Two of my stories came out this week–one on the near future, and one on the distant past.
1. Global warming is beginning to drive evolution of plants and animals. And soon it will be shifting to high gear. Read more at Yale Environment 360.
2. You, me, and the mushroom over there are all eukaryotes. So are slime molds and Giardia. We all share a number of features that set us apart from prokaryotes like E. coli. The split between eukaryotes and other living things is arguably the deepest in all life. In this week’s issue of Science, I have an essay that looks at how the basic eukaryote cell, complete with nucleus, mitochondria, and all its other bells and whistles came to be. Check it out (here or here). And you can also listen to me talk about the question on this week’s Science podcast here.
August 7th, 2009 at 3:20 pm
Great! I was inspired to write a bit about this myself after hearing Norman Pace at the AAAS Annual Meeting last Feb. Looking forward to reading your article.
August 8th, 2009 at 8:35 pm
“Global warming is beginning to drive evolution of plants and animals.”
Beginning? Climate change has been a major factor in evolutionary change for eons. I’m assuming you mean man-made climate change.
August 9th, 2009 at 5:07 am
[...] From the award-winning science writer/blogger Carl Zimmer. His latest post on his blog “The Loom” briefly discusses how global warming may be the driving force of evolution. View the article. [...]
August 9th, 2009 at 12:53 pm
The sun is the cause of global temperature changes, humans have very little impact on global temperatures. Global warming was coined in the late 70′s as a way to tax air. CO2 rising follows temperature changes.
Evolution is a religion that had one source, a group of wealthy individuals who practiced inbreeding, this is important because, if you believe that genetic variability helps species survive, why would you marry and have children with your first and second cousins only?
Einstein for example married his cousin, as did Darwin as have nearly all the ruling classes. This explains all of their birth defects which led to their early deaths and their delicate mental states.
All of the things I have said may upset you, but being people who investigate things, you should make sure that everything I have said is false.
On the other hand, animals adapting to their surroundings makes perfect sense and the world did not need a plagiarist inbreed to tell them that.
Happy studying
August 9th, 2009 at 1:08 pm
Cd189 – are you a Poe? If not, that is some of the stupidest stuff I have ever read. Everyone who reads this post has now lost 10 IQ points. May God have mercy on your soul.
August 20th, 2009 at 11:45 pm
[...] at the Origins blog at Science, I follow up on my essay on the evolution of eukaryotes with a look at a new paper that suggests we are, ultimately, microbes within microbes within [...]
August 29th, 2009 at 2:28 pm
CD189, Oh, don’t worry your little head over it. I’m not a bit upset after having made sure everything you have said is false.
Confidently yours, Anchor.
August 29th, 2009 at 2:48 pm
And the pattern persists…
This is an idea I’ve thought about for decades, ever since it was first pointed out that mitochondria within eukaryotes (for example) may originally have been independent bacteria-like organisms that established residency within larger microbes (through ingestion or by invasion, it matters little in the end) and found the accomodations of that environment tolerable, if not agreeable. It certainly automatically offered another layer of protection against the external slings and arrows of outrageous fortune.
A completely dispassionate and preconception-free alien visiting the Earth today would note that the basic naked human unit habitually ensconces itself within a vast range of both sedentary and mobile “garments”, from houses and buildings and cities to cars, trains, planes and spacecraft, all of them modularly designed to extend the reach and capacity of the basic unit and support them to perform tasks which in turn supports the metabolism of that vastly greater critter those units call “civilization.”
Which is why I often regard Los Angeles as “Locust Land” (especially while sitting in a nominal traffic jam). Everybody knows that people put their cars on to commute, and when they do, the resulting creature that runs along rubber tires on prepared pathways is something else. What’s a “human”? That question depends on what they happen to be occupying at any given moment.