Comments on: Genome Size and Flight in Bats https://gregladen.com/blog/2008/06/22/genome-size-and-flight-in-bats/ Sat, 25 Jul 2009 22:13:53 +0000 hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=6.4.6 By: kpss https://gregladen.com/blog/2008/06/22/genome-size-and-flight-in-bats/#comment-10142 Sat, 25 Jul 2009 22:13:53 +0000 http://scienceblogs.com/gregladen/2008/06/22/genome-size-and-flight-in-bats/#comment-10142 Cell size relates to metabolism in such a way that smaller cells would make more sense in an organism that required high energy demand in certain tissues on a regular basis (or even occasionally, but on important occasions).

]]> By: David Marjanovi? https://gregladen.com/blog/2008/06/22/genome-size-and-flight-in-bats/#comment-10141 Mon, 23 Jun 2008 07:19:42 +0000 http://scienceblogs.com/gregladen/2008/06/22/genome-size-and-flight-in-bats/#comment-10141

Cell size relates to metabolism in such a way that smaller cells would make more sense in an organism that required high energy demand in certain tissues on a regular basis (or even occasionally, but on important occasions).

The surface-volume ratio seems to be what matters here.

]]> By: Greg Laden https://gregladen.com/blog/2008/06/22/genome-size-and-flight-in-bats/#comment-10140 Sun, 22 Jun 2008 20:06:55 +0000 http://scienceblogs.com/gregladen/2008/06/22/genome-size-and-flight-in-bats/#comment-10140 TR: Thanks for the additional information.It was not at all clear that this was Jill’s first time at bat. Oops.. (A truly unintended pun, honestly …) And a well done presentation by a student is the sign of an excellent adviser.

]]> By: Barn Owl https://gregladen.com/blog/2008/06/22/genome-size-and-flight-in-bats/#comment-10139 Sun, 22 Jun 2008 15:09:52 +0000 http://scienceblogs.com/gregladen/2008/06/22/genome-size-and-flight-in-bats/#comment-10139 Many bat species seem to have extreme longevity, given their size and high metabolic rate-especially when they’re compared to small insectivores and rodents. Don’t know whether this has any correlation to genome size, though. However, longevity does seem to correlate with lower free radical production and perhaps with efficiency at repairing oxidative stress-related damage, and it’s another way in which bats resemble birds.Sounds like an awesome meeting, with lots of great research presentations!

]]> By: TR Gregory https://gregladen.com/blog/2008/06/22/genome-size-and-flight-in-bats/#comment-10138 Sun, 22 Jun 2008 13:54:24 +0000 http://scienceblogs.com/gregladen/2008/06/22/genome-size-and-flight-in-bats/#comment-10138 Thanks for the nice writeup. I am sure Jill will be pleased at the kind words. To answer a few questions…- I don’t go to many of the big meetings anymore. If I am one of the invited speakers I do, but mostly I find the big ones (SSE, SMBE, ESEB) too long and exhausting. I also am in the middle of some things here and could not get away for the conference this summer.- Jill is working on a lot of other groups. We focused on “megabats” because it’s one group that 1) had never been studied (cf. “microbats”), 2) was a reasonably coherent dataset (a lot of the rest is in progress), and 3) relates to an interesting question that can be addressed within this one taxon.- Intraspecific variation, other possible correlates, yadda yadda, are standard questions. Obviously we are interested in these issues and will address them when we have more than 12 minutes to cover things.Again, thanks for the nice words — this was Jill’s first big presentation and it is good to know you thought it was excellent (I was confident it would be).

]]> By: Coturnix https://gregladen.com/blog/2008/06/22/genome-size-and-flight-in-bats/#comment-10137 Sun, 22 Jun 2008 11:35:21 +0000 http://scienceblogs.com/gregladen/2008/06/22/genome-size-and-flight-in-bats/#comment-10137 Sometimes a typo is really funny, in a kinda appropriate way. ‘Gnome size’ is generally regarded to be quite small ;-)Still, very cool research. I wish I could have been there.

]]> By: Greg Laden https://gregladen.com/blog/2008/06/22/genome-size-and-flight-in-bats/#comment-10136 Sun, 22 Jun 2008 10:53:26 +0000 http://scienceblogs.com/gregladen/2008/06/22/genome-size-and-flight-in-bats/#comment-10136 The story of flightless bats is here.There are not flightless bats, but there are bats that fly less and those that fly more (or harder, or whatever). This was taken into account in Jillian’s research by the way (a detail I left out).

]]> By: Greg Laden https://gregladen.com/blog/2008/06/22/genome-size-and-flight-in-bats/#comment-10135 Sun, 22 Jun 2008 10:51:25 +0000 http://scienceblogs.com/gregladen/2008/06/22/genome-size-and-flight-in-bats/#comment-10135 I had no idea there were flightless bats. (are you sure you are not thinking if rats?)But yes, that would be good. Flightless birds seem to have larger genomes than flighty birds.

]]> By: PhysioProf https://gregladen.com/blog/2008/06/22/genome-size-and-flight-in-bats/#comment-10134 Sun, 22 Jun 2008 10:40:25 +0000 http://scienceblogs.com/gregladen/2008/06/22/genome-size-and-flight-in-bats/#comment-10134 There are some flightless bats, right? Looking at their genome size would be a good test of the hypothesis.

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