Dude. Seriously?

Phoebis sennae metamorphosis video produced by timelapse videographer extraordinaire JCMegabyte.

In a dream last night, I sprinkled water on a dried out, old mantis ootheca which I had given up as spent or dead.  Miraculously, nymphs began rapelling miniature but almost fully-formed from the papery husk.

Nabokov's annotated first page of Kafka's Metamorphosis.

The butterfly expert V. Nabokov surmised that the monstrous unclean animal of Kafka’s imagination was most probably a very large beetle, and certainly not a cockroach as commonly assumed.  I am inclined to agree with him not only on the morphological grounds from which he argues but also for the fact that that cockroaches like mantids (which are essentially toned, insecticidal roaches) and bugs and grasshoppers and sucking lice are hemimetabolous.  They do not metamorphose.  Or as the convential parlance has it their metamorphosis is “incomplete.”

Though form does change from instar to instar to imago in the hemimetabolous orders, these changes are more or less subtle – an increase in body size a subtle change in shape or color the growth of wings.  Dragonflies are hemimetabolous desipite their dramatic transformation from killer submarine to muderous biplane – the shadow of the naiad can be seen in imago with some imagination.

True (“complete”) metamorphosis is a trick reserved for the endopterygotes – butterflies and bees and beetles, flies and fleas and ants and ant lions &c.  Each of these groups begins life as a wormy larva hardens into a mummylike pupa in which the body tissues literally digest themselves and build an entirely new, wonderful thing not at all like the melted maggot or caterpillar from which it precipitated.

It is much, much easier to imagine the maggoty Gregor metamorphosing into a beetle than a cockroach.

All of which is a wholly unnecessary preamble to THE MOST, most bizarre scientific papers I have read all year: weirder than hermit eurypterid hand puppets, stranger than penguin poop from space, more fantastic than plastic barnacle penes, and more incredible, even, than psychic protists.

I’m speaking of course of Donald Williamson’s mind-bending new paper in PNAS: ” Caterpillars evolved from onychophorans by hybridogenesis. ” (DOI: 10.1073/pnas.0908357106).

Without, it seems, a single piece of empirical data to support his claim, Williamson posits that the larval stages of holometabolous insects (and other animals which undergo dramatic post-larval transformations) evolved via “Larval Transfer” when insects mated with velvet worms! Butterflies (and beetles, and flies &c.) are, in this view sort of sequential transphyletic chimera. This is something like, well a human mating with a cockroach which then gives birth to a human that then eventually metamorphoses into a cockroach.  Or something.

While this is an, ahem, iconoclastic proposition to say the least, and it is fairly astonishing that it appears in one of the most prestigious general science journals, Williamson at least proposes a “research program” to test his hypothesis.  Here is one experiment he proposes:

As an initial trial, it should be possible to attach an onychophoran spermatophore to the genital pore of a female cockroach and see if fertilized eggs are laid (page 4 from Williamson 2009)

This is like some awesome Dr. Moreau style shite.  The entire paper is sort of like a Lynch film: wonderful and horrifying and you’re not sure if it’s some kind of put on or there is some kind of insane genius at work.

The back story; and some choice quotes expressing the astonishment with which this paper has been received by the uh, “mainstream” scientific community is covered in this Scientific American article.

But. Dude.  Seriously?

Monophyly FAIL

Unless you have been living under a slab of oil shale, you will have already heard, read and seen quite a lot about the Eocene primate Darwinius masillae recently described in the online open-access journal PLOSone.  The blogosphere has been, ahem, a-twitter over the “hype” surrounding this important fossil–to the extent that some have even begun to decry the anti-hype hype–and it has provided fodder for some excellent satire.  Even the Old Gray Lady has weighed in.

In my forthcoming (‘cough) book on the late 20th/early 21st C. social history of fossils (tentatively entitled Paleontology After Modernism) I discuss the role of flash-powered websites in the promotion of important fossil discoveries (see: Tiktaalik’s or Puijila’s).  Given that Darwinius already has its own book and not one, but two television specials, one of which is narrated by Sir David Attenborough, it comes as no surprise that it has its own flashy website too.

Unfortunately, it appears that the website creators did not bother to read the freely available publication they are trying to summarize, and instead chose to present a woefully outdated picture of primate evolution.  I’m sure Brian Switek will take them to tasks for trotting out the old “march of progress” canard,  and perhaps we can forgive the pervasive “Homo sapians” typo.

However, suggesting that primates “diversified into two key groups: the anthropoids and the prosimians” (see image at top of post) is misleading at best and, at worst, directly contradicts the argument laid out in the new paper.  “Prosimian” is term used to refer to various primates perceived to be um, primitive in their anatomy including lemurs, lorises and tarsiers.  However it has been well known for quite some time that this is not a natural group that can be split from the “anthropoid” monkeys and apes, but rather a paraphyletic group of animals including the direct ancestors of anthropoids, as well as animals only distantly related to anthropoids.

Exactly which “prosimians” are more closely related to anthropoids is a matter of debate, and one that this fossil may shed new light on, though, see Brian’s detailed critique of  the new paper.  It is certainly understandable that the LINK website designers would not want to go into the finer details of this debate, however there is no excuse for falling back on a “simplified” but outdated and erroneous picture of primate evolution.

I’m wholeheartedly in favor of trying to get the public excited about important scientific discoveries, even when it involves some minor exaggeration, disseminating misinformation on the other hand is simply inexcusable.

And don’t get me started on this….

Because every archeological discovery deserves a breakfast cereal

“Um…what are you working on?” my lab mate asked.  A few hours earlier she had shown me a truly rank skull that she had just dissected from a frozen chimaerid.

“Oh..um…well…” I paused to consider my explanation.  “There’s a new paper out in PNAS about the discovery of thousand-year-old chocolate at Chaco Canyon in New Mexico.  So, um I decided to design a cereal box based on that concept…”

“Oh, okay.  I’ll let you get back to that…”

For the record, the cereal’s mascot is named “Cocoapelli.”  Hat-tip to Will Baird for the name “Choco Canyon.”

O RLLY?

I know, I know, huge methane plumes on Mars (!!!) it’s hard to keep one’s head on straight.  I feel a bit woozy myself.  But I really expect more from the New York Times than this:

“Bacteria May Be Source of Methane on Mars — Kenneth Chang 1/15/2009“

Normally when I see a headline like that, I assume the headline writer has been hitting the black label a little to hard again.  Unfortunately, that’s not the case this time here’s the second sentence in that article:

Subsurface Martian cows appear unlikely, but scientists are seriously considering the possibility that bacteria are generating the methane.

Well, first off, of course cow emissions are bacterially* generated, but whatever.  Even *if* the Martian methane is of biological origin (and don’t forget there is loads of abiotic methane elsewhere in the solar system) it’s a tremendous leap to attribute the methane production to bacteria.  “Bacteria” is not a generic term for microbes, it refers to a specific group of unicellular organisms that have been on Earth for billions of years.

The discovery of bacteria on Mars would have tremendous implications for the interplanetary dispersal of organisms and possibly even for the origin of life itself.  But the presence of methane alone does not yet confirm the presence of life on Mars and it certainly doesn’t indicate that any hypothetical Martian microbes had a common origin with life on Earth as the presence of bacteria would.  Lets wait for some more facts before we start making a interplanetary leaps to conclusions, please!

POSTSCRIPTO: *It occurred to me that actually methanogens (microbes that generate methane) aren’t even technically bacteria–they’re archaea! Any speculation that bacteria are responsible for the methane plumes on Mars is basically totally without merit. I’m sure we’ll see a retraction in the Times tomorrow.

All Hail Haber-Bosch

When corporations start running ad campaigns with cute kids while taking credit for the well-being of society, and  setting up flashy websites with pages devoted to “grassroots activism” — you know that some executives are getting a little jittery.  Remember that whole, “carbon dioxide–some call it pollution, we call it life” campaign?

Well, it seems the fertilizer industry has realized that if the public can get concerned about the environmental consequences of massive anthropogenic manipulation of the carbon cycle, they might eventually start getting concerned about the emerging evidence that our massive anthropogenic manipulation of the nitrogen and phosphorous cycles may also have some negative consequences.

Episodes of dramatic biogeochemical flux in the past were not happy times to be alive, and just as with carbon, there is substantial reason to believe that we are dramatically altering the global balance of nitrogen and phosphorous, perhaps at rates and levels that have never been seen before.

Look, there’s no doubt that the “Green Revolution” that increased global food production in regions historically prone to debilitating famine has been a net-plus from a humanistic stand-point.  But just as with the industrial revolution a century before, it’s now crystal clear that these technological breakthroughs have come with significant costs and risks to the biosphere.  And ultimately it is the biosphere that sustains us.  If we continue to rape the biosphere as we have been, well, you better start developing a taste for raw nitrates.

We are in desperate need of a Greener Revolution,  one that focuses on sensible farming practices: crop rotation and diversification, proper soil management, an end to devoting so much arable land to produce factory-made animal protein,  and a reduction of exogenous input (fossil fuels, fossil and synthetic fertilizers) and output (emissions, runoff).  As consumers we need to develop sensible eating practices, endeavor to figure out where our food comes from and how it’s produced and make a concerted effort to send our food waste back to the soil and not to the landfill or incinerator (growing some of your own food and patronizing local farmers helps a lot on all of these counts).  Actually there is one easy word that covers all of this: sustainability.

It was innovation that brought about the original Green Revolution not advertising and not re-branding famine as the “South Bengal Diet.”  This is what these corporations should be investing in, sustainable innovation, not some million dollar PR campaign.  Reupholstering the deck chairs and pointing out to everyone that the iceberg is “completely natural and organic” just isn’t going to cut it.

Also, that’s not penne you idiots it’s rotini.

[uh, I don't know when microecos became a political blog...sorry we'll get back to comparative American studies soon enough]

Enigmatic Triassic Hellasaur Thursday…wait, what day is it?

LOL! j/k but, seriously what the eff was Raeticodactylus chomping with those whackjob quinticuspid teeth? Um, doy! Baby placodonts!

Sorry.

POSTSCRIPTO!

Turns out the feet may have been involved too, we await further details….

Totally Tubular!

…with apologies to my former classmate Daniel Garson

So, I was going to spend the afternoon creating a logo for Bloggers Half-Assedly Opining about Peer Reviewed Research Even Though Nobody Asked Them in the First Place (or BH-AOPR2ETNATFP) but I decided to devote the time to making this kick-ass band logo instead!

Of course that’s not going to stop me from posting the latest entry in our occasional series where I hastily comment on a slightly stale arm-waving brevium and then we sit back and wait for Catalogue of Organisms’ own Christopher Taylor to come along and straighten us out.

This week we take on Droser and Gehling (2008). Their brief report “Synchronous Aggregate Growth in an Abundant New Ediacaran Tubular Organism” appeared in Science a few weeks ago although, judging from the popular press accounts at least (which, of course are invariably cut-and-paste jobs from the University PR release) might have been better titled “Ropey Sea-Creatures were Sexing it up 570 million years ago…I swear!” From the press release:

Droser and Gehling observed that Funisia appears as 30 cm-long tubes in the fossils. They also observed that the tubes commonly occur in closely-packed groups of five to fifteen individuals, displaying a pattern of propagation that often accompanies animal sexual reproduction.

“In general, individuals of an organism grow close to each other, in part, to ensure reproductive success,” said Droser, the first author of the research paper and the chair of the Department of Earth Sciences. “In Funisia, we are very likely seeing sexual reproduction in Earth’s early ecosystem – possibly the very first instance of sexual reproduction in animals on our planet.

Um, okay, that’s a pretty freaking bold claim. Well, first off, as Larry Moran notes, bacteria do it, yeast do it, even educated peas do it, so sex itself is certainly a larger, longer, deeper and much slimier affair than might be given by an overly credulous reading of that quote. But even accepting for a moment Dr. Droser’s “animal” caveat lets review the evidence shall we?

Funisia fossils from Droser and Gehling 2008

First, the authors noted the occurrence of dense clusters of this tubular problematicon which they interpret as “spat falls”, e.g. multiple individuals which settled onto a substrate after planktonic larval dispersal around the same time. In modern organisms the formation of these aggregations are sometimes seen as a reproductive strategy. Animals which spend their adult life attached to the bottom improve their chances of finding a matching gamete for the sperm or egg they dump into the sea by being close to a member of the opposite sex.

Then they make a logical leap:

Among living organisms, spat production is almost ubiquitously the result of sexual reproduction but is known to occur rarely in association with asexual reproduction. (Droser and Gehling 2008)

That might be compelling circumstantial evidence, if we had any clue what Funisia was. However, like most other Ediacaran animals Funisia might as well be jam on toast for all we know about it’s ecology, life history or evolutionary relationships. Did that make any sense? Good. The author’s themselves note:

The phylogenetic affinity of F. dorothea is problematic. The morphology is consistent throughout all well-preserved specimens and serial units are a 3D character rather than features of external ornamentation. However, the lack of evidence for polypoid openings or pores in the body wall limits our understanding of its taxonomic affinities. Although it is difficult to place these fossils within Metazoa, the morphology and ecology are suggestive of stem-group cnidarians or poriferans.

Speaking of cnidarians…the first thing I thought of when I read the paper was Anthopleura elegantissima the so called “aggregating anemone.” While Anthopleura is capable of sexual and asexual reproduction it forms dense mats of asexually cloned individuals. Perhaps “spat” like clustering of similarly sized individuals isn’t necessarily linked to sexual reproduction.

At any rate, any insight into the Ediacaran ecosystem, however provisional, is certainly significant. Unfortunately, once again a University PR department eager for novelty and newsworthiness has muddied the water around a thought-provoking paper and fed more fuel to the “those crazy paleontologists what will they prove/disprove next?!” fire.

Droser, ML and JG Gehling 2008 – Synchronous Aggregate Growth in an Abundant New Ediacaran Tubular Organism — Science 319:5870 1660-1662