The force of blog nature known as BORA! has decided he does not like the Pepsi aftertaste and is leaving Scienceblogs. I’m just back from a wonderfully rain-soaked vacation in Ireland, so I’m scrambling to get back up to speed. I won’t update my post on the scienceblogs diaspora till this afternoon. But in the meantime, read the epic farewell from BORA!
Originally published July 19, 2010. Copyright 2010 Carl Zimmer.
[An old post I’m fond of]
Scoop up some dirt, and you’ll probably wind up with some slime mold. Many species go by the common name of slime mold, but the ones scientists know best belong to the genus Dictyostelium. They are amoebae, and for the most part they live the life of a rugged individualist. Each slime mold prowls through the soil, searching for bacteria which it engulfs and digests. After gorging itself sufficiently, it divides in two, and the new pair go their separate, bacteria-devouring ways. But if the Dictyostelium in a stamp-size plot of soil should eat their surroundings clean, they send each other alarm signals. They then use the signals to steer toward their neighbors, and as many as a million amoebae converge in a swirling mound. The mound itself begins to act as if it were a single organism. It stretches out into a bullet-shaped slug the size of a sand grain, slithers up toward the surface of the soil, probes specks of dirt, and turns around when it hits a dead end. Its movements are slow – it needs a day to travel an inch – but the deliberateness of the movements eerily evokes an it rather than a they.
Continue reading “From the Vault: Us and Them Among the Slime Molds”
Maria, a paleontologist, writes, “Archaeopteryx, to me, represents a beautiful example of a transition fossil and of evolution in general, showing characters that both dinosaurs and birds share.”
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 18, 2010. Copyright 2010 Carl Zimmer.
Melissa writes,
[A post from 2005 I’m fond of]
Clint, the chimpanzee in this picture, died several months ago at a relatively young age of 24. But part of him lives on. Scientists chose him–or rather, his DNA–as the subject of their first attempt to sequence a complete chimpanzee genome. In the new issue of Nature, they’ve unveiled their first complete draft, and already Clint’s legacy has offered some awesome insights into our own evolution.
Continue reading “From the Vault: Clint Is Dead, Long Live Clint!”