Southern Fried Science

The moldy kingdom gets a new neighbor

May 13, 2011May 24, 2011 Andrew Thaler 6 Comments

Science

tree2 — A diagrammatic tree depicting the organisation of most eukaryotes into six major groups. The relationships amongst most of the major groups and the position of the ‘root’ of the tree are shown as unresolved (note however, the grouping of Opisthokonta and Amoebozoa). The arrow shows a possible precise placement of the root, based on gene fusion data. (Simpson and Roger 2004)

Depending on your view of phylogenetics, a recent publication in Nature reporting the discovery of a new kingdom-level branch on the tree of life, basal to Kingdom Fungi, is either a major revision of our current view of taxonomy or completely unsurprising and expected. While we mostly refer to the four kingdoms within Domain Eukarya as Protista, Plantae, Fungi, and Animalia, it’s understood by the scientific community that Protista is essentially a catch-all category, not a true clade, for eukaryotes that don’t quite fit into the other three groups. While this is convenient for organization, it fails to adequately express the diversity of protists. Four kingdoms is a useful system, but there’s no reason why diversity at the kingdom level couldn’t be much higher. A strict cladist could create hundreds, if not thousands of kingdoms from Protista alone.

Weekly dose of TED – John Delaney: Wiring an interactive ocean

May 13, 2011May 12, 2011 Andrew Thaler

Uncategorized

Off to the International Marine Conservation Congress!

May 12, 2011May 12, 2011 David Shiffman 2 Comments

Conservation

I’m on my way to the 2nd International Marine Conservation Congress in Victoria, British Columbia. This gathering, organized by the Society for Conservation Biology, brings together leading scientists and conservationists from around the world.

Short update on the North Carolina Wildfire and Red Wolves

May 12, 2011 Andrew Thaler 2 Comments

Conservation

The wildfire that ignited in Dare County last week is still burning, as many coastal residents were reminded last night when the wind changed and brought smoke inland. Fortunately, the incident command is reporting that the fire is more than 50% contained, has not reached the town of Stumpy Point, and did not penetrate to … Read More “Short update on the North Carolina Wildfire and Red Wolves” »

Florida Senate fails basic biology, accidentally outlaws sex.

May 11, 2011May 25, 2011 Andrew Thaler 59 Comments

Science

Question: If your elected officials fail basic taxonomy, promote anti-science curriculum, and consistently attempt to undermine the fundamental underpinning of all biology, what happens when they start trying to legislate from this flawed view of reality?

Does Knowledge Equal Power?

May 10, 2011May 10, 2011 Bluegrass Blue Crab

Uncategorized

Lend-An-Ear — knowledge of plants has mean money, if not power, www.mindfully.org

Foucault saw the concepts of knowledge and power as one entity, which he called “pouvoir-savoir”, based on the philosophy that knowledge and power are co-evolved. There are a number of examples where Foucault’s assertion seem to be correct. In France, a group of patients with muscular dystrophy coordinated and collected vast amounts of collective data on the rare disease by detailed recordkeeping by family members. They even held their own conferences and shared information, eventually bringing in a couple of doctors to do standard medical analysis on their data. Armed with knowledge of the disease, they were able to confront the medical establishment, which had previously ignored their cases because so little was known about the disease and the doctors did not want to look ignorant. Public attention brought by these events also brought funding to an otherwise unprofitable treatment regiment (Rabeharisoa and Callon in Jasanoff 2004). In other parts of the world, knowledge of medicinal plants and other helpful plant genotypes has been linked to indigenous rights movement through intellectual property (Whatmore 2002). Plant germplasms have become a way for communities to connect to international groups supporting biodiversity, which in turn helps secure indigenous rights over both intellectual and land properties.

The Outer Banks Ablaze

May 9, 2011May 9, 2011 Andrew Thaler 1 Comment

Conservation, Science

Early hours of the wildfire in Dare Country. Image NCFWS

In Beaufort, the first sign that something was amiss occurred on Sunday night. The air became thick with haze and smelled like of burning mulch. At first we thought it was just an overzealous barbecue somewhere down the road, but as we drove over the Morehead City highrise bridge, we discovered that the smoke was everywhere. This wasn’t an isolated grilling accident, trash burn, or house on fire, some thing was burning, something big. It could only be a forest fire, and, judging by the direction of the wind, it was blowing in from somewhere near the Outer Banks.

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Three reasons why you should donate to Bonehenge

May 4, 2011May 5, 2011 Andrew Thaler

Bonehenge is our community outreach project of choice here at Southern Fried Science. Over the last few years we’ve been raising money and publicity to help make Bonehenge a reality. There is a widget on the left side of the page where you can make a donation to help build Bonhenge. We’ll match all donations up to $250 dollars, so you can make you contribution count double. Here are three reasons why you should contribute to Bonehenge:

Biodiversity Wednesday: Yellowstone Geysers

May 4, 2011May 4, 2011 Bluegrass Blue Crab

Science

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA — www.princeton.edu

Yellowstone National Park was established to preserve the American West, largely held up as the iconic American landscape. Picturesque Yellowstone houses the hopes and dreams of the frontier, the wilderness that is a large part of American heritage, and the final refuge for North American wildlife. Despite such a colorful and large part of American history, Yellowstone should perhaps be famous not for its astounding trees and bouncing elk, but instead for the ecosystems that depend on Yellowstone’s geysers. They are the unsung heroes of modern biotechnology and place Yellowstone’s wilderness leaps and bounds above other temperate forests in terms of biodiversity.

Full video of injured shark shows numerous natural injuries

May 3, 2011May 10, 2011 David Shiffman 101 Comments

Science

Junior-244x300 — Junior the Great White shark, before and (long) after being caught by Dr. Domeier's team. Image courtesy FijiSharkDiving.Blogspot.com

Several months ago, still photographs showing an injured great white shark surfaced. The shark in question was previously captured by a shark research team lead by Dr. Michael Domeier on the TV show “Shark Men” – and the capture of this shark didn’t go as planned. These still images were taken from a video, and in response to the ensuing controversy, Dr. Domeier’s team claimed that when the full video is viewed, you can see that the injury comes from another shark and not from capture injury. No clear sharkbite injuries are visible in the original still image.

I submitted a Freedom of Information Act request for the full video, which had been in the possession of NOAA’s Office of National Marine Sanctuaries pending an investigation.

Here, for the first time available to the public, is the full video from which the above images were taken.