Vladimir Nabokov, evolutionary biologist extraordinaire

Posted on by Matt Kristoffersen

Here’s a paraphrasing of an email I got this morning from Harvard biologist Naomi Pierce:

“I don’t know if you remember, but I mentioned a few years ago how Vladimir Nabokov, best known as a novelist, was also a self-taught expert on butterflies. In 1945 he had a wild idea about how his favorite group of butterflies evolved that no one took seriously. Well, for the past decade I and my colleagues have been scouring the Andes for butterflies and sequencing their DNA to test his hypothesis. And he turns out to have been right in all sorts of ways.

“Oh, and the paper will be published tonight.”

I got on the phone fast. And here’s my story on Nabokov’s last laugh in the New York Times.

[Update: here’s the new paper that vindicates Nabokov, and here’s his 1945 monograph [click on the pdf link for a free file!]. Check out his Nabokovian conclusion at p.44, plus his painstaking drawings of butterfly sex organs.]

Originally published January 25, 2011. Copyright 2011 Carl Zimmer.

The ultimate case of TMI: Behold my bellybutton’s microbiome

Posted on by Matt Kristoffersen

Why is ScienceOnline a meeting like no other? Because it’s the sort of meeting where a biologist named Rob Dunn can set up shop in the lobby to ask for samples of bellybutton shmutz that he can analyze for biological diversity. Not only is it a place where such a person will not be hustled out by security, but it’s a place where a whole bunch of people respond by grabbing Q-tips to do their part for science. And you can bet every last bit of your bellybutton lint that I was right up near the front of the line.

Ten days later, my sample is now thriving nicely on a Petri dish, awaiting a more detailed analysis of its DNA. And here are the rest of the samples from the meeting.

All I can say is, #974, what is going on in there?

Originally published January 25, 2011. Copyright 2011 Carl Zimmer.

Nonfiction: Nabokov Theory on Butterfly Evolution Is Vindicated

Posted on by admin

The New York Times, January 25, 2011

Link

Vladimir Nabokov may be known to most people as the author of classic novels like “Lolita” and “Pale Fire.” But even as he was writing those books, Nabokov had a parallel existence as a self-taught expert on butterflies.

He was the curator of lepidoptera at the Museum of Comparative Zoology at Harvard University, and he collected the insects across the United States. He published detailed descriptions of hundreds of species. And in a speculative moment in 1945, he came up with a sweeping hypothesis for the evolution of the butterflies he studied, a group known as the Polyommatus blues. He envisioned them coming to the New World from Asia over millions of years in a series of waves.

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