In a community of pollinators there are bound to be some that skirt the usual mutualistic pact between flower and pollinator. As I wrote about in my previous post (Nectar Robbing Bees, Natural Evil and the Image of God) nectar robbing bees short circuit the nectar bribery system put in place by flowers leaving the... Continue Reading →
Cheaters prosper! Yes, they really do. Hundreds of thousands of species are singularly devoted to some form of parasitic life strategy. It's a strategy that involves one organism deriving all or much of its resources from a host organism to the detriment of that host. Many of these strategies make us cringe. For example the... Continue Reading →
A difference of opinion among creationist’ organizations about the origin of species and natural selection has been festering for a number of years and yesterday that dispute broke out into full view. The Institute for Creation Research (ICR) published a short article on their website extolling the virtues of Dr. Guliuzza’s Continuous Environmental Tracking (CET)... Continue Reading →
How did the earth become populated by billions of species of living things? Conventional evolutionary biology provides an explanatory framework to answer that question. Intelligent Design advocates provide another as do Progressive Creationists (Old Earth Creationists). But a large segment of the population looks to creation scientists (Young-earth creationists—YECs) to answer the question. How do... Continue Reading →
Armadillos are curious little animals but were all of them as small as they are today?  DNA extracted from a 12,000 year old bone of an extinct glyptodont the size of a small car revealed a genetic code that clearly places this huge animal inside the group (clade) of diverse animals we collectively call armadillos. These DNA results (see... Continue Reading →
One method of examining a student’s grasp of a complex topic is to confront that student with an alternative point of view and ask them to critique it. If that student has a good working knowledge of the subject, they should be able to recognize the broad philosophical underpinnings of that alternative viewpoint and be able... Continue Reading →
A central tenet of young earth creationism is the belief that the entire world before Adam’s transgression experienced no animal death.  What would such a world have looked like? Examining YEC depictions of Eden you would think that the animals looked like those alive today except that all extinct things, eg. dinosaurs, were also alive... Continue Reading →
Young earth creationists (YECs) are the most vocal skeptics of evolutionary theory, however, they recognize organisms do change over time. But how much? Everyone agrees that organisms have the capacity to adapt to their environments. This adaptive ability can lead to the formation of isolated genetic lineages we identify as species.  Evolutionary theory posits that continued... Continue Reading →
The fact that bacteria are able to develop resistance to antibiotics has been a textbook example of evolutionary processes in action. Mutations and natural selection—two primary agents of change—work together to sculpt new genetic combinations allowing individuals to exploit resources unavailable to bacteria previously unable to resist antibiotic chemicals in their environment. Now you can watch a powerful... Continue Reading →
The ministry of Ken Ham’s Answers in Genesis exists, in part, to provide Christians with responses to what they believe are anti-biblical beliefs about the age of the earth and the origin of biological diversity. To provide these answers, AiG has assembled a small group of geologists and biologists. These employees provide answers to questions that... Continue Reading →
When do the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few, or the one, as Spock suggested in Star Trek II? I have no interest in defending the utilitarian philosophy of Jeremy Bentham, especially as a guide for understanding human moral psychology, but it is interesting to observe that some simple organisms display... Continue Reading →
This fish prefers to be out of water! Â The Pacific leaping blenny is back in the news again with new research on how they avoid being eaten by birds and lizards. Whoa, back up a bit you say. Â A fish living out of water! Yep, and this isn't just a fish that can drag itself... Continue Reading →
Plants aren't just helpless victims of herbivory. They find ways to fight back against those voracious animals that can ravage them in short order.  Plants can produce toxins, spines, thorns, glass crystals in their cells and many other defenses but all of these defenses require a significant allocation of energy.  That energy could be spent growing new... Continue Reading →
Naturalis Historia 