88 posts · 7,308 views
Brains, behaviour, and evolution.
Zen Faulkes
88 posts
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- July 22, 2010
- 08:00 AM
- 4 views
Drugs in the water affecting crustaceans’s precious bodily fluids?
by Zen Faulkes in NeuroDojo
You shouldn’t be able to call a species anything you want.
Yes, biologists switched to using Latin names for species because we recognized that common names were too variable and imprecise. Still, that doesn’t mean that common names are infinitely flexible.
A crustacean story has been making the rounds in the news, and alas, the news stories are often botching the basics. I wish I could be surprised. News stories based on journal articles seem to be a never ending well of things to correct........ Read more »
Guler Y., & Ford A. (2010) Anti-depressants make amphipods see the light. Aquatic Toxicology. DOI: 10.1016/j.aquatox.2010.05.019
- July 21, 2010
- 08:00 AM
- 2 views
Snake eyes
by Zen Faulkes in NeuroDojo
To many, “snake eyes” is a bad bet at the craps table. To some, it’s a GI Joe villain. To a very small, select group, it’s a minor addition to the oeuvre of Brian De Palma. *
Today, I want to look at the most literal meaning of the term imaginable. But, since this is a biology blog, you could probably guess that I was going to end up talking about the eyes of snakes.
I’m willing to bet that when most people visualize snake eyes, they think of something with a vertical slit for a pupi........ Read more »
Brischoux F, Pizzatto L, & Shine R. (2010) Insights into the adaptive significance of vertical pupil shape in snakes. Journal of Evolutionary Biology. DOI: 10.1111/j.1420-9101.2010.02046.x
- July 19, 2010
- 08:00 AM
- 5 views
Neural plasticity isn’t new
by Zen Faulkes in NeuroDojo
A recent post on neuroscience of learning got me thinking about how several people are talking about brain plasticity as though it is a huge revelation of the last couple of decades. From the post:
Only twenty years ago most people in the world of neuroscience believed that the connections between the neurons in your brain were fixed by the time you were a teenager (or even younger)
This is a distortion of history, I think. Ideas about neural plasticity were bubbling around well before 1990s. F........ Read more »
Castellucci VF, & Kandel ER. (1974) A Quantal Analysis of the Synaptic Depression Underlying Habituation of the Gill-Withdrawal Reflex in Aplysia. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 71(12), 5004-5008. info:/
Kuba H, Oichi Y, & Ohmori H. (2010) Presynaptic activity regulates Na channel distribution at the axon initial segment. Nature, 465(7301), 1075-1078. DOI: 10.1038/nature09087
Merzenich M, & Kaas J. (1982) Reorganization of mammalian somatosensory cortex following peripheral nerve injury. Trends in Neurosciences, 434-436. DOI: 10.1016/0166-2236(82)90235-1
- July 14, 2010
- 08:00 AM
- 2 views
Life and death and sex choices in mantids
by Zen Faulkes in NeuroDojo
If ever there was a time to be careful about who you were going to mate with, it would probably be when there was a good chance you were going to die in the attempt.
And we’re not talking about some sort of heroic situation where the male has to endure hardships to get to the female. We’re talking about situations where the female herself is the threat.
“Fair princess, I have arrived to...”
CHOMP. Nom nom nom.
A lot has been written about the cannibalistic tendencies of praying manti........ Read more »
Barry KL. (2010) Influence of female nutritional status on mating dynamics in a sexually cannibalistic praying mantid. Animal Behaviour. info:/10.1016/j.anbehav.2010.05.024
- July 12, 2010
- 08:00 AM
- 2 views
Book review: Do Fish Feel Pain?
by Zen Faulkes in NeuroDojo
Victoria Braithwaite’s Do Fish Feel Pain? is not a technical book. The type is large and the prose is easy to understand.
I had to read this book, because many of the issues around fish pain are the same as those raised for invertebrate pain (Puri and Faulkes 2010; this post). Fish researchers are about five years ahead of the invertebrate researchers.
Braithwaite’s answer to the question posed in her title is...
Spoiler alert! Click the heading of the post to read more.
“Yes.”
H........ Read more »
Bshary, R., Hohner, A., Ait-el-Djoudi, K., & Fricke, H. (2006) Interspecific communicative and coordinated hunting between groupers and giant moray eels in the Red Sea. PLoS Biology, 4(12). DOI: 10.1371/journal.pbio.0040431
Brathwaite V. (2010) Do fish feel pain?. Oxford University Press, 1-194. info:/978-0-19-955120-0
Tracey Jr., W., Wilson, R., Laurent, G., & Benzer, S. (2003) painless, a Drosophila gene essential for nociception. Cell, 113(2), 261-273. DOI: 10.1016/S0092-8674(03)00272-1
- July 9, 2010
- 08:00 AM
- 3 views
“You’re not my type!”, echolocation edition
by Zen Faulkes in NeuroDojo
Distinguishing your own species from other species is useful: for one thing, it prevents a lot of potentially embarrassing mating attempts.
“Um. You mean we don’t belong to, er... that is to say... you’re not my species? I am so sorry...”
Awkwaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaard.
But how fine a distinction can a species draw? Does it stop at, “You’re not my species,” or can it extend to, “You’re species B, not C or D”? And would species be able to distinguish other species outside of r........ Read more »
Schuchmann M, & Siemers B. (2010) Behavioral evidence for community‐wide species discrimination from echolocation calls in bats. The American Naturalist, 176(1), 72-82. DOI: 10.1086/652993
- July 8, 2010
- 08:00 AM
- 2 views
How'd you get that fat lip?
by Zen Faulkes in NeuroDojo
African rift lake cichlids are among the most famous subjects for the study of evolution. The rift lakes formed recently in geological time, but the cichlids that got in have radiated into a dazzling array of species in short order.
But there are cichlids and other similar recent geological events in the Americas, too, just as interesting!
This research by Elmer and colleagues takes advantage of a lake made by volcanic activity, in Nicaragua. The lake appears to have been formed about 1,800 ye........ Read more »
Elmer, K., Lehtonen, T., Kautt, A., Harrod, C., & Meyer, A. (2010) Rapid sympatric ecological differentiation of crater lake cichlid fishes within historic times. BMC Biology, 8(1), 60. DOI: 10.1186/1741-7007-8-60
- July 7, 2010
- 08:00 AM
- 4 views
Sending signals is subtle: Killifish’s favourite colours
by Zen Faulkes in NeuroDojo
Making a clear visual signal is tricky. Consider this traffic signal:
(I totally thought I was going to have to photoshop a stop sign, but no.)
Whether this signal is effective depends on a lot of factors. What's the visual environment like? Some colours stand out better in some lighting conditions than others.
More critically for this discussion, what’s the experience of the person the signal is aimed at? And I mean the term broadly. Is the person colour blind? Has the person grown up in........ Read more »
Fuller, R., Noa, L., & Strellner, R. (2010) Teasing Apart the Many Effects of Lighting Environment on Opsin Expression and Foraging Preference in Bluefin Killifish. The American Naturalist, 176(1), 1-13. DOI: 10.1086/652994
- July 5, 2010
- 08:00 AM
- 2 views
Island getaway, or: A lizard in a life-boat
by Zen Faulkes in NeuroDojo
Bermuda. Famous for its sun. Sand. Surf. Shorts. Triangles. Lizards.
Okay, maybe not the lizards. Not yet.
Islands and lakes hold a special place in the heart of evolutionary biologists (here’s a few examples from this blog: sticklebacks, crickets). As Jerry Coyne likes to say, island biogeography provides evidence for evolution so strong that most creationists simply ignore it.
View Larger Map
Bermuda formed about two million years ago. It’s small and a long way from the mainland, and ........ Read more »
Brandley, M., Wang, Y., Guo, X., Nieto Montes de Oca, A., Fería Ortíz, M., Hikida, T., & Ota, H. (2010) Bermuda as an evolutionary life raft for an ancient lineage of endangered Lizards. PLoS ONE, 5(6). DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0011375
- July 2, 2010
- 08:00 AM
- 2 views
Persuasion and other failures of will (but trust me on that sunscreen)
by Zen Faulkes in NeuroDojo
You don't have to read this. You could stop at any time. Couldn't you?
Everyone is going to say "Yes" to that question. We love to think that we are masters of our fate, captains of our destiny, our choices are ours alone. That notion is crucial to the ethical concept of agency, legal matters of intent, and much more.
But I'm sure everyone has had a moment like in video below. It starts at 1:58 and runs to 3:00:
It's that moment where you stop yourself, and go, "What am I doing?"
We don't........ Read more »
Falk, E., Berkman, E., Mann, T., Harrison, B., & Lieberman, M. (2010) Predicting Persuasion-Induced Behavior Change from the Brain. Journal of Neuroscience, 30(25), 8421-8424. DOI: 10.1523/JNEUROSCI.0063-10.2010
Custers, R., & Aarts, H. (2010) The Unconscious Will: How the Pursuit of Goals Operates Outside of Conscious Awareness. Science, 329(5987), 47-50. DOI: 10.1126/science.1188595
- July 1, 2010
- 08:00 AM
- 2 views
The elephant and the shrew, an axonal story
by Zen Faulkes in NeuroDojo
The world is different for small animals and big animals. J.B.S. Haldane said it best:
To the mouse and any smaller animal (gravity) presents practically no dangers. You can drop a mouse down a thousand-yard mine shaft; and, on arriving at the bottom, it gets a slight shock and walks away, provided that the ground is fairly soft. A rat is killed, a man is broken, a horse splashes.
What does scale mean for neurons? As an animal gets bigger, it’s going to take longer for neural signals to get f........ Read more »
More, Heather L., Hutchinson, John R., Collins, David F., Weber, Douglas J., Aung, Steven K. H., & Donelan, J. Maxwell. (2010) Scaling of sensorimotor control in terrestrial mammals. Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences. info:/10.1098/rspb.2010.0898
- June 29, 2010
- 04:45 PM
- 3 views
A bull in a bear market: Social media and the scientist “shortage”
by Zen Faulkes in NeuroDojo
Joshua Ward thinks scientists have to embrace social media.
Okay. As a blogger, someone on Twitter, and so on, I guess I can’t disagree with that.
But almost didn’t get to that point, because I just about did a spit-take when I read:
In the face of basic scientist shortages in many of the leading fields(...)
Shortage? What shortage? I rarely read about institutions unable to find good people. I read a lot about institutions with bona fide research positions that are swamped by application........ Read more »
Ward, J. (2010) Recruiting future talent in ecology and evolutionary biology. Trends in Ecology . DOI: 10.1016/j.tree.2010.06.002
- June 25, 2010
- 08:00 AM
- 3 views
Building a bigger brain
by Zen Faulkes in NeuroDojo
How does one species get a bigger brain than another?
A while ago, I wrote about a paper that argued that genes that define boundaries in the nervous system seemed to be responsible for differing brain structures in cichlid fish. This seemed to explain the data better than a competing hypothesis, which was that the differences in brain size were caused by the length of time the brain spent forming neurons (neurogenesis). A forthcoming paper by Charvet and Striedter suggest a third possibility.
........ Read more »
Charvet, C., & Striedter, G. (2010) Bigger brains cycle faster before neurogenesis begins: A comparison of brain development between chickens and bobwhite quail. Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences. DOI: 10.1098/rspb.2010.0811
- June 24, 2010
- 08:00 AM
- 3 views
A virtual camera lucida
by Zen Faulkes in NeuroDojo
Sometimes, the scientific literature sucks at getting information to you.
I was looking at the table of contents of a new issue of The Journal of Crustacean Biology and saw an article about how to photograph soft-bodied crustaceans. Hm, I wonder why photographing soft-bodied crustaceans is difficult, I thought.
And the abstract mentioned software to deal with short focal planes by merging several pictures. The software is Helicon Focus.
Yes, I should be happy that I have found something usefu........ Read more »
Berejnov, V., Sinton, D., & Djilali, N. (2010) Structure of porous electrodes in polymer electrolyte membrane fuel cells: An optical reconstruction technique. Journal of Power Sources, 195(7), 1936-1939. DOI: 10.1016/j.jpowsour.2009.10.050
Hegna, T. (2010) Photography of Soft-Bodied Crustaceans via Drying, Whitening, and Splicing. Journal of Crustacean Biology, 30(3), 351-356. DOI: 10.1651/09-3253.1
Scannell, E., Dell'Ova, C., Quinlan, E., Murphy, A., & Kleckner, N. (2008) Pharmacology of ionotropic and metabotropic glutamate receptors on neurons involved in feeding behavior in the pond snail, Helisoma trivolvis. Journal of Experimental Biology, 211(5), 824-833. DOI: 10.1242/jeb.011866
- June 22, 2010
- 05:06 PM
- 3 views
Razor-sharp teeth and venom: The bacteria love it
by Zen Faulkes in NeuroDojo
A bite from a Komodo dragon would take you down. They have large teeth that are very sharp. And their salivary glands secrete venom.
For a long time, people sort of overlooked those two factors. The teeth were obvious, but the venom wasn’t. Instead, people suggested that one of the ways that the slow moving monitor lizards were able to take down large prey was because their mouths contained so many bacteria, that the bitten prey animal got infected, quite quickly, and went down from the bacte........ Read more »
Bull, J., Jessop, T., & Whiteley, M. (2010) Deathly Drool: Evolutionary and Ecological Basis of Septic Bacteria in Komodo Dragon Mouths. PLoS ONE, 5(6). DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0011097
- June 21, 2010
- 08:00 AM
- 2 views
The rational crayfish, Procambarus economicus?
by Zen Faulkes in NeuroDojo
You might expect a paper whose title starts with “Neural control” to include neurons.
This new paper by Liden and collegues doesn’t. It’s straight behaviour paper in the style of classic neuroethology. It starts by explicitly trying to tie itself to a hot new field: neuroeconomics. Neuroeconomics is about value assessment and decision making in humans. In many cases, this means doing brains scans of people while they play with experimenter’s money.
Liden and company argue that humans........ Read more »
Liden, William H., Phillips, Mary L., & Herberholz, Jens. (2010) Neural control of behavioural choice in juvenile crayfish. Proceedings of the Royal Society B. info:/10.1098/rspb.2010.1000
Schmidt, F. (2010) Detecting and Correcting the Lies That Data Tell. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 5(3), 233-242. DOI: 10.1177/1745691610369339
Yeh, S., Fricke, R., & Edwards, D. (1996) The Effect of Social Experience on Serotonergic Modulation of the Escape Circuit of Crayfish. Science, 271(5247), 366-369. DOI: 10.1126/science.271.5247.366
- June 19, 2010
- 01:57 PM
- 2 views
Conquest of the land, a la Chubby Checker
by Zen Faulkes in NeuroDojo
Now this is wild:
It’s a fish. It jumps.
This picture was not taken in an aquarium filled with water; it’s in air.
The fish is a blenny, Alticus arnoldorum, and a new paper introduced me to this fish that barely deserves to be called a fish. According to the author, Shi-Tong Hsieh, this fish spends so much time on land that it actively defends territory on land. It can stay out of water indefinitely, as long as it stays moist.
That blows my mind.
Hsieh was interested how blennies wer........ Read more »
Hsieh, Shi-Tong Tonia. (2010) A Locomotor Innovation Enables Water-Land Transition in a Marine Fish. PLoS ONE, 5(6). info:/10.1371/journal.pone.0011197
- June 15, 2010
- 01:00 PM
- 4 views
Tuesday Crustie: Mandibles
by Zen Faulkes in NeuroDojo
I saw this and could think of nothing but the alien from the movie Predator.
This is a frontal view of the head of a male Branchinecta brushi. This species of fairy shrimp is interesting in several ways. First, it is a species new to science, having just been described in a paper last week.
Second, this is one of the two highest crustacean species on the planet. There is one other crustacean found in the same pools that B. brushi is found in.
I also have to give this paper credit for the bes........ Read more »
Hegna, T., & Lazo-Wasem, E. (2010) Branchinecta brushi n. sp. (Branchiopoda: Anostraca: Branchinectidae) from a Volcanic Crater in Northern Chile (Antofagasta Province): A New Altitude Record for Crustaceans. Journal of Crustacean Biology, 30(3), 445-464. DOI: 10.1651/09-3236.1
- June 14, 2010
- 01:14 PM
- 4 views
“Ogle me, ogle me!” orders the opistobranch
by Zen Faulkes in NeuroDojo
The problem with writing about sea slug colouration is that they are so spectacular, so lovely, that you are tempted to turn the whole post into a photo gallery just to show off the pictures.
The bright colours are not there for just the benefit of lucky SCUBA divers. As I've noted before, sea slugs mollusks are perhaps the most appealing targets imaginable for a predator. When your entire body plan is essentially a predator’s “meals on wheels,” you might think the last thing you would wa........ Read more »
Cortesi, F., & Cheney, K. (2010) Conspicuousness is correlated with toxicity in marine opisthobranchs. Journal of Evolutionary Biology. DOI: 10.1111/j.1420-9101.2010.02018.x
- June 10, 2010
- 08:00 AM
- 25 views
Mimics without models: Allopatric Batesians
by Zen Faulkes in NeuroDojo
I was imitating Jean Chrétien a while ago to tell an anecdote to one of my students.
I could have done the greatest, most perfect, most spot-on, hysterical impersonation of Chrétien ever.* It all would have been lost on this student. An American undergraduate would be unlikely to recognize a Canadian prime minister, no matter how distinctive his speaking style was. (And it was. Oh, how it was.)
That’s the problem with imitation: it only works if both parties recognize what’s being imitat........ Read more »
Pfennig, D., & Mullen, S. (2010) Mimics without models: causes and consequences of allopatry in Batesian mimicry complexes. Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences. DOI: 10.1098/rspb.2010.0586
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