comparative genomics reveals birth and death of fragile regions in mammalian evolution. My main resource was EurekAlert!

Now when you are told that your logic is faulty, you can say with a straight face that it is.

Winter Break, The Memory Bank

Well finals are over, classes done, and back home for a three week break. I got back yesterday afternoon to seeing the cat asleep on my bed, such a cute thing laying there with his face plunged into the pillow. It's these small reminders that I always have something important and cheerful to come back to, even when it seems like life just kicked my ass. Another important get away are video games, at least for me. Today, after going out with our long time family friends, the Halls, to get xmas trees, I just sat in my room playing Banjo-Kazooie on the N64. Such fond memories of that game. A friend and I used to play it together when we were younger. Always talking about how far we got, which levels we thought were just pains etc. Nostalgia, gotta love it. Thinking back to when times were simpler, and life was less complicated. And what better time to do that than xmas time. Seriously, that's what I love about it the most. Not the gifts or food, but the memories it brings back of family, family lost and gone to the river of time. I realize now in my older age that I have to cherish these times now because they wont be around for much longer. More back story to it, but don't want to go into that.

Going to a different topic now, college life, and getting back home. I come from a well off family, so I have accumulated a decent amount of stuff. Going to college, it's hard to decide what stuff goes, and what stuff stays behind. I have since learned that I took too much stuff, so now I have to cut it down to a smaller version of my stuff. If this sounds familiar, wither you went through this experience before, or you have heard George Carlin's skit, A Place for My Stuff. Now that I have brought stuff back, I know that I will be taking little of it back with me. Dont need so many clothes, or games, or towels, among other things. Before all that though, I need to clean my room...Also doing something with family tomorrow, but i can't remember what right now. Further I forgot to do my fun fact friday, but I will try to remember to do that when I wake up in the morning.
(Sneak Peak: Genomic Fault Zones, now when creationsists say you use faulty logic, you really can and still show them their ignorance of science)

Another fun college experience I need to think about... getting an apartment next year, yaaaayy. Well I already have ideas for roommates, but have yet to tell them about it. Need to think about where also, clearly in Davis but where. These are the updates and ramblings in my life for today.