Maybe you remember the old Far Side cartoon with two jellyfish outhouses featuring (apparently) identical icons on their doors, the caption reading “Only they know the difference.” I was reminded of that strip reading this paper about two closely-related goby species. As the paper details, humans can face challenges differentiating them without genetic analysis. The most diagnostic visual difference only emerges once the fish reach a certain size, making the identity of smaller fish more ambiguous. Yet the genetic analysis reveals clearly distinct populations; when it’s time to find a mate of the same species, clearly the goby know who’s who.
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speciation
Science Corner: Party People
Greetings, future friends! I’m writing to you from the past, before Election Day in the United States. I hope you were all able to vote as you deemed appropriate, and you were able to do so safely. Maybe by Wednesday morning (or whenever you read this) you know the outcomes or maybe not; I certainly don’t here in the past. But I am reasonably confident that, regardless of the results, we’ll still need to come to grips with our political polarization or political sectarianism. To that end, we may benefit from a body of psychology and sociology research identifying the nature of the divide, some contributing factors, and most helpfully, possible interventions that have demonstrated some efficacy in reducing animosity.
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Science Corner: Digging into Natural History
This week’s exploration of Christians’ history in the sciences brings us to Mary Anning. Anning was a 19th century fossil collector whose work would form the foundation of paleontology. She found some of the first ichthyosaur, plesiosaur and pterosaur skeletons.
Most striking to me is that she did so largely as an outsider. She had a passion for science and pursued her investigations without the kind of institutional support we associate with modern science. We may need more Mary Annings going forward as that kind of support is available to a smaller proportion of qualified scientists than in recent years.
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