Monthly Archives: May 2017

May 18, 2017

By analyzing both the genes that control color detecting photoreceptors and the structural components of the eye itself, University of California, Irvine evolutionary biologists have discovered male and female butterflies of one particular species have the unique ability to see the world differently from each another because of sex-related evolutionary traits.

The study, which appears in the journal Molecular Biology and Evolution, offers new insights into these selective environmental pressures that guide butterfly eye evolution.

Led by Adriana D. Briscoe, UCI professor of ecology & evolutionary biology at the Ayala School of Biological Sciences, researchers discovered that the butterfly species Heliconius erato possesses a distinct set of visual photoreceptors based on species sex. Females of the species contain two types of the ultraviolet opsin gene (UVRh1 and UVRh2), while males lack UVRh1.

The findings were surprising to the group, as no other animal has been found to have a sex-linked difference in the make-up of its eye that depends on the suppression of an opsin gene. The researchers also noted that the violet receptors controlled by the expression of the ultraviolet opsin genes may help facilitate species recognition between Heliconius erato and other butterflies.

"We are only now beginning to appreciate that male and female Heliconius see the world through different eyes," said Briscoe. "Pollinator preference can have a huge impact on the evolution of flower coloration, just by virtue of which flower gets visited. Flowers may change their colors to match what butterflies can see; and sex differences add another layer to the story of these interactions."

Briscoe and her colleagues were astonished by the sex differences found in the Heliconius erato species; however, it remains to be determined why such differences would evolve in the first place. Their findings shed light on a fascinating way that environmental pressure can give rise to the origins of a new visual receptor.

"We think this study will inspire visual ecologists to look more closely at the behavior of each sex - how they see each other, how they see flowers and how they find places to lay their eggs," she said. We are testing this hypothesis by giving male and female Heliconius butterflies color vision tests in the lab."

Briscoe and study co-leader, UCI post-doctoral scholar Kyle McCulloch, added "Finding this level of color receptor diversity in closely related butterflies supports other studies showing that eye evolution is not always a slow and conservative process. As a field, we are still not sure why some lineages diversify and use many more color receptors than others, but with this study, we can frame new hypotheses to answer these questions. In particular it will be exciting to learn what mechanisms during development lead to these sex and species differences in the eye, and what selection pressures - mate choice, foraging, oviposition - lead to these differences in Heliconius."

Explore further: 'Taste sensor' genes in female butterflies vital to species' survival

More information: Kyle J. McCulloch et al, Sexual Dimorphism and Retinal Mosaic Diversification Following the Evolution of a Violet Receptor in Butterflies, Molecular Biology and Evolution (2017). DOI: 10.1093/molbev/msx163

Giving the phrase "Mother knows best" a whole new meaning, UC Irvine researchers have identified unique genes in female butterflies that enable them to select the best host plant for their larvae and avoid deadly ones.

(PhysOrg.com) -- Butterfly experts have suspected for more than 150 years that vision plays a key role in explaining wing color diversity. Now, for the first time, research led by UC Irvine biologists proves this theory true ...

The preference of Heliconius butterflies for certain leaf shapes is innate, but can be reversed through learning. These results support a decades-old theory for explaining the evolution of the exceptional diversity of leaf ...

The genes that make a fruit fly's eyes red also produce red wing patterns in the Heliconius butterfly found in South and Central America, finds a new study by a UC Irvine entomologist.

Professor Richard ffrench-Constant of the University of Exeter in Cornwall has worked with an international team of experts to decode the patterns on butterflies wings.

Red may mean STOP or I LOVE YOU! A red splash on a toxic butterfly's wing screams DON'T EAT ME! In nature, one toxic butterfly species may mimic the wing pattern of another toxic species in the area. By using the same signal, ...

A new Oxford University collaboration revealing the world's prime insect predation hotspots, achieved its landmark findings using an unusual aid: plasticine 'dummy caterpillars.'

After decades of research aiming to understand how DNA is organized in human cells, scientists at the Gladstone Institutes have shed new light on this mysterious field by discovering how a key protein helps control gene organization.

Breeding in plants and animals typically involves straightforward addition. As beneficial new traits are discoveredlike resistance to drought or larger fruitsthey are added to existing prized varieties, delivered via ...

(Phys.org)A pair of researchers from Stanford University has studied the energy used by a type of small parrot as it hops from branch to branch during foraging. As they note in their paper uploaded to the open access site ...

Researchers have successfully developed a novel method that allows for increased disease resistance in rice without decreasing yield. A team at Duke University, working in collaboration with scientists at Huazhong Agricultural ...

University of Chicago psychology professor Leslie Kay and her research group set out to resolve a 15-year-old scientific dispute about how rats process odors. What they found not only settles that argument, it suggests an ...

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Scientists find evolution in butterfly eye dependent on sex - Phys.Org

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Orangutans Suckle for Up to Eight Years Science Daily Biomarkers in the teeth of wild orangutans indicate nursing patterns related to food fluctuations in their habitats, which can help guide understanding of breast-feeding evolution in humans, according to a study published today in Science Advances ... Cyclical nursing patterns in wild orangutans | Science AdvancesScience Advances all 14 news articles »

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Orangutans Suckle for Up to Eight Years - Science Daily

We sure have come a long way in the gig economy. We are maturing, pivoting and enabling workers and businesses all over the world to seamlessly tap into the new digital economy. Life is good.

I remember reading back in 2011 about one of the initial gig platforms, TaskRabbit, and how one of their taskers was earning supplemental income by delivering cupcakes. It was a cute story. The gig economy started originally as a true B2C phenomenon. The "C"is obviously for cupcakes!

But that was the old gig economy. Although there is still a strong vertical for consumers, the gig economy has become more professional, streamlinedand innovative.

Related: The Affiliate Marketing Model: A Blueprint for Success in the Gig Economy

The gig economy resulted from the combination of two important factors: the boom in digital platforms and the leveraging ofunderutilizedassets. The gig economy began as a peer-to-peer phenomenon, with consumers being able to access the assets of other consumers directly through digital platforms. Think Uber, Airbnb, and yes, cupcake deliveries on TaskRabbit.

Consumers wanted more choices, better access to goods and servicesand flexible work options. And oh boy, did they get it! Graphic designers can now easily pick up side jobs on Upwork. People with a vehicle can drive for Uber. Those with a spare room can rent it on Airbnb, and free time can be used to conduct tasks through WeGoLook.

The peer-to-peer gig economy is mainstream and is predicted to grow to a $300 billion industry by 2025. That's not bad growth. But this is only the beginning of the gig economy story. Get ready for Act 2, where businesses are taking notice and tapping into this new industry.

I love the quote by entrepreneur Paul Hawken,who in 2013 noted that the B2B gig economy would be "bigger than the internet." Now,Hawken may have been little ahead of the times, but we are starting to witness his prediction come true in 2017.

The gig economy's shift from B2C to B2B is in its early stages with Airbnb targeting the business travel marketand Uber entering the commercial transportation scene. Newcomers like DashHaul, uShipandCargomatic, businesses thatconnect enterprises with each other to leverage unused space in both shipment and warehousing, are on the rise.

The B2B gig economy began with business travel, naturally found a place in the logistics industryand is now moving toward one of its most promising sectors -- staffing.

Related: Gig Economy Platforms Are Creating A New Class of Entrepreneurs

They key difference here between the cupcake and business gig economy is that enterprise solutions provided by gig platforms are integrating seamlessly into business cycles and supply chains. How are they doing this? Through a network of on-demand workers connected through a powerful mobile application. More and more businesses are tapping into the on-demand workforcetofulfillstaffing needs. Some studies estimate 40 percentof the U.S. workforce will be classified as independent, or gig, workers by 2020.

Let's consider WeGoLook as a case study. The company has more than30,000 gig workers globally who are ready to perform professional tasks such as asset verifications, document delivery, notary services, data capturing and much more.

Enterprise clients areincreasinglyleveraging our Looker -- what we call a gig worker -- network, instead of their own workforce. Traditional staffing methods are wising up to the fact that on-demand workers can be dispatched at a moment's notice to perform a variety of professional tasks. Why use an expensive full-time employee who can use their time for other important duties? This is a rhetorical question all of our clients are asking themselves.

Freelancing and contracting is by no means new, but the integration of this type of workforce with innovative digital technology and mobile applications is fairly new.

For instance, WeGoLook works with gig workers who are licensed drone operators who can perform a variety of tasks such as damage assessments, professional photos for realty companiesand property inspections.

WeGoLook has also partnered with many enterprise insurance clients to give them access to our network of gig workers. Instead of sending an expensive fieldadjuster, our app will notify Lookers that are within the job radius. They will go capture that data immediately, submit it, and the insurance carrier has that report within an hour.

You can see why enterprises are increasingly electing to plug into the gig economy. The B2B gig economy allows businesses to easily extend their service offerings outside of their normal footprint.

Related: 6 Millennials Who Quit Their Day Jobs Share How They Did It

As you can see, the gig economy has matured considerably. The B2B gig economy has come a long way from the early days of peer-to-peer sharing of goods and services.

Seasoned gig companies like WeGoLook have embraced the shift to B2B, withoutcompromisingthe B2C services that got us into business in the first place. B2B solutions have allowed WeGoLook to give more employment options to our Lookers, all the while helpingenterprises join the digital economy.

Thegrowing enterprise demand for integrated on-demand workforces and gig economy models is shaping the future gig economy. This is the gig economy 2.0.

Excerpt from:

The Evolution of the Gig Economy: Cupcakes to Claims Inspections - Entrepreneur

Trump will be impeached. Given certain observable facts about the known cosmos, the inevitability of Donald Trumpbeing forced out of office grows every day.

How can I be so sure of thisso sure that I have given this feature a Malcolm Gladwell-style title? The New Yorker just had a long piece by Evan Osnos about the possibility of impeachment. That article is titled How Trump Could Get Fired. (Italics mine) If the New Yorker cannot guarantee Trumps political demise, what tells me it will happen?

It doesnt take an act of God. Nor does it require the Democrats to become good at their jobs, or for the GOP to become moral, or any other impossibility. It doesnt demand the karma police or the age of heroes reborn or your cousin writing a dozen protest songs with his new girlfriend. All that is required for impeachment is for laws of the universe to continue, and for Trump to stay Trump.

The Drunkards Walk tells me everything I need to know about the eventuality of Trump leaving office.

THE DRUNKARDS WALK

By Drunkards Walk, I do not mean the actual walk we have all done at some point. The Drunkards Walk is a concept taken from biology. The scientist Stephen Jay Gould thought there was no directionality in evolution, no progress. He believed evolution was a series of unplanned genetic changes. But there does seem to be progress: complex animals come from simpler ones. How it possible for two-legged apes with therapists to emerge from a lot of random mutations? As an explanation, Gould proposed the Drunkards Walk model of evolution.

In the example of the Drunkards Walk, you have to imagine an intoxicated person, walking down a sidewalk. To his back is the bar, which he has just been kicked out of. He cant go back in. He has to walk forward. The intoxicated person is blotto and has no idea where he is going, or whats happening. He has no agenda, just as a cell has no agenda.

There is a wall to his left, and a street to his right. The Drunkards Walk suggests he will eventually land in the street, even without meaning to, because he cannot go left beyond the wall, but he can eventually go into the street. After enough random stumbles, the numbers suggest he will topple into the gutter.

The message of the Drunkards Walk is that we can arrive at a destination, without really meaning to.

In biology, Gould used the Drunkards Walk to help explain evolution. Like the intoxicated person, cells dont know what theyre doing. They dont plan on getting more elaborate. But there is a wall in evolution, the complexity of a cell. Thats the limit: cells are not going to simply disassemble, since cells are basically machines for making copies of themselves. Theres nowhere to go, except for becoming more complicated. Eventually, given enough time and enough randomness, a cell will fall in the streetgrow complex. The cell didnt mean to end up in the street; it didnt mean to do anything. It doesnt have a brain, after all. Set enough boundaries, and a direction can emerge without intention.

Although Goulds example was designed to describe the unconscious actions of cells, Goulds example can also be applied to careless public figures.

In politics, despite his famous aversion to alcohol, Trump is the very intoxicated man.

He has no plan. No idea where he is going. But he will still end up in the street, face down in the gutter.

WHAT DO WE KNOW ABOUT TRUMP?

All of the following are true:

A) Trump is President. B) Trump will never quit. C) With poor impulse control, a complaisant Congress, and a team of yes-men, Trump has no checks to stop him from doing goofy stuff.

If it isnt Comey or the Russians, it will be the next thing. Or the next thing after that. Trump will keep having penny-ante dumb reactions until its too much. Not because he is a Machiavellian monster but because hes a barely-aware toddler who lives in a narcissistic envelope. He will threaten the Republican agenda to the point where even the leaders of Congress cannot abide it.

We normally think of impeachment as the countermeasure against scheming, power-hungry Presidencies. But for the purposes of my prediction, it doesnt matter if Trump is deliberately undermining the Constitution or colluding with Putin. We get the same results whether he has an agenda or not. Personally, I dont think Trump plans anything. I think he is an old playboy with appetites and poor impulse control. In a metaphoric sense, he is permanently drunk.

Gould wrote that the simplest possible organism can only become more complex or stay the same. Let us consider his example as it applies to Trump.

The intoxicated person leaving the bar cant go back in the bar. A legally-sworn in politician cant un-President himself. Trump cant go back in the barthat is, be a private citizen and a President at the same time. The President cannot leave the spotlight. He cannot fail to discharge the duties of the office; he must keep appearing in public and saying many words and exercising many powers.

The intoxicated person cannot go left, because he will run into the wall. Trump is a prideful man who has become President. He will not quit.

The intoxicated person keeps taking random steps, because at this precise moment, he cannot sober up. Trump is unlikely to change, or submit to someone else trying to change him. God help me, but I am about to quote Ross Douthat from the Times. Douthat says about Trumps child-like incomprehension:

But ultimately I do not believe that our president sufficiently understands the nature of the office that he holds, the nature of the legal constraints that are supposed to bind him, perhaps even the nature of normal human interactions, to be guilty of obstruction of justice in the Nixonian or even Clintonian sense of the phrase. I do not believe he is really capable of the behind-the-scenes conspiring that the darker Russia theories envision. And it is hard to betray an oath of office whose obligations you evince no sign of really understanding or respecting. ... leaving a man this witless and unmastered in an office with these powers and responsibilities is an act of gross negligence.

Trump will not change. He will stay politically intoxicated and oblivious, stumbling randomly, governing on impulse, screaming at cable news.

If the intoxicated person cannot go back to the safety of the bar, go through the wall, or sober up, he will eventually fall in the street. If Trump cannot become a private citizen again, stop being President, or change his behavior, he will eventually be impeached.

Given these constraints, it is inevitable that the intoxicated person falls into the gutter. And it is pre-ordained that Trump be impeached.

These are odd times. As the New Yorker points out, most impeachments are driven by struggles for power. Andrew Johnson couldnt abide freed slaves or Radical Republicans, so he flouted the law and eventually dodged removal by one vote. At the height of his popularity and strength, Nixon struck out in paranoia against his perceived enemies. His eventual cover-up involved violating the balance of powers, so he was dispatched. Clinton surrendered to his appetites, so the Congress saw their chance to kneecap him. Trump is unpopular. A substantial portion of the populace hates and fears him, but this is different. He is not a shrewd man, but a helpless one. He will go out the door the same way he came in: by the power of his bungling and despite the incompetence of his enemies.

He will be removed from office, and then Pence will be President, and the GOP agenda will sail through Congress in about ninety days. But Trump will be gone, and there will be a diminished risk of the world ending or the Constitution dying today. Those of us on the left will deal with the devil we know, and not with the baffling demon we have never seen.

Impeaching a President is no small act. When a government falls in the gutter, we all fall with it. But as a wise man once said, when the fall is all there is, it matters.

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The Drunkard's Walk: How Evolution Explains Why Trump Will Soon Be Impeached - Paste Magazine

According to a recent article in The Guardian, New haul of Homo naledi bones sheds surprising light on human evolution, but the most important word in the headline is surprising. It turns out that the fossils are much younger than evolutionary biologists expected.1

In 1982, paleontologists Niles Eldredge and Ian Tattersall noted that it is a myth that the evolutionary histories of living beings are essentially a matter of discovery. If this were really true, they wrote, one could confidently expect that as more hominid fossils were found the story of human evolution would become clearer. Whereas if anything, the opposite has occurred. The Homo naledi bones show that Eldredge and Tattersall were right.2

Emory University archaeologist Jessica Thompson (quoted in The Guardian) explains that the discovery makes it clear that human evolution is not as straightforward as it is made out to be. It doesnt start out with something that looks like a monkey, and then something that looks like an ape, and then something that looks like a human, and then all of a sudden youve got people, she said. Its much more complicated than that.1

Indeed, human origins are as mysterious now as they have ever been. As Yale paleoanthropologist Misia Landau once wrote, stories of human evolution far exceed what can be inferred from the study of fossils alone, so fossils are placed into preexisting narrative structures.3 And the overarching narrative structure is materialistic philosophy the view that matter and physical forces are the only realities and God is an illusion.

Science educators tell materialistic stories about how we are accidental by-products of unguided evolution, and the stories are illustrated with iconic drawings of apes morphing into humans. But the stories come first; fossils such as Homo naledi are plugged in later.

References:

(1) Ian Sample, New haul of Homo naledi bones sheds surprising light on human evolution, The Guardian (May 9, 2017).

(2) Niles Eldredge and Ian Tattersall, The Myths of Human Evolution (New York: Columbia University Press, 1982), 126127.

(3) Misia Landau, Narratives of Human Evolution (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1991), pp. ix-x, 148.

Photo credit: Lee Roger Berger research team (http://elifesciences.org/content/4/e09560) [CC BY 4.0], via Wikimedia Commons.

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Latest Homo naledi Bones Are Younger than Expected - Discovery Institute