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Climate change, evolution, and Canadian conservatives.

T. Ryan Gregory — Wed, 02 Feb 2011 17:44:04 +0000

Thanks to Larry at Sandwalk, I caught this clip from the Bill Maher show in which panelists were discussing climate change and evolution.

The woman in the discussion is Kim Campbell, former Prime Minister of Canada. Some caveats, though: she wasn’t elected Prime Minister but assumed the role when she took over as leader of the Progressive Conservative Party following the departure of Brian Mulroney. Not long afterward, the PC party was decimated in a federal election and was left with only two seats in parliament. In part, this precipitated the rise of the current Conservative Party of Canada which currently has a minority government under Prime Minister Stephen Harper.

I *should* be proud of Ms. Campbell and of Canadian politics in general that a former *conservative* Prime Minister is so articulate and informed on the issues of climate change and evolution. But mostly it makes me sad that the current conservative side of Canadian political discourse seems closer to Republicans in the USA than to the previous Progressive Conservatives in Canada.

Climate change, evolution, and Canadian conservatives. is a post from Genomicron.

Jerry gets a frog.

T. Ryan Gregory — Wed, 14 Apr 2010 13:22:24 +0000

Jerry Coyne now has a frog named after him. I have always wanted a species named after me, and frogs are my favourite, so I’m quite jealous. Meanwhile, the leech that is supposed to bear my name has yet to make an appearance… isn’t that right, Mark? Nudge nudge.

Jerry gets a frog. is a post from Genomicron.

My favourite web apps.

T. Ryan Gregory — Wed, 30 Dec 2009 15:42:13 +0000

I don’t really use Facebook, Myspace, Twitter, or the other social networking stuff that the kids are into these days (bah!), but I do try to keep up with more useful web 2.0 applications. Here’s a list of some of my favourites.

Firefox
This is the best browser, period, and it finally surpassed IE! One of the great things about open source programs like this is the add-ons that people contribute. In particular, I recommend:

WordPress
The best blog and website authoring software for intermediate to advanced users. To really help with webpage design, I recommend working with the Atahualpa theme. Some of the best plugins:

Skype
Free online video chat and inexpensive long-distance to land lines. Extremely useful for keeping in touch with friends and family.

Google Earth
See the whole world from the comfort of your chair (unless your chair is uncomfortable).

Mendeley
Free reference management program that you will love, trust me.

PBWorks
Wiki software that is WYSIWYG rather than Wiki-code. Very useful for collaboration.

Webspiration
A free online (and not free desktop) concept mapping/flow chart program that can be useful for organizing ideas.

Google Reader and iGoogle
Keep track of your favourite blogs, news feeds, journal TOCs, and even automatic literature searches.

Dropbox
Online folder synchronization to keep everything synced on multiple computers.

Animoto
A very cool app that creates animated slideshows with music automatically using uploaded photos and videos. Major kudos for their offer of a free pro account to any non-profit humanitarian organization.

OpenGoo
A free lab management program that lets students and advisors keep track of projects, share files, and set schedules.

Wordle
Word usage for any text — very neat.

My favourite web apps. is a post from Genomicron.

Where am I? – 2

T. Ryan Gregory — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 19:31:13 +0000

A slightly easier clue this time…

Where am I? – 2 is a post from Genomicron.

Where am I?

T. Ryan Gregory — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 19:49:52 +0000

Easy question… where am I (not a trick — I just took this picture)?

Where am I? is a post from Genomicron.

Another, um, good reason to care about genome sizes.

T. Ryan Gregory — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 18:41:48 +0000

You denizens of the science blogosphere probably will have heard about the, shall we say, “questionable” article by Donald Williamson (and communicated by Lynn Margulis) in PNAS, in which he claimed that insect larvae arose via hybridization between non-metamorphosing ancestral insects and Onychophora (velvet worms).

Maybe this sounds silly to you. Me too. It also sounded silly to Hart and Grosberg (2009), who thoroughly debunk the hypothesis using data that were already easily available. You can read a play by play of the refutation over at Jerry Coyne’s blog Why Evolution Is True and in Scientific American.

So, if it’s already been discussed on a popular blog, why bring it up again? Because this one relates directly to my area of research, and the subject of many a post here on Genomicron — genome size.

One of the “predictions” given in Williamson’s paper is that species of insects with complete metamorphosis (holometabolous development) will exhibit evidence of a merger of insect and onychophoran genomes, and thus have larger DNA amounts. It so happens that a) this is bass-ackwards, and b) it is easy to find this out by checking my Animal Genome Size Database (which is what Hart and Grosberg did) or my paper in Genetica from 2002 or my book from 2005 or pretty much any decent paper on insect genome sizes in the last several years.

From Gregory (2005).

I often have to summarize reasons why people should care about genome size, as when preparing grant applications. I never thought that I could add to this list, “refuting nutty hypotheses about the origins of caterpillars”. I won’t, though, even if many of the data used in the comparison were generated by me or my students (including pretty much all the Lepidoptera estimates).

But, on a more positive note, this flap did draw attention to velvet worms, which are pretty cool:

_________

References

Gregory, TR. 2002. Genome size and developmental complexity. Genetica 115: 131-146.

Gregory, TR. 2005. Genome size evolution in animals. In: The Evolution of the Genome, ed. TR Gregory. Elsevier, San Diego, p. 3-87.

Hart, MW and Grosberg RK. 2009. Caterpillars did not evolve from onychophorans by hybridogenesis. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA, in press.

Williamson, D.I. 2009. Caterpillars evolved from onychophorans by hybridogenesis. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA 106:15786–15790.

Another, um, good reason to care about genome sizes. is a post from Genomicron.