January 2013
Let the games begin!
We the blog declare that a month of games will commence from tomorrow. The aim is to achieve the most hits for a blog post in a day. The prize will be worth that of a King's Ransom and will be revealed in good time. Cry havoc, and let slip the blogs of war! Scribe Adam […]
Intelligent Design: Part One – a brief explanation and history
Trinity College Theological Society recently held a talk by Dr Alistair Noble titled ‘A Scientific Case for Intelligent Design’ which I attended as, possibly, the only biologist in the room. It was a fascinating, if deeply frustrating, experience. Before I get into the details of the talk, a brief explanation of intelligent design may be […]
Good-bye Guinea worm?
The media is all abuzz about the Carter Centre’s recent announcement that 542 cases of guinea worm infection were reported in 2012. That is a remarkable achievement, considering that 3.5million cases where the reported when the Carter Centre began their eradication programme in 1986. The guinea worm (Dracunculus medinensis) is a particularly gruesome parasitic nematode […]
Punch it in the face! Coping with cuteness…
Why is it that the first things that happen upon seeing a pudgy baby panda, fluffy penguin or tumbling kitten are usually utterances of “squeezing it”, “eating it” or “smushing it”!? We’ve been talking quite a bit about ‘cuteness’ in the department for a while now; what makes an animal cute, animals exploiting that inbuilt […]
Men are from Earth and women are from Earth
We love to explore and our adventures into outer space represent the acme of our derring-do. But when we leave our cozy planet we put an awful lot of stress on our minds and bodies. The billions of years of evolutionary pressures exerted on our ancestors all took place within the confines of Earth so a […]
Anatomical enablers in the evolution of grasses
A paper just published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA (including Trevor Hodkinson, Botany, School of Natural Sciences, TCD; Trinity Centre for Biodiversity Research) highlights the role of leaf anatomical change in the evolution of a type of photosynthesis (classified as C4) that has allowed a large group of grass species […]
The Perks of Zoology; Field Work in the Greek Islands
One of the many things I love about Zoology is the opportunity to work away from a desk. As an undergraduate I enjoyed field courses and summer projects in the not so exotic wilds of Ireland and Cambridgeshire – great experiences but not quite a match for the glamour of the recent TCD trip to […]
Another piece in the trophic puzzle
The food chain is a concept that many non-biologists are familiar with. Ecologically-speaking, this should be referred to as a food web, because there is rarely one prey species for a given predator or one predator of any given species. The biochemistry of metabolism and digestion means we can reconstruct the diet of a member […]
Unlocking your potential with the British Ecological Society
At their Annual Meeting in December just gone, the British Ecological Society held a special event for PhD students and Post Docs entitled "Unlocking Your Potential - Keys to a Successful Career in Ecology". The purpose of the meeting, as you might have guessed, was to provide early career ecologists with advice on how to […]
Hey Tree of Life! How's it growing?
Following the influence of science writers such as S.J. Gould, I always try to look back at the historical perspectives of what I’m studying. These days I'm playing with 3Gb trees so I was delighted by Mindell's 2013 Systematic Biology publication about the Tree of Life. The idea of placing species into the so called […]