Going Different Directions in the Same Space
As many of you know, I’m a graduate student in a zoology department. When I tell kids that, most of them think I’m studying to become a zookeeper. They also usually think that’s something pretty cool. When I explain that I’m really studying to be a scientist who studies how animals change, it usually turns out to be a letdown. For some reason, kids are usually happier thinking that I might get eaten by the lion or stepped on by an elephant.
Anyway, what I actually study is speciation mechanisms. What that means is that I’m trying to look at the DNA of closely related species in order to figure out why they wound up as different species. There are a lot of questions left to answer, and lots of scientists are working in this area.
I’m guessing that right about now at least some of you are thinking something along the lines of, “Hey, wait a minute! Haven’t you guys been telling us that Darwin figured that out way back when?”