This should be interesting. In the June issue of Scientific American, I wrote an article called “What Is A Species?” I wrote about the challenges scientists face in drawing a line between species, especially when they have only recently diverged from a common ancestor and are still interbreeding. One of the best examples of how scientists tackle this challenge came out of a conversation I had with Jason Bond, an East Carolina University biologist who studies trapdoor-building spiders. In the article I explained how he studies the evolutionary history of the spiders, their adaptation to ecolical niches, and the flow of genes from one population to another. Combining these lines of evidence, he then proposes new species.
In May, Bond made big news by naming one of his spiders after Neil Young. Colbert lambasted Bond, and Science In General, for not naming a species after him (video below). Bond has plenty of spiders to name, so he submitted to Colbert’s demand, and he’s going to go on the Colbert Report tonight to unveil the newly named species. I asked Bond for the details, and he says a paper on the spider will be posted tomorrow on the web site of the journal Systematic Biology. [Update: The paper’s online, but unfortunately it doesn’t appear to be open access, as I had expected. Now it’s free!]
I’m not sure there’s a joke to be made about species delimitation, but I’m hoping Colbert is up to the challenge.
And here’s the clip when Bond and Colbert talk on the phone…
August 6th, 2008 at 6:03 pm
“Clade 2 (Fig. 7,node F), Aptostichus stephencolberti sp. nov., is restricted to the coastal dunes that extend from the Big Sur area to the San Francisco peninsula at Point Lobos and Golden
Gate (Fig. 6b).”
Nice.
August 6th, 2008 at 6:06 pm
“Etymology.—The specific epithet is a patronym, named in honor
of Mr. Stephen Colbert. Mr. Colbert is a fellow citizen who truly has
the courage of his convictions and is willing to undertake the very
difficult and sometimes unpopular work of speaking out against those
who have done irreparable harm to our country and the world through
both action and inaction. He will be especially remembered by many
of Jason Bond’s generation for his speech at the 2006 White House
Correspondents Dinner.”
An Integrative Method for Delimiting Cohesion Species: Finding the Population-Species Interface in a Group of Californian Trapdoor Spiders with Extreme Genetic Divergence and Geographic Structuring
Jason E. Bond; Amy K. Stockman
August 6th, 2008 at 9:58 pm
Hey, you’re missing the Big Point here! Colbert. Spider. So many layers of irony you need to strip mine it…
August 7th, 2008 at 2:25 am
“Read my lips…no new taxa” George Bush on hearing that new species are being discovered and named, and understanding that the new taxa are subject to being protected under ESA if they become depleted.
First species delimitation joke?
August 7th, 2008 at 12:28 pm
[…] Jason Bond fared pretty well on the Colbert Report, as Colbert picked a spider to be named after him. (Actually, the name was in the bag–or rather, in […]