My bad–for some reason I thought my piece on NPR would air this morning. It was on the news tonight. And you can listen to it here.
Originally published December 1, 2007. Copyright 2007 Carl Zimmer.
Author: Lori Jia
The great biologist Seymour Benzer passed away yesterday. If you know Benzer, it’s probably through Jonathan Weiner’s masterful book, Time, Love, Memory, which focused on how Benzer discovered the influence of genes on behavior in fruit flies. But Benzer was one of those rare scientists who had enough time in his life for more than one great project. Before Benzer turned to fruit flies, he studied E. coli. And in studying that wonderful microbe, he helped to figure out what genes are in the first place.
Last year I wrote about the emerald cockroach wasp, Ampulex compressa, which injects venom into cockroaches to turn them into zombie hosts for their parasitic offspring. (More posts on Ampulex here.) The scientists I wrote about have been trying to figure out what exactly the venom does to the nervous system of their victims, and they’ve discovered that it interferes with a neurotransmitter called octopamine. New Scientist has an update. And they also have a link to a YouTube video that offers more than you may want to see of this awesome parasitic manipulation.
Originally published December 1, 2007. Copyright 2007 Carl Zimmer.
A quick heads-up: I’ll be talking about the tree of life tomorrow morning on NPR’s Saturday Weekend Edition. The segment will be archived on their “Science Out of the Box” web page. We’ll be talking about everything from animals to mushrooms to the unclassifiable viruses that graft the tree of life into a web.
Update: 12/1 10 am: …or maybe not. As far as I could tell over the breakfast din, the piece didn’t run this morning. I’ll let you know when and if it does.
Update: 12/1 5:30 pm: The piece just ran. I don’t think I made any major gaffes, but fact-check away. Here’s where you can listen online.
Continue reading “Swinging Through The Tree of Life Tomorrow on NPR”
The Center for Science Writings at Stevens Institute of Technology has rolled out the “Stevens Seventy,” the seventy greatest science books since 1900. If you click all the way through to Z, my 2000 book Parasite Rex ends the list. Many thanks.
As the introduction to the list points out, these things are always arbitrary, so judge for yourself. Did they leave any classics off? Did they honor an unworthy title?
Originally published November 29, 2007. Copyright 2007 Carl Zimmer.