Recently in Resources for Biologists Category

Michael Le Page at New Scientist discusses Evolution: 24 myths and misconceptions.

Shared misconceptions:

Everything is an adaptation produced by natural selection
Natural selection is the only means of evolution
Natural selection leads to ever-greater complexity
Evolution produces creatures perfectly adapted to their environment
Evolution always promotes the survival of species
It doesn’t matter if people do not understand evolution
“Survival of the fittest” justifies “everyone for themselves”
Evolution is limitlessly creative
Evolution cannot explain traits such as homosexuality
Creationism provides a coherent alternative to evolution

Read on for the much longer list of Creationist myths

The Howard Hughes Medical Institute has extensive lectures and resources for educators, in fact anyone can order their DVD’s for free. You can also subscribe to their podcasts.

Talks include Ken Miller’s Evolution: Fossils, Genes, and Mousetraps

Leading evolution educator Ken Miller discusses the controversy surrounding the teaching of evolution, presents compelling evidence for evolution and reasons why “intelligent design” is not scientific. The presentation also features Dr. Miller’s responses to questions from a live audience of high school students.

Explore the site, it’s full of interesting information helping anyone appreciate the science of evolution and biology.

The University of California, San Diego (UCSD), the alma mater of Discovery Institute’s spokesperson Casey Luskin, explores why “Evolution Matters”. In cooperation with UCSD-TV, they bring us a fascinating lecture series:

For 2007-08, the Division of Biological Sciences is launching Evolution Matters: The Diversity of Development. In this series of 5 lectures, held over the course of the year, leading cell and developmental scientists will explore the evolution of plants, animals and humans and will discuss how their research into this field holds promise for finding solutions to key health and environmental issues facing us today.

Educational Website: Grey Matters

Educational Website: Science Matters

Atoms to Xrays

Neil Shubin’s latest book on evolutionary theory is by all standards a great success. It ranks around 200 in Amazon books and first in Evolution Science Books. When I checked the book’s availability in our library system there were close to 40 pending holds.

A sales rank of 200 means 225-250 books per week are sold. Compare this to a rank of 24,000 for Behe’s boo “Edge of Evolution” sold at a bargain price of $6.99 down from $28.00 or 111,550 for the regular priced version. Those numbers translate to few copies per month being sold.

Neil Shubin is a professor of organismal biology at the University of Chicago. He, as part of a team of scientists, discovered the now infamous Titaalik transitional fossil which causes so much consternation amongst Intelligent Design Creationists. His book Your Inner Fish introduces its readers to an exciting overview of how our evolutionary history links us back to a common ancestor with fish. Of course, that’s not where our common ancestry ends.

Why do we look the way we do? What does the human hand have in common with the wing of a fly? Are breasts, sweat glands, and scales connected in some way? To better understand the inner workings of our bodies and to trace the origins of many of today’s most common diseases, we have to turn to unexpected sources: worms, flies, and even fish.

In Your Inner Fish, Neil Shubin tells the story of evolution by tracing the organs of the human body back millions of years, long before the first creatures walked the earth. By examining fossils and DNA, Shubin shows us that our hands actually resemble fish fins, our head is organized like that of a long-extinct jawless fish, and major parts of our genome look and function like those of worms and bacteria.

The PNAS Early Edition webpage has just posted a series of papers from the December 2006 National Academy of Sciences Sackler Colloquium, “In the Light of Evolution: Adaptation and Complex Design,” organized by Francisco Ayala and John Avise. The series of papers, on topics ranging from color vision to beetle horns, is now available (I will post the list below the fold). Eugenie C. Scott (aka Genie) was invited to speak at this meeting about evolution education and the history of opposition to it, and the speakers wrote papers to be published in PNAS and a forthcoming NAS volume.

Genie brought me on as a coauthor on the paper she was asked to write. This became:

Although many have read the transcripts of the Kitzmiller v. Dover trial (HTML version | PDF version) and found them interesting, reading the transcripts does not give the full sense of what it was like to be in the Kitzmiller courtroom. In real life, in addition to the witness answering questions, the lawyers and witnesses were constantly referring to exhibits that were digitally projected onto a large screen on the right wall of the courtroom. Usually the exhibits were just documents, but when the science witnesses testified, their powerpoint presentations contain fossils, flagella, and everything else in between. I think it is safe to say that the testimony is much easier to understand when read with the demonstrative exhibits available (the exhibit lists and a few exhibits are available online).

However, it takes a lot of work to convert the slides to web format, add captions, embed them in HTML, etc. But as a first step, I and others at NCSE have done this for Kevin Padian’s testimony (testimony+slides | just slides).

Students are often overwhelmed by the number of species concepts cited in the literature. Here is a working list of species concepts presently in play. I quote “Concepts” above because, for philosophical reasons, I think there is only one concept - “species”, and all the rest are conceptions, or definitions, of that concept. I have christened this the Synapormorphic Concept of Species in (Wilkins 2003).

Read the rest on Evolving Thoughts.

Over at Immunoblogging, Joseph has a multi-post series on the evolution of the immune system that I’ve been meaning to highlight, since obviously the claim that there’s no research done in this area plays a large part in IDists’ claims. So, some background reading on a few of the issues:

Part One Part Two Part Three and a bonus (if a bit older) post on Toll-like receptors here, along with a newer overview here.

Additionally, at the new Good Math, Bad Math, MarkCC discusses Dembski’s (mis)use of the NFL theorem and creationist use of probability. Check ‘em out.

Since they say this more succintly than I probably could, I’ll just quote from the email I received:

AAAS is providing educators with practical resources to meet the challenge of teaching evolution. For example, at a successful special event for local teachers during our Annual Meeting in February, we distributed a packet titled Evolution on the Front Line: An Abbreviated Guide to Teaching Evolution. Project 2061, our long-term science education reform initiative, prepared the materials, which included the educational benchmarks for evolution knowledge at specific grade levels and other valuable teaching tools.

You can access the guide, speaker presentations, and the AAAS opening video shown at this event at http://www.aaas.org/programs/center[…]/index.shtml.

AAAS has responded to mounting attacks on evolution, including attempts to insert intelligent design into science curricula, with a series of op-ed commentaries, letters, and high profile interviews. We have adopted a “local strategy” through which we intervene, whenever we can, at the local level where the real action usually is. From Kansas to Pennsylvania to Georgia and, most recently, South Carolina, we have defended evolution as one of the most robust and widely accepted principles of modern science. We are being heard, but there constantly are new audiences to reach. We encourage you to add your voices, as scientists and educators defending the integrity of science and science education in our places of worship, schools, and community organizations. Visit our website for in-depth resources and news reports for the press and the public: http://www.aaas.org/news/press_room/evolution/.

Only had a chance to browse it so far, but looks like some good stuff.

Greetings and salutations! I just returned from the AAAS meeting in St. Louis, and what a trip it was! I finally got to meet Wesley Elsberry and Nick Matzke of NCSE fame, and it was great to see Eugenie again. The occasion for these festivities? The newly formed Alliance for Science ran a three hour symposium entitled Antievolutionism in America: What’s Ahead? We had one hell of a speaker line-up. Dr. Scott kicked it off with her usual eloquence, and was followed by a slew of people to talk about everything from threats to fields outside biology, particularly geology and neuroscience, to the successes of Dover C.A.R.E.S. This symposium was unique because we recognize the plight of those on the front line and gave plenty of podium time to them. For example, Gerald Wheeler from the National Science Teachers Association, a certain pastor from this little town called Dover, and Michael Zimmerman of the Clergy Letter Project all got a chance to air their concerns and suggestions.

Not surprisingly the room was packed for most of the event, with standing room only in the back. The press even ate it up by publishing a story that included the Alliance for Science and a legislative initiative with which we are involved. The article did get one little piece of information wrong though: it suggests that the AAAS itself was involved in the creation of the Alliance for Science. This is not the case.

Bestill your beating hearts, Darwin fans, for yet more Darwin texts are free online. Many have long known and loved the website The writings of Charles Darwin on the web run by John van Wyhe, at the British Library, which has virtually all of Darwin’s published books and articles online (yes, Virginia, Darwin wrote over 100 articles in addition to all his books). And, less well known but very useful, all the volumes of The Correspondance of Charles Darwin are searchable at Google Print.

Now, as reviewed by Niles Eldredge in PLoS Biology [1], we have online Darwin’s early notebooks – the “Red” and “Transmutation” notebooks – and manuscripts: the 1842 Sketch, the 1844 Essay, and the massive unpublished book for which Origin of Species was the “abstract”, Natural Selection. The website is The Darwin Digital Library of Evolution at the American Natural History Museum (http://darwinlibrary.amnh.org).

1. Eldredge, N. 2005. “Darwin’s Other Books: ‘Red’ and ‘Transmutation’ Notebooks, ‘Sketch,’ ‘Essay,’ and Natural Selection.” Public Library of Science: Biology, 3(11): e382. November 15, 2005.

PS: Hmm, the PLoS: Biology article says that the “Red” and “Transmutation” notebooks are online at the website, but I can’t find them. Post a think if you find them.

Today’s Nature has an interesting letter suggesting a way to introduce genetics to children–even kids as young as 5, they suggest. Harness pop culture–specifically Harry Potter–in order to introduce basic concepts in genetics.

Everyone with a serious interest in biology is aware of PubMed and Genbank, the major literature and sequence databases at NIH. But there are a large number of more specialized and professionally curated databases that allow the researcher unparalleled glimpses into an organism’s genetics, molecular biology, physiology and evolution. Over the next few articles, I’d like to highlight some of these databases, showing how they are used and how critical they are for an understanding of the organism. These databases often have deep and highly technical content, but they also have much that is accessible to the non-specialist. And in genomics there are always more questions being asked than there are people to supply answers. As with planetary image analysis and observational astronomy, there may be some areas of opportunity for talented amateurs (especially those with a computational background) who wish to make a contribution to the field.