#biology

See tagged statuses in the local bookrastinating.com community

Living organisms are assumed to produce same- .

But this is not the case for Messor ibericus, an that lays individuals from two distinct .

In this life cycle, females must clone males of another species because they require their sperm to produce the worker caste.

As a result, males from the same mother exhibit distinct genomes and morphologies, as they belong to species that diverged over 5 million years ago.

The evolutionary history of this system appears as sexual parasitism that evolved into a natural case of cross-species cloning, resulting in the maintenance of a male-only lineage cloned through distinct species’ ova.


https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-025-09425-w

Defying classification, fantastical artworks reframe the racism of Carl Linnaeus

In the 18th century, the Swedish biologist Carl Linnaeus set out to classify life, creating a system of taxonomy that still endures. But, as Firelei Báez explains, his work included hierarchies of humans based on race that were ‘sheer nonsense’, embedding racist ideas into science that echo to this day.

https://aeon.co/videos/defying-classification-fantastical-artworks-reframe-the-racism-of-carl-linnaeus

Carl Linnaeus at PG:
https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/author/9516

Linnaeus: Örtaboken (Herb book), early manuscript by L., 1725. "Earliest manuscript by L." The image shows Örtaboken (“The Herb Book”), the earliest known manuscript by Carl Linnaeus, created in 1725 when he was still a young student. The page, yellowed with age, is filled with neat, handwritten text in dark ink, written in Swedish and Latin. Botanical names and descriptions are carefully arranged, often accompanied by delicate ink or pencil sketches of plants, leaves, or flowers in the margins. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Carl_von_Linn%C3%A9#/media/File:Linnaeus_-_%C3%96rtaboken,_early_manuscript,_1725.jpg

🐝🌻 More than 4,000 species of wild were already thriving in when European honeybees arrived in 1622. From tiny metallic green sweat bees to bumblebees that vibrate pollen loose through buzz pollination, these native species are often more effective pollinators than their famous cousins.

Many wild bees specialize in just one or a few species, creating partnerships that have developed over millions of years where each partner's survival depends on the other.

👉 Learn more: https://zurl.co/b0YJp

A fuzzy golden-brown native bee with visible antennae and wings feeds on a pale yellow flower with prominent white stamens against a blurred green background.
A fuzzy golden-brown native bee with visible antennae and wings feeds on a pale yellow flower with prominent white stamens against a blurred green background.
A fuzzy golden-brown native bee with visible antennae and wings feeds on a pale yellow flower with prominent white stamens against a blurred green background.

Because life can be full of bullshit, here's some pleasant counterprogramming:

Meet 3.3 m/11 ft

(Old people like me will get the reference)

First spotted off in 2015

The only we've discovered in the world, now or ever

Researchers have studied him (yes, a he) as to cause

Diet: no. Stress: no. Toxins: no. Infection: no

They now think it is just a rare genetic mutation

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/rare-pink-manta-ray-spotted-near-australias-lady-elliot-island-180974196/

a pink manta ray
a pink manta ray
a pink manta ray
a pink manta ray

Sign up for an author's newsletter, get a free book. This one includes my cyberpunk thriller Biodigital. I wrote it in 2012 but it's about today. It's freakily prescient, I promise. If it doesn't give you nightmares I'll eat my (virtual) hat.

https://books.bookfunnel.com/freeadventures/2negu05zwk

It's always weirded me out that humans think of any (other) animals as pests or invaders in our space, since WE are the ones technically invading THEIR space, as they've already been living on the land for so long.

This is a really cool piece about coyotes, urban wildlife, and co-existing together: https://www.biographic.com/the-coyote-next-door

How it started: Life is DNA, which uses rna to send messages and make proteins that do stuff.

How it's going: Life is RNA, which uses dna as a long-term data storage medium optimized for replication and repair.

People ask me what I would advise them to do in preparation for their own funeral. I tend to say they can leave their loved ones to decide the service if they write a . And if you are + write a will & do it now. If you are or write your will. If you are feeling you are too or not needing to think about it yet *write a will*. Look into the eyes of the people you love, write it for them. If we don’t write a will, will win over . Please

We're just migrated from another instance, so here is our (re)introduction:

Neurofrontiers is a bilingual blog about interesting neuroscience topics that tries to be accessible to the broader public while still maintaining scientific accuracy. It's run by a team of three people: a computational neuroscientist, a psychologist, and a graphic designer. We think that being on social media allows us to stay up-to-date with the most recent discussions in science and hope to be able to connect with like-minded individuals.

Posting interests below so we show up in mutual searches:

Indigenous Tribes Engineered British Columbia’s Modern Hazelnut Forests More Than 7,000 Years Ago
--
https://www.science.org/content/article/indigenous-tribes-engineered-british-columbia-s-modern-hazelnut-forests-more-7000-years <-- shared technical article
--
https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2402304121 <-- shared paper
--
[not my usual ‘sort of thing’ to post - as broad as that is - but I found this fascinating; it reminds me, in a sense, of the Incas incrementally selecting corn stock that can handle higher and higher altitudes, in ‘research stations’, although those were a domesticated crop]

charts - Clustering results of hazelnut individuals obtained by discriminant analysis of principal components (DAPC) and Bayesian-based structure analysis. (A) Plot of the first two axes from a principal component analysis (PCA) of 219 hazelnut samples genotyped for 9,650 SNPs showing differentiation between South Coast, Interior, and North samples. Groups are shown as different colors and inertia ellipses (95% of variance), while dots represent individuals. (B) Structure plot showing the posterior probabilities of assignment of individuals to the different clustering groups.
map - Six genetically distinct clusters of hazelnuts are represented in the study region, with four groups in the “isolated” northern region. Considering ethnographic and archaeological records of hazelnut management among Ts’msyen, Nisga’a, Gitanyow, and Gitxsan, this genetic diversity very likely reflects ancient management and cultivation efforts.
photo - hazelnut seed in tree, British Columbia, Canada
photo - First Nation member in a hazelnut kitchen, British Columbia, Canada

TIL: The West African Crocodile (or Sacred Crocodile) Crocodylus suchus only was recognized as a separate species from the Nile Crocodile in 2003, despite being discovered as a seperate species in 1807 by a French naturalist who compared mummified crocodiles to common crocodiles.

They aren't even particularly closely related.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/West_African_crocodile

This week's at the library: Once a year @princetonupress has their autumn sale, knocking 70% off prices (it's still on!). Thus I bagged myself four very different books: The Last Muslim Conquest, The Pivotal Generation, The Liars of Nature and the Nature of Liars, and The Hidden Company That Trees Keep

@princetonnature

A photo of four books, standing upright next to each other in a half-circle on a small, brown, wooden table. These are from Princeton University Press and in their autumn sale: The Last Muslim Conquest: The Ottoman Empire and Its Wars in Europe, The Pivotal Generation: Why We Have a Moral Responsibility to Slow Climate Change Right Now, The Liars of Nature and the Nature of Liars: Cheating and Deception in the Living Worlds, and The Hidden Company That Trees Keep: Life from Treetops to Root Tips. The out-of-focus background shows shelves full of books.