This new coffee-table format kids book, The Animal Awards: Celebrate NATURE with 50 fabulous creatures from the animal kingdom, by Martin Jenkins with illustrations by Tor Freeman*, is a rollicking riot of excellent information about (fifty) animals, with fun illustrations.

The ceremony is about to begin. Roll up, roll up, roll up! The ceremony is about to begin so prepare to be amazed. We’re here to celebrate the crème de la crème of the animal kingdom, and shine a spotlight on the finest achievements and unique qualities of some special individuals. Among others, we will be awarding prizes to the fastest, the oldest, the strongest, the smelliest, the tallest, and the longest. We have some unusual prize winners and some quite scary ones, too. As we run through our short lists you’ll have the privilege of meeting our esteemed guests from dangerous, frogs to organised ants, to spiders that have devised all sorts of strange and admirable ways of catching their food. It’s been a really difficult job choosing winners but we hope you approve and find plenty to marvel at in this beastly line-up of champions. Now put your hands together and clap! The Animal Awards is about to begin…

Tor Freeman is a London-based illustrator. In 2012 she was awarded the Sendak Fellowship. In 2017 she won the Guardian Graphic Short Story Prize. Her books include the Digby Dog and Olive series.

Martin Jenkins is conservation biologist and children’s writer. His jobs have varied greatly: “I’ve been an orchid-sleuth in Germany, a timber detective in Kenya and an investigator of the chameleon trade in Madagascar.” His titles include Emperor’s Egg, winner of the Times Junior Information Book of the Year Award, Can We Save the Tiger, winner of the SLA Award, and Gulliver’s Travels, winner of the Kate Greenaway Medal. He lives in Cambridge and London.

There are three categories of science book authors: Scientists, who write the best ones most of the time, science-steeped (often trained-as-scientists) science writers, who can write some pretty good books, and journalists who delve into the science and sometimes write amazing books, other times write books that are good books but not necessarily good science books. Superlative: The Biology of Extremes is in the higher end of the last category. It is about the scientists, the teams, the work more than the cells and polymers.

Also, LaPlante has another set of credentials: He is deeply, severely, hated by Bill O’Reilly and Glenn Beck. Oh, also, the book is at present deeply on sale.

Animal Beauty: On the Evolution of Biological Aesthetics (The MIT Press) is sort of the opposite.

This is a series of essays by biologist Chrisiane Nusslein-Volhard, engagingly and skillfully illustrated by Suse Grutzmacher (and translated by Jonathan Howard) about the aesthetic sense talked about by Darwin, its evolution, distribution, function, meaning, across animals. The essays take a Tinbergian approach to explore most aspects of how thinks look or are looked at, how paterns, colors, and other features play ar ole in sexual selection, and how the underlying genetic connect to these important surface features, allowing us to understand the phylogeny of this physical-behavioral nexus. This is the scientist talking about the science. The book itself is also a bit unusual, as it is designed to fit comfortably in a pocket or purse. Take it to the dentist office or hair stylist! (When the Pandemic is over.)

Go for a swim with a ghost shark, the slowest-evolving creature known to humankind, which is teaching us new ways to think about immunity. Get to know the axolotl, which has the longest-known genome and may hold the secret to cellular regeneration. Learn about Monorhaphis chuni, the oldest discovered animal, which is providing insights into the connection between our terrestrial and aquatic worlds.

I’m not endorsing every idea or story in this book. One can not write a book about adaptations and have any evolutionary biologist worth their salt not bump on things. But the author does an honest and straightforward job of representing the research, and you’ll learn quite a bit that is new, see new perspectives on things you’ve considered in the past, and you’ll enjoy LaPlante’s writing.

I will probably be recommending this volume as a holiday gift for the Uncle who has everything or the teenager who likes natural history. Teachers of wildlife biology, evolution, or related topics will be able to mine this volume for stories. The use of footnotes is notable.* I recommend Superlative

• … and well done.

And now, a press note from the American Chemical Society:

Water striders’ ability to walk and jump on the surfaces of ponds and lakes has long amazed curious observers — and inspired robot designers who want to mimic the bugs’ talent. Now, scientists have measured for the first time key parameters that allow them to walk on water — by studying their leg shadows. The findings, reported in the ACS journal Langmuir, could contribute to designs for water-skimming robots.

More than 2,000 years ago, Greek scientist Archimedes explained flotation, stating that the upward, floating force on an object in water equals the weight (or downward force) of the water displaced. The principle has informed the building of ships, submarines and other aquatic vehicles. But for tiny water striders, water isn’t displaced. It is expelled by the insect’s hairy legs. The updated Archimedes principle predicts that the weight of the expelled water should equal the floating force. But confirming this prediction experimentally is a challenge. Because water striders are so light, they are almost impossible to weigh using conventional techniques. So Yu Tian and colleagues used an unconventional method — analyzing the shadows cast by the insects’ legs.

The researchers placed a white sheet of paper at the bottom of a lab aquarium housing water striders and installed a light source above the water. The insects’ stick-straight legs cast shadows that were rounded, representing the curvature of the water and the expelled water volume from which the floating force and weight can be calculated, the researchers say. Also, from these measurements, the striders’ slightest shifts in weight and body angle could be detected for the first time.

The authors acknowledge funding from the National Natural Science Foundation of China.

The abstract from the original publication:

Forces acted on legs of water-walking arthropods with weights in dynes are of great interest for entomologist, physicists, and engineers. While their floating mechanism has been recognized, the in vivo leg forces stationary have not yet been simultaneously achieved. In this study, their elegant bright-edged leg shadows are used to make the tiny forces visible and measurable based on the updated Archimedes’ principle. The force was approximately proportional to the shadow area with a resolution from nanonewton to piconewton/pixel. The sum of leg forces agreed well with the body weight measured with an accurate electronic balance, which verified updated Archimedes’ principle at the arthropod level. The slight changes of vertical body weight focus position and the body pitch angle have also been revealed for the first time. The visualization of tiny force by shadow is cost-effective and very sensitive and could be used in many other applications.

Citation: Yelong Zheng, Hongyu Lu, Wei Yin, Dashuai Tao, Lichun Shi, and Yu Tian. 2016. Elegant Shadow Making Tiny Force Visible for Water-Walking Arthropods and Updated Archimedes’ Principle. Langmuir 2016 32 (41), 10522-10528. DOI: 10.1021/acs.langmuir.6b02922

Let’s start off with a kid’s book: Grandmother Fish: a child’s first book of Evolution by Jonathan Tweet.

From the blurb:

Grandmother Fish is the first book to teach evolution to preschoolers. While listening to the story, the child mimics the motions and sounds of our ancestors, such as wiggling like a fish or hooting like an ape. Like magic, evolution becomes fun, accessible, and personal. Grandmother Fish will be a full-size (10 x 8), full-color, 32-page, hardback book full of appealing animal illustrations, perfect for your bookshelf. US publishers consider evolution to be too “hot” a topic for children, but with your help we can make this book happen ourselves.

I reviewed the book here before it first came out. This was a kickstarter project, and it may be currently unavailable commercially, but if you click through to the kickstarter project you can probably get a copy of it.

The most recent book to come across my desk is Don Prothero’s The Story of Life in 25 Fossils: Tales of Intrepid Fossil Hunters and the Wonders of Evolution. I’ve got a review of Prothero’s book in my draft file, so look for that post coming out over the next few days.

One might ask, “how do you choose 25 fossils, among so many choices, to represent evolution?” Well, Don cheated a little by mentioning more than 25 fossils. Also, you really can’t do this. Don selected fossils using several criteria, but one basis for his choice was the availability of rich historical information about a fossil’s discovery, interpretation, and effect on our thinking about evolution. And, he covers all of that.

Don is one of those rare authors who is both an expert scientist and a great writer, with a proven ability to explain things in a way that is not watered down yet totally accessible.

Here’s a selection of the many other books written by Prothero:

• Abominable Science!: Origins of the Yeti, Nessie, and Other Famous Cryptids

• After the Dinosaurs: The Age of Mammals (Life of the Past)

• Catastrophes!: Earthquakes, Tsunamis, Tornadoes, and Other Earth-Shattering Disasters

• Greenhouse of the Dinosaurs: Evolution, Extinction, and the Future of Our Planet

• Rhinoceros Giants: The Paleobiology of Indricotheres (Life of the Past)

• Evolution: What the Fossils Say and Why It Matters by Prothero, Donald R. 1st (first) Edition [Hardcover(2007)]

Evolution: The Whole Story is an astonishing book that needs to be on the bookshelf of anyone interested in evolution. The work is edied by Steve Parker, but authored by nearly a dozen experts in various subfields of fossils and evolution, so it is authoritative and scholarly. At the same time, it is very accessible and enjoyable. This is not a book you read from cover to cover, though you could. Feel free to skip around, and you;ll find yourself looking stuff up all the time.

The book is divided into major sections, and each section has a series of short pieces on this or that fossil, group of fossils, type of life system, method for studying fossils, etc. There is a running sidebar on the bottom of many pages giving “key events” in evolutionary history of the group of life forms under consideration The book is VERY richly illustrated, with detailed keys to the illustrations. Many of the illustrations are broken down into “focal points” that expand significantly on the illustrations’ details. There are countless additional inserts with more information. The book itself is beautiful, intriguingly organized, and it is full of … well, everything. The book is very well indexed and sourced, and has helpful, up to date, phylogenies and chronological graphics.

The Biology Book: From the Origin of Life to Epigenetics, 250 Milestones in the History of Biology (Sterling Milestones) by Michael Gerald and Gloria Gerald is a compendium of biological topics and key moments in the history of biological science, organized in a sort of chronological framework. Major groups (the insects, the amphibians), major ideas (Pliny’s Natural History, Ongogeny and Phylogeny), key physiological and developmental concepts (meiosis, mitosis, many topics in endocrinology), key fossils (like the Coelocanth) and so on are discussed, very nicely illustrated. This is almost like having a gazillian short articles from Natural History Magazine (or similar) all in one book. There are 250 biological “milestones” in all. The charming part of the book is that a milestone can be an evolutionary event, an extinction episode, the emergence of a great idea, or a particular discover. And, as noted, these are ordered across time, as well as one can, from the beginning of life to a selection of the most recent discovery. The book effectively combines history of biology (and related sciences) and the biological history itself.

Life’s Greatest Secret: The Race to Crack the Genetic Code by the well respected scientist and historian Matthew Cobb is a carefully and clearly written history of the discovery of the nature of DNA, covering a lot more than, and since, Watson and Crick. It is extremely well sourced, indexed, and supported, and very readable.

This is the detailed and authoritative work on all the elements that came together to understand the genetic code. Don’t talk about the discovery and understanding of DNA any more until you’ve read this book. From the publisher:

Life’s Greatest Secret mixes remarkable insights, theoretical dead-ends, and ingenious experiments with the swift pace of a thriller. From New York to Paris, Cambridge, Massachusetts, to Cambridge, England, and London to Moscow, the greatest discovery of twentieth-century biology was truly a global feat. Biologist and historian of science Matthew Cobb gives the full and rich account of the cooperation and competition between the eccentric characters—mathematicians, physicists, information theorists, and biologists—who contributed to this revolutionary new science. And, while every new discovery was a leap forward for science, Cobb shows how every new answer inevitably led to new questions that were at least as difficult to answer: just ask anyone who had hoped that the successful completion of the Human Genome Project was going to truly yield the book of life, or that a better understanding of epigenetics or “junk DNA” was going to be the final piece of the puzzle. But the setbacks and unexpected discoveries are what make the science exciting, and it is Matthew Cobb’s telling that makes them worth reading. This is a riveting story of humans exploring what it is that makes us human and how the world works, and it is essential reading for anyone who’d like to explore those questions for themselves.

Extinction and Evolution: What Fossils Reveal About the History of Life is a an updated version of a classic book about evolution and extinction written by one of the scientists who developed our modern way of thinking about evolution and extinction (especially the extinction part).

Eldredge’s groundbreaking work is now accepted as the definitive statement of how life as we know it evolved on Earth. This book chronicles how Eldredge made his discoveries and traces the history of life through the lenses of paleontology, geology, ecology, anthropology, biology, genetics, zoology, mammalogy, herpetology, entomology and botany. While rigorously accurate, the text is accessible, engaging and free of jargon.

Honorable Mentions: Older books that are great and may now be avaialable for much reduced prices.

I really liked The Great Transition: Shifting from Fossil Fuels to Solar and Wind Energy as an expose of a particular time period and major event in geological history. Greenhouse of the Dinosaurs: Evolution, Extinction, and the Future of Our Planet by Prothero is a classic, again, looking at a fairly narrowly defined moment in prehistory. You can get it used for about five bucks.

The Fossil Chronicles: How Two Controversial Discoveries Changed Our View of Human Evolution by Dean Falk is a great book focusing on one key human fossil. This is a personal story as well as a scientific one. Again, available used for a song.

Have you read Your Inner Fish: A Journey into the 3.5-Billion-Year History of the Human Body yet? I’m sure you’ve heard about it. It is still a great read, and you can get it used cheap.

The only book I would recommend that uses the “paleolithic” to advise you on diet and exercise is The Paleolithic Prescription: A Program of Diet and Exercise and a Design for Living.

Did you ever wonder what those bumps and nodules growing on the leaves are? Some trees or bushes have them here and there, others seem to have them on every leaf. Those trees have gall: Well, gall-eeee!! (brought to you by The Little House in the Not-So-Big Woods blog.

My parents retired to Las Vegas several years ago, and my sister who lives out west has a place there as well. So I’ve spent a fair amount of time in the vicinity and a good part of that in the Mohave Desert or other wild habitats within driving distance (There are some good mountains, and Death Vally isn’t really that far away). Anyway, The Watcher of Salt Lake City and the Watching the World Wake Up blog apparently had a similar idea, and here chronicles a number of aspects of a trip to Vegas, as it were: Vegas Boondoggle Part 1: Daggers & Moths This post is loaded with videos and some great pictures of some interesting plants, focusing on Spanish Dagger (Yucca schidegera).

The Watcher also has an interesting post on Peas, Palms Pines and Dorks in Mexico, and a trip to an acid swamp. Also, this item: City Creek Part 3: Rocks, Global Warming, and Pooping in Wells

How, when, and in what form did terrestrial plants evolve? In other words (dare I say it?) What are the “links” from sqishy water algae plant-things to the first land plants, to the first land vascular plants, and eventually to the first plants with plant naughty bits (seeds and pollen)? Suite101.com: Sequence of Terrestrial Plant Evolution.

Woodwardia fimbriata is the Giant Chain Fern, and it truly is giant. “Apparently its fronds have been known to reach 8 feet in length (!). This species is native to the west coast and up into Canada…” and you can read all about it and see some amazing photographs of it at the No seeds, no fruits, no flowers: no problem blog, which focuses on ferns: Woodwardia fimbriata

Beetle’s in the Bush’s Friday Flower is the Red Buckeye:

Red buckeye is native to the southeastern U.S., just reaching Missouri in the southeastern Ozarks (though cultivated further north). This makes it less well-known than the more widely distributed Ohio buckeye…

Read about the Red Buckey here!

Grrrl Scientist has a great shot of Purppura Päivänkakkaraa here, and along with it an interesting linguistic side story. Grrl also has this post with a stunning closeup of a pink ranunculus.

What is the actual range of Claytonia caroliniana? JSK of Anybody seen my focus? blog has evidence to suggest it is a little farther south than previously suspected. Have a look at Carolina Springbeauty (Claytonia caroliniana)? for detailed descriptions and links to background resources. Let’s see if the blogosphere can come up to the plate and answer this question.

I grew up in Albany, NY, which was famous for it’s Tulip Festival and the diversity of trees in its main park (Washington Park). The mayor in those days liked trees, so there were trees. And naturally, given the whole tulip thing, many of those trees were “tulip trees.” On which, by the way, tulips do not grow. Anywqay, A Digital Botanic Gardin blog has a post with amazing photos: Tulip tree, Liriodendron tulipifera

Check this out:

At night, when the ram was roasted, a major carousing began. One of the men in the caravan, who usually kept somewhat apart from the rest of the members, became especially violent. He decided to untie the hobbles of the mules and allow them to run free. Attempts to persuade him to stop were to no avail. A scuffle began, which continued into the night. The uproar threatened to disrupt the entire caravan.

What happened next? Well, they settled down for some coffee, according to vaviblog: Give ’em wild coffee, that’ll sober ’em up

The one phrase parents live in dread of hearing from their child, but eventually always do, is: “Daddy, where do mangoes come from?” For help in answering this question, visit Agricultural Biodiversity Weblog blog and read The birthplace of the Dashehari mango. I was surprised. What is even more surprising, from the same blog, is this: The Three-hundred-variety mango of Malihabad.

Foothills Fancies blog has some great photographs of spring: The Green Scene, and a Spring Surprise.

My own contribution to this month’s summary of plant blogging is a set of photos of various plants and plant parts mainly from southern and East Africa (with a few animals thrown in) accumulated under the archive category “Random Photograph“.

As you may have guessed, you have just finished reading the 28th edition of the Berry Go Round web carnival. If you have an interest in nature blogging, science blogging, plants, or anything related, please support blogging in these areas by actually clicking through to the posts linked to above. All of them if you can. If not, please at least visit a selection of them.

In fact, you can think of this as a sort of r-strategy vs. K-strategy decision. Click on each link and glance at each page (r-srategy). Or, click on a hand full of them, read the posts carefully and leave a thoughtful comment there. Or a mixed strategy: Click through to half of them and leave a short comment like “great post” or “sucky post” or whatever.

The reason I’m asking you to pay special attention to the carnival is that we (the people who usually write this carnival and/or contribute to it) have been discussing the value of this sort of enterprise.

In my opinion, carnivals are useful but underused. Teachers should be telling their students about appropriate carnivals when asked general questions about some topic or another. If you read blogs and have a friend or relative of like interests who does not, sending a link for a recent carnival to that person is a great way to introduce her or him to the part of the blogsphere of interest.

And, if you are engaged in social networking in any way (Facebook, Twitter, Whatever) please send this carnival out on that network, and at least a selection of the blogs linked herein.

And, of course, if you are listed in this carnival, please put up a blog post pointing your readers to it, and share the carnival on Facebook Twitter, iWhatever.

The home page of the Berry Go Round web carnival is here.

The most recent edition prior to this one was at A Neotropical Savanna.

The next edition (late June, 2010) of the carnival will be held at Agricultural Biodiversity Weblog.

You may now submit your favorite plant post to a Berry Go Round carnival by sending the post’s URL directly to berrygoround@gmail.com. Or, you may add a link to the diigo Berry Go Round group. Of course, you may also continue using the automatic Blog Carnival submission form.

Your submissions are welcome, no matter how you get it to us. If you would like to host a BGR carnival, let us know at the BGR email address: berrygoround@gmail.com.

How has Darwin’s theory of Natural Selection fared over the last 150 years, and what needs to be done to bring this theoretical approach to bear as we increasingly examine complex systems, including human society?

Pagel discusses both the controversial nature of and the sheer simplicity of Darwin’s Natural Selection, very briefly summarizes the range of applications that has been made of it, then focuses on the core questions “which cut across the hundreds of specific topics of evolutionary investigation.” Pagel will not conclude, as was recently suggested by the New York Times, that Darwin needs to die (or Darwinism at least) for us to get on with our work in applying evolutionary theory. Quite the contrary, in fact.

The core areas Pagel addresses are: Descent with Modification, Variation, Speciation and Adaptation. These concepts are interwoven with questions about the nature of tinkering and perfection and Gouldian contingency. Since Pagel’s Insight is itself a well adapted summary of a huge set of questions, it would be absurd for me to summarize it for you here. Just get it and read it. But I will make a few comments on selected items.

Pagel, because he just can’t stop himself from doing this sort of thing, compiled and analyzed a huge data set. This consisted of papers “that include the term ‘natural selection’ in their title, abstract or keywords, recorded separately for subject areas as identified by the ISI Web of Knowledge. Data are derived from a search on ‘natural selection’ in November 2008, yielding 14,232 hits over all years.”

From this he produces a graph that shows several interesting things. For instance, there is a huge range of subject areas in which Natural Selection appears non-trivially. Genetics and Heritability and Evolutionary biology unsurprisingly top the list. Psychology, Nutrition, and Pathology are modestly represented. Meteorology sports several hundred papers with the term. The lowest number is found in Chemistry.

Alarming and disturbing, not to mention annoying, is the fact that the lower-ranked subject areas include most of the medical subjects. This underscores my long time assertion that medical research pays an insufficient level of attention to Evolutionary Theory.

Pagel is a wanton adaptationist. In a paper some years ago, he articulated a position on adaptation that I have slightly modified and named after him, which I call Pagel’s Wager. Pagel’s Wager is this: If you observe a heritable system in nature, bet it is an adaptation. You’ll usually win the bet. More importantly, the cost of betting against a heritable system being an adaptation is very high. You miss getting to work on (or at least think about) something interesting.

In the paper under consideration, Pagel summarizes his current thinking on this:

Which view is correct? Not everything is an adaptation: human blood just happens to be red, and human chins might be relics of the way the human jaw develops. But the weight of evidence suggests that it is probably wise not to bet against natural selection. The struggle for existence means that traits have to pay their way. The traits observed now probably improve an animal’s chances of surviving and propagating, and those traits that do not will tend to be lost. For example, fish that have adapted to life in dark underwater caves lose the ability to see.

I have also defined another biological guideline called Pagel’s Rule. He does not address this concept in the Nature Insight piece, but I’m inclined to give it to you anyway:

“In considering two or more adaptationist explanations for a given trait, where all else is equal, determine which is the most insidious or evil. That is likely to be the correct explanation.”

Regarding contingency, Pagel makes an interesting comment (referring to a paper in the same issue of Nature). As you will already be aware, the “contingency” concept, championed by Stephen Jay Gould, is that if you play the ‘tape of evolution’ again and again, you will get quite different results each time. Pagel mentions what might be Gould’s favorite example of this phenomenon: If the whopping big object that hit the earth about 65 million years ago missed, the evolution of mammals would have been a very different story, and it is likely that not even Stephen Jay Gould himself would have evolved. (Well, SJG did not put it exactly that way ….). Pagel reviews some of the evidence testing this idea and concludes that “Contingency does not seem to be the pervasive force that Gould suspected.” And he’s got a point.

Pagel crams a LOT more into this small paper, including commentary on human evolution and human language, co-evolution, and speciation. I’ll leave you with this bit on Darwin and diversification:

The size and details of monophyletic groups illustrate an important feature of life. Rather than designing each species from scratch, as an engineer might, evolution is conservative, using the same designs over and over. Darwin recognized, as the comparative anatomist Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire had before, that the hands of moles, horses, porpoises and bats all used the same bones.

Please find the paper, read it, and enjoy it. Link and references below.

Since I’m sitting at a computer that automatically puts me through to Nature, I am not absolutely certain, but I think you can access the article here.

Mark Pagel (2009). Natural selection 150 years on Nature, 457 (7231), 808-811 DOI: 10.1038/nature07889

reposted

In the vicinity of Rio Tercero…

Hearing … of the remains of one of the old giants, which a man told me he had seen on the banks of the Parana, I procured a canoe, and proceeded to the place. Two groups of immense bones projected in bold relief from the perpendicular cliff [but] I could only bring away small fragments of one of the great molar-teeth … sufficient to show that the remains belonged to a species of Mastodon. The men who took me in the canoe, said they had long known of them, and had often wondered how they had got there: the necessity of a theory being felt, they came to the conclusion, that … the mastodon formerly was a burrowing animal!

In remote St. Fe …

A tooth which I discovered … interested me much, for I at once perceived that it had belonged to a horse. Feeling much surprise at this, I carefully examined its geological position, and was compelled to come to the conclusion, that a horse, which cannot … be distinguished from the existing species, lived as a contemporary with the various great monsters that formerly inhabited South America. Mr. Owen and myself, at the College of Surgeons, compared this tooth with a fragment of another, probably belonging to the Toxodon, which was embedded at the distance only of a few yards in the same earthy mass. No sensible difference in their state of decay could be perceived; they were both tender, and partially stained red. … Certainly it is a marvellous event in the history of animals, that a native kind should have disappeared to be succeeded in after ages by the countless herds introduced with the Spanish colonist! But our surprise should be modified when it is already known, that the remains of the Mastodon angustidens (the tooth formerly alluded to as embedded near that of the horse, probably belonged to this species) have been found both in South America, and in the southern parts of Europe.

Weighty considerations of the distribution of extinct and extant fauna lead Darwin to the neighborhood of modern geological concepts.

Very few species of living quadrupeds, which are altogether terrestrial in their habits, are common to the two continents, and these few are chiefly confined to the extreme frozen regions of the north. The separation, therefore, of the Asiatic and American zoological provinces appears formerly to have been less perfect than at present. The remains of the elephant and of the ox have been found on the banks of the Anadir (long. 175° E.), on the extreme part of Siberia, nearest the American coast: and the former remains, according to Chamisso, are common in the peninsula of Kamtschatka. On the opposite shores, likewise, of the narrow strait which divides these two great continents, we know, from the discoveries of Kotzebue and Beechey, that the remains of both animals occur abundantly: and as Dr. Buckland has shown they are associated with the bones of the horse, the teeth of which animal in Europe, according to Cuvier, accompany by thousands the remains of the pachydermata of the later periods. With these facts, we may safely look at this quarter, as the line of communication (now interrupted by the steady progress of geological change) by which the elephant, the ox, and the horse, entered America, and peopled its wide extent.

Now, here we have Darwin on the verge of understanding the rise of the Panama Land bridge (or something like that) based on the biogeography. The above passage, the following passage, and other material is very frustrating. If Darwin was not such a geological gradualist he could have advanced geology to the 1950s with a single fell swoop of reasoning!!!!

The occurrence of the fossil horse and of Mastodon angustidens in South America, is a much more remarkable circumstance than that of the animals mentioned above in the northern half of the continent; for if we divide America, not by the Isthmus of Panama, but by the southern part of Mexico, .. where the great table-land presents an obstacle to the migration of species, … we shall then have two zoological provinces strongly contrasted with each other. Some few species alone have passed the barrier, and may be considered as wanderers, such as the puma, opossum, kinkajou, and peccari. The mammalogy of South America is characterized by possessing several species of the genera of llama, …, tapir, peccari, opossum, anteater, sloth, and armadillo. If North America had possessed species of these genera proper to it, the distinction of the two provinces could not have been drawn; but the presence of a few wanderers scarcely affects the case. North America, on the other hand, is characterized by its numerous rodents, and by four genera of solid horned ruminants, of which section the southern half does not possess a single species.

Just so you know, South and North America were separated, and had largely independent mammalian evolution (and migration), until very recently, about five million years ago, when the isthmus of Panama was raised.

Darwin is seeing the very time-deep echo of this event, masked by subsequent migration of North American mammals in to South America, and clouded by the more pressing (to him) question of Old World and New World relationships.

It is interesting that the monkey’s (appearing in both the old world and new world tropics) don’t freak him out. They freak me out.

Visit The Beagle Project Blog

Struthio Rhea

I will now give an account of … the Struthio Rhea, or South American ostrich. This bird is well known to abound over the plains of Northern Patagonia, and the united provinces of La Plata. It has not crossed the Cordillera; but I have seen it within the first range of mountains on the Uspallata plain…. The ordinary habits of the ostrich are familiar to every one. They feed on vegetable matter; such as roots and grass; but at Bahia Blanca, I have repeatedly seen three or four come down at low water to the extensive mud-banks which are then dry, for the sake, as the Gauchos say, of catching small fish. Although the ostrich in its habits is so shy, wary, and solitary, and although so fleet in its pace, it falls a prey, without much difficulty, to the Indian or Gaucho armed with the bolas. When several horsemen appear in a semicircle, it becomes confounded, and does not know which way to escape. They generally prefer running against the wind; yet at the first start they expand their wings, and like a vessel make all sail. On one fine hot day I saw several ostriches enter a bed of tall rushes, where they squatted concealed, till quite closely approached. It is not generally known that ostriches readily take to the water. Mr. King informs me that at the Bay of San Blas, and at Port Valdes in Patagonia, he saw these birds swimming several times from island to island. …When swimming, very little of their bodies appear above water, and their necks are extended a little forward: their progress is slow. On two occasions, I saw some ostriches swimming across the Santa

The following passage is thought by some Darwin scholars to reflect one of Darwin’s most significant “aha” moments, leading to his understanding of evolutionary processes. The bird described here is known as the Avestruz Petise, and was named by the ornithologist Gould as Rhea darwinii. However,since the bird was earlier named (based on reports, not specimens) Pterocnemia pennata (the Lesser rhea), Darwin’s name does not survive today in the annals of taxonomy.

Read the passage then I’ll note its presumed significance.

…I repeatedly heard the Gauchos talking of a very rare bird which they called Avestruz Petise. They described it as being less than the common ostrich (which is there abundant), but with a very close general resemblance. … The few inhabitants who had seen both kinds, affirmed they could distinguish them apart from a long distance. … This species occurs most rarely on the plains bordering the Rio Negro; but about a degree and a half further south they are tolerably abundant. …They are said to prefer the plains near the sea. When at Port Desire, in Patagonia (lat. 48°), Mr. Martens shot an ostrich; and I looked at it, forgetting at the moment, in the most unaccountable manner, the whole subject of the Petises, and thought it was a two-third grown one of the common sort. The bird was cooked and eaten before my memory returned. Fortunately the head, neck, legs, wings, many of the larger feathers, and a large part of the skin, had been preserved. From these a very nearly perfect specimen has been put together, and is now exhibited in the museum of the Zoological Society. Mr. Gould, who in describing this new species did me the honour of calling it after my name, states, that besides the smaller size and different colour of the plumage, the beak is of considerably less proportional dimensions than in the common Rhea …

Eventually, Darwin made note of the fact that over time, distinct but similar species seemed to differ by grades (such as in size) in the fossil record, as and the same pattern could be seen across geographical space. In his notebooks, he was to eventually note that the variation across space and time seemed to be two ways of looking at the same pattern of change. He made the link between biographical variation in the Rhea and the finches on the Galapagos and similar variation seen in the fossil fauna such as discussed here, along the South American Atlantic coast.

In a note book dated to “1836 and after” (late in the voyage), Darwin wrote a passage that has been the focus of a great deal of attention. In it, he demonstrates his waffling about the nature of species. He frames his introspection in terms of “creation” and at the same time struggles with the evidence from biogeography, which suggests that closely related species would have a common ancestor. He also addresses extinction. Darwin is essentially asking “… where are the transitional forms?”

Remember, this is his notebook writing … it is very much stream of consciousness, conflicting, and hard to understand. I’ll provide you with the entire relevant passage unedited except for the removal of some geologizing. It is painful and wonderful at the same time:

Speculate on neutral ground for 2 Ostriches: bigger one encroaches on smaller;–change not progressive; produced at one blow, if one species altered. …

Should urge that extinct Llama owed its death not to change of circumstances; reversed argument, knowing it to be a desert. Tempted to believe animals created for definite time:–not extinguished by change of circumstances.

The same kind of relation that common ostrich bears to Petisse–[S. Darwinii] and difft. kinds of extinct Guanaco to recent. In former case position, in latter time (or changes consequent on lapse), being the relation, as in first cases distinct species inosculate [To pass into; to join or unite so as to become continuous; to blend] so must we believe ancient ones [did] not gradual change or degeneration from circumstances, if one species does change into another it must be per saltum–or species may perish. This representation of species important, each its own limit and represented. Chiloe creeper; Fournarius, Callandria. Inosculation alone shows not gradation.

an animal in two (gemmiparous by nature or by accident) we see an individual divided either at one moment or through lapse of ages. Therefore we are not so much surprised at seeing Zoophite producing distinct animals, still partly united, & egg which becomes quite separate. Considering all individuals of all species as each one individual divided by different methods, associated life only adds one other method where the division is not perfect.

Dogs, Cats, Horses, Cattle, Goat, Asses, have all run wild and bred, no doubt with perfect success. Showing how creation does not bear upon solely adaptation of animals. Extinction in same manner may not depend. There is no more wonder in extinction of species than of individual.

When we see Avestruz [the Petisse or smaller Ostrich, Struthio Darwinii] two species certainly different, not insensible change; yet one is urged to look to common parent? Why should two of the most closely allied species occur in same country? In botany instances diametrically opposite have been instanced–

Of this passage, Nora Barlow (in her publication on these notebooks) wrote, in 1945:

We can see the mill at work, grinding out hypotheses. … In biological fields the throes of question and doubt, of comparison of masses of facts, of discardings and reviewing, were still to continue for 23 years before the Theory of Evolution as we know it, found expression.

Well said, Nora.

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Bahia Blanca is a port at the northern end of Patagonia. Chapter V of The Voyage begins:

THE Beagle arrived on the 24th of August, and a week afterwards sailed for the Plata. With Captain Fitzroy’s consent I was left behind, to travel by land to Buenos Ayres.

I tried Googling that … using “get directions.” Google maps was unable to compute a route. In fact, Google Maps has no roads whatsoever in Argentina. But, I was able to make a map showing the two locations, to give you an idea of what this must have been like. Darwin walked (well, there were horses) between these two points:

And along the way, he found some fossils. Here are brief excerpts describing some of his finds. As you read through this (it’s long, but I’ve tried to edit it down as much as possible) keep in mind the following things: Evidence for evolution, climate change, large scale global synthesis, connections between observations and theory. It is all here. This is Darwin coming to an understanding of the Big Picture of Evolution.

At Punta Alta, a low cliff, about twenty feet high, exposes a mass of [sediment] containing numerous recent shells. We may believe a similar accumulation would now take place … where tides and waves were opposed. In the gravel a considerable number of bones were embedded. … the following list may give some idea of their nature: 1st, a tolerably perfect head of a megatherium, and a fragment and teeth of two others; 2d, an animal of the order Edentata, as large as a pony, and with great scratching claws; 3d and 4th, two great Edentata related to the megatherium, and both fully as large as an ox or horse; 5th, another equally large animal, closely allied or perhaps identical with the Toxodon …, which had very flat grinding teeth, somewhat resembling those of a rodent; 6th, a large piece of the tesselated covering like that of the armadillo, but of gigantic size; 7th, a tusk which in its prismatic form, and in the disposition of the enamel, closely resembles that of the African boar; it is probable that it belonged to the same animal with the singular flat grinders. Lastly, a tooth in the same state of decay with the others: … but the part that is perfect, resembles in every respect the tooth of the common horse.* … the space in which they were collected could not have exceeded one hundred and fifty yards square. It is a remarkable circumstance that so many different species should be found together; and it proves how numerous in kind the ancient inhabitants of this country must have been.

… in another cliff of red earth, I found several fragments of bones. Among them were the teeth of a rodent, much narrower, but even larger than those of the Hydrochærus capybara; the animal which has been mentioned as exceeding in dimensions every existing member of its order. There was also part of the head of a Ctenomys; the species being different from the Tucutuco, but with a close general resemblance.

The remains … were associated … with shells of existing species. … similar to the species now living in the same bay: it is also very remarkable, that not only the species, but the proportional numbers of each kind, are nearly the same [as the modern fauna] … If I had not collected living specimens from the same bay, some of the fossils would have been thought extinct … We may feel certain that the bones have not been washed out of an older formation, and embedded in a more recent one, because the remains of one of the Edentata were lying in their proper relative position (and partly so in a second case) …

…

From the shells being littoral species … we may feel absolutely certain that the remains were embedded in a shallow sea, not far from the coast. From the position of the skeleton being undisturbed, and likewise from the fact that full-grown serpulæ were attached to some of the bones, we know that the mass could not have been accumulated on the beach itself. …

From the general structure of the coast of this part of South America, we are compelled to believe, that the changes of [elevation] have … of late … been in one direction, and … very gradual. If, then, we look back to the period when these quadrupeds lived, the land probably stood at a level, less elevated only by a few fathoms than at present. Therefore, its general configuration since that epoch cannot have been greatly modified; …

The surrounding country, as may have been gathered from this journal, is of a very desert character. … Here, then, is an apparent difficulty: we have the strongest evidence that there has occurred no great physical change to modify the features of the country, yet in former days, numerous large animals were supported on the plains now covered by a thin and scanty vegetation.

That large animals require a luxuriant vegetation, has been a general assumption, which has passed from one work to another. I do not hesitate, however, to say that it is completely false; and that it has vitiated the reasoning of geologists, on some points of great interest in the ancient history of the world. The prejudice has probably been derived from India, and the Indian islands, where troops of elephants, noble forests, and impenetrable jungles, are associated together in every account. If, on the other hand, we refer to any work of travels through the southern parts of Africa, we shall find allusions in almost every page either to the desert character of the country, or to the numbers of large animals inhabiting it. The same thing is rendered evident by the many sketches which have been published of various parts of the interior. When the Beagle was at Cape Town, I rode a few leagues into the country, which at least was sufficient to render that which I had read more fully intelligible.