Author: Lori Jia
The Discovery Channel picked up my cockroach zombie story and interviewed Dr. Fred Liebersat on his research. They included some cool footage of the roach and its sinister wasp brain surgeon. To watch, go to their archives and scroll to “Roach-o-rama.”
Unfortunately, there’s no footage of young wasps poking their heads out of their cockroach hosts, but perhaps that was too hard to catch. Or maybe just too disturbing…
Originally published March 10, 2006. Copyright 2006 Carl Zimmer.
Enceladus, a tiny moon of Saturn, suddenly gets interesting. It may be spewing liquid water. And since the only life we know of needs liquid water–and since Enceladus may now be the second place we know of in the solar system with liquid water–I want to buy a ticket there. Details and pictures here.
Originally published March 9, 2006. Copyright 2006 Carl Zimmer.
I’ve revisited the wrist walker story after a scientist involved accused me of spreading “empty gossip.” I don’t agree with that charge, but I do think I should retract some of what I wrote. But I’ve still got some nagging questions about the whole affair. Check it out.
Originally published March 9, 2006. Copyright 2006 Carl Zimmer.
I’ve been in low-blogging mode for a few days as I try to fire off a few dead-tree articles. But I wanted to write up a quick post to draw your attention to threetwo very interesting pieces of human evolution in the news.
1. Modern evolution. A new paper presents the results of a systematic scan for human genes that have experienced natural selection in the past few thousand years. An impressive 700 regions turned up. The fact that humans have been evolving during recorded history is not new. The ability to digest lactose in milk as an adult, resistance to malaria, and other traits have long been recognized as having experienced strong natural selection after the dawn of agriculture.
Scientists are probably centuries away from drawing the full tree of life. For one thing, they have only discovered a small fraction of the species on Earth–perhaps only ten percent. They are also grappling with the relationships between the species they have discovered. Systematists (scientists who study the tree of life) rely mainly on DNA these days to figure out how species are related to one another. They compare the similarities and differences in a given gene in several different species to figure out which ones share the closest kinship. But they have actually sequenced DNA from relatively few species. And in many cases, that DNA may come from a single gene.