For this week’s “Matter” column, I write about the bees buzzing from flower to flower this summer. In particular, I take a look at the bees that pollinate 20,000 species of plants–including crops like tomatoes and potatoes–with some amazing acoustics. They vibrate hundreds of times a second to shake pollen loose from special tubes in the flowers.

That’s why you can use a tuning fork to coax some flowers to release a cloud of pollen, as this video from Anne Leonard of the University of Nevada, Reno, illustrates. Bees, in other words, are living tuning forks.

As I continue to catch up from a week’s vacation, I realize that I neglected to point Loom readers to last week’s “Matter” column in the New York Times. It’s a fun one: a look at the species with the fewest known genes in its genome–just 120. Which raises the questions, just how low can you go? Is there some minimal essence of life? The answer is not what you might think. And it involves living inside a mealybug.

Andrew Howley over at National Geographic News Watch shares my fascination with such “Whoa…” questions, and so we exchanged some further thoughts about what it means to be alive. You can read his conversation with me here.

In 2009, I published The Tangled Bank: An Introduction. I intended it as a textbook for non-majors, as well as a guide to evolution for people looking for a thorough but non-technical account of how life has gotten to be the way it is. The project proved to be far more work than I had reckoned, but I was happy with how it turned out, especially thanks to the talented artists and designers I had the privilege to work with. The reception has been gratifying; the Quarterly Review of Biology, for example, called it “spectacularly successful.” A number of courses have adopted The Tangled Bank both in the United States and abroad.

It’s hard to believe that four years have rushed by since the book came out. A lot has happened in the world of evolutionary biology during that time, some of which I’ve tried to document here and in my articles. And so, next month, I’ll be publishing the second edition of The Tangled Bank.

Continue reading “The Tangled Bank 2.0, Ready For Pre-Order” →

Dan Weston writes, “Given your interest in Moby Dick and tattoos, I thought you might appreciate my recent tattoo, based on an illustration by Rockwell Kent from the 1930’s edition (that I inherited from my grandmother and have read so many times that I had to have it rebound).”

Clearly, Dan has read my post from last year, “Herman Melville, Science Writer.”

For years I owned a copy of Moby Dick with Rockwell Kent’s dream-like engravings. The book disappeared a while ago, but the pictures remain how I see the story. The Plattsburgh State Art Museum has an online gallery of Kent’s illustrations here; I’ve reprinted the source of Dan’s ink below.

I think I need to buy myself another copy as a birthday present.

You can see the rest of the Science Tattoo Emporium here or in my book, Science Ink: Tattoos of the Science Obsessed.

Originally published July 7, 2013. Copyright 2013 Carl Zimmer.