Selecting for Cuddliness (aka Cultural Evolution and the Future Parameters for Species Survival)

I feel like I've been inundated recently by all kinds of info on saving endangered species and how important it is to preserve habitat and dedicate funds to their protection. Just yesterday, I visited the Harvard Museum of Natural History, which had a special little section on the birds of North America (Ivory-Billed Woodpecker, Passenger Pigeon, etc) that have disappeared due to habitat destruction, hunting, and all kinds of other, uniquely human, sins. I was also particularly alarmed while watching the BBC Planet Earth episode on the poles and saw a cuddly little (and by "cuddly" and "little," i mean "really dangerous" and "fucking huge") polar bear swimming farther and farther between bits of melting ice. Loads and loads of guilt have ensued.

I began to notice something a bit striking about the skew of the publicity that different species get for being endangered. In the most recent issue of Scientific American 3.0, all about sustainability and environmental concerns, there is a graphic about endangered species. The graphic depicts lots of individual pictures of different species, with a certain number sort of faded out, representing the number of species that are in danger in the near future. After a brief inspection, I noticed that every one of these species had a backbone, and most had fur.

This may not seem like a big deal. lots of things have backbones, and lots have fur. Especially the ones that we consider very cute. As someone who spends lots of his time thinking about bugs though (which do NOT have backbones), I'm a bit miffed by this. For a little bit of taxonomic background, things with backbones are called Vertebrates, and things with fur (and mammary glands) are Mammals. Mammals are just one of many classes of Vertebrates. Vertebrates, in turn, belong to one Phylum (chordata). This phylum is one of 38 phyla in the kingdom Animals alone. Animalia is in turn one of four kingdoms (plants, fungi, and protists are the others) that make up one of three Domains of life. My only point with all this jargon is that, taxonomically speaking, what was represented in this visual on endangered species is hugely skewed toward a very narrow group of species.

And so, finally, as I was wallowing in my own bitterness of studying an underappreciated section of life, what I realized is that, if public recognition of the endangered-ness of a species is predictive of how much Endangered Species funding they get, and this funding actually results in their preservation and continued existence on the planet, then this represents a potential fundamental shift in what kinds of things are being selected for in animals.

Let me try to explain that a bit more coherently. I think that now, and probably increasingly, we are selecting for certain characteristics in animals. It seems to me that the attention and funding that goes to certain groups over others (I'm thinking in particular of mammals and other vertebrates) is greatly skewed, and this is based not on anything as practical as ecosystem functioning or potential usefulness for biomimicry, etc., etc. Rather, it seems to me that we are selecting species for how cuddly they are, or rather how much they appeal to our public sentiments and sensibilities, more than anything else. Their symbolic value may be more important than their ability to function in the natural world. I imagine a future for the biological world in which the defining traits of a species are not how well they survive and reproduce in the wild, but how well the concept of them survives and reproduce in our minds. In brief, perhaps in the future, the future genetic evolution of species will depends largely on the evolution of these organisms as memes in our own human minds.

Ode to Home Heating

In the back of my mind, I spend lots of time denigrating modern civilization, with our obvious pitfalls, egoism, environmental destruction, and otherwise unending parade of travesties. But every now and then, I am starkly reminded of just how nice it is to live in the world we live in. For the last few hours, Boston has been getting pounded by a snow storm, freeing winds, etc. I just came back from walking down the street to drop off some mail. No more than a few hundred yards, but my cheeks were rosy, my shoes were filled with snow and I was chilled to the bone. And then, and then I stepped back into my 65 degree apartment, where my computer and guitar and cat and books and oven and food for months were all waiting for me, and it was lovely. Indoor heating, I love you...

We are still evolving (and how!)

Recent common sense in general science and among biologists has been that humans are no longer evolving. Natural selection is a process which depends on differential rates of death, and we've gotten so good at avoiding death (at least before reproductive age) that lots of people with theoretically disabling genes still get to pass those genes on (I, for example, have horribly flat feet and a genetic disposal to tear my ACLs. While not great for my athletic career, this probably will not, fingers crossed, affect my ability to reproduce).

Some recent work in the field of genetics, however, is possibly turning this assumption on its head. Mostly through projects like the HGP (Human Genome Project), and advanced techniques for processing very large amounts of data, we can now compare and trace lots of different genes in the genomes of lots of different people. When examined on this level, there is some preliminary evidence that our genome is actually going under extremely fast selection, in geo-historical terms. It could be that 10% of our genes are actually under some kind of active selection, which is very much on the high end for evolution. Most of this work is pure statistics, and based on the assumption that if mutations are inherently random, and we see a whole bunch of alleles (specific versions of genes) changing in the same direction over some appreciable amount of time, then this is indicative of active selection for these specific alleles. With a few notable exceptions (like some work on selection for the gene that allows adult humans to digest lactose), these genetic changes cannot be linked to specific functions, and so we don't know exactly what kind of gene is being selected for. But, from a certain perspective, it makes lots of sense that we are actually under greatly accelerated natural selection, since the rate of changes in our lifestyles, as well as the increased rates of disease evolution that are likely from increasing population densities, are in the big scheme of things, very recent phenomena. Either way, very interesting to think that for all of our medicine and modern mumbo-jumbo, our genes are still being aggressively selected.

Selecting for Cuddliness (aka Cultural Evolution and the Future Parameters for Species Survival)

I feel like I've been inundated recently by all kinds of info on saving endangered species and how important it is to preserve habitat and dedicate funds to their protection. Just yesterday, I visited the Harvard Museum of Natural History, which had a special little section on the birds of North America (Ivory-Billed Woodpecker, Passenger Pigeon, etc) that have disappeared due to habitat destruction, hunting, and all kinds of other, uniquely human, sins. I was also particularly alarmed while watching the BBC Planet Earth episode on the poles and saw a cuddly little (and by "cuddly" and "little," i mean "really dangerous" and "fucking huge") polar bear swimming farther and farther between bits of melting ice. Loads and loads of guilt have ensued.

I began to notice something a bit striking about the skew of the publicity that different species get for being endangered. In the most recent issue of Scientific American 3.0, all about sustainability and environmental concerns, there is a graphic about endangered species. The graphic depicts lots of individual pictures of different species, with a certain number sort of faded out, representing the number of species that are in danger in the near future. After a brief inspection, I noticed that every one of these species had a backbone, and most had fur.

This may not seem like a big deal. lots of things have backbones, and lots have fur. Especially the ones that we consider very cute. As someone who spends lots of his time thinking about bugs though (which do NOT have backbones), I'm a bit miffed by this. For a little bit of taxonomic background, things with backbones are called Vertebrates, and things with fur (and mammary glands) are Mammals. Mammals are just one of many classes of Vertebrates. Vertebrates, in turn, belong to one Phylum (chordata). This phylum is one of 38 phyla in the kingdom Animals alone. Animalia is in turn one of four kingdoms (plants, fungi, and protists are the others) that make up one of three Domains of life. My only point with all this jargon is that, taxonomically speaking, what was represented in this visual on endangered species is hugely skewed toward a very narrow group of species.

And so, finally, as I was wallowing in my own bitterness of studying an underappreciated section of life, what I realized is that, if public recognition of the endangered-ness of a species is predictive of how much Endangered Species funding they get, and this funding actually results in their preservation and continued existence on the planet, then this represents a potential fundamental shift in what kinds of things are being selected for in animals.

Let me try to explain that a bit more coherently. I think that now, and probably increasingly, we are selecting for certain characteristics in animals. It seems to me that the attention and funding that goes to certain groups over others (I'm thinking in particular of mammals and other vertebrates) is greatly skewed, and this is based not on anything as practical as ecosystem functioning or potential usefulness for biomimicry, etc., etc. Rather, it seems to me that we are selecting species for how cuddly they are, or rather how much they appeal to our public sentiments and sensibilities, more than anything else. Their symbolic value may be more important than their ability to function in the natural world. I imagine a future for the biological world in which the defining traits of a species are not how well they survive and reproduce in the wild, but how well the concept of them survives and reproduce in our minds. In brief, perhaps in the future, the future genetic evolution of species will depends largely on the evolution of these organisms as memes in our own human minds.

Selfish chromosomes, evolution, and arpiar saunders

I wanted to give a shout out to Arpiar Saunders, not only because he's a friend of mine but because he is the co-author of a really good article out in Science this week about chromosomal evolution with the intimidating title "Centromere-Associated Female Meiotic Drive Entails Male Fitness Costs in Monkeyflowers". Although the old no-one-really-says-this-but-it-fits-my-point saying about Science is that "if it makes it in Science, it's got to be interesting" is not alway true, and although female meiotic drive may not be particularly self-explanatory as to why it's so interesting, I'll try to convince you that it's actually a really cool addition to how we think about evolution and selfishness in the biological world (I apologize, Arpy, or anyone who actually understands this science better than me, for the butcherin' that's a-comin').

First, we need a quick reminder about high school biology and cell division. So, most cells in your body have two copies of each chromosome (these are the little Xs that your genes hang out on, and we have twenty three different chromosomes), one that came from your dad, one from your mom. combined when your parents bung. When you, as a biological, adult, are going to combine your genes with another person's (what was once called "sex"), you are only going to pass on one of those two copies to your sperm or egg, which each only have one copy of each chromosome (then they get together so that the fertilized egg, later "zygote," has two copies of each chromosome).

So Mendel (papa bear of genetics) assumed that each trait in genetics had an equal probability of being passed on. In modern genetics, this would mean that each of the two chromosomes, each containing a bunch of genetic info, has an equal opportunity of being passed into the sex cells. Then natural selection determines which of these genes (which are sitting on chromosomes) is best "fit" to the environment, and those combinations of genes that are most successful in the environment reproduce more and make more copies of those genes, and presto, evolution.

The traditional focus of evolutionary theory, then, has been put mostly into the arena of adult fitness, or animal performance. What really matters though, is what genes get passed on. So, what Arpiar Saunders and Lila Fishman (at the University of Montana) studied was how genes can exploit and be successful at a very different moment in evolution. Using some genomics voodoo, they tracked a gene that preferentially gets passed on during female meiosis (i.e. makes it more likely that its chromosome gets passed on versus its homologous chromosome in the same cell). Most interestingly, however, individuals who were homozygous for this gene (they had two copies of the same gene, one on each chromosome) showed decreased pollen viability. So, boiled down to a tiny nugget of information, this is an example of how genes can compete on the molecular level, and how certain genes can become relatively prevalent in a genetic population, despite decreasing overall performance of the organism they're hitching a ride in. Selfish douchebags.

For all you weird scientists...

The now-annual Dance Your PhD contest, where scientists turn their PhD research topic into a choreographed dance. Personal favorite: Flaming hula hoops at night-time as an interpretation of "Hydrodynamic Trail Detection in marine Organisms."

Family Matters (for amoeba)

Very cool article on social behavior in amoebae. Amoeba? Social? For real?

Even a sack of molecules as simple as an amoeba can have social behaviors. Apparently, ameobae will group together into larger blobs when food gets scarce to move faster and find more food. Unfortunately for some, creating this larger blob requires some individuals to sacrifice themselves (a pattern pretty common in insects, but pretty impressive for a single-celled organism). A new study in PLOS has shown that these the amoeba will only cooperate, however, only with closely genetically related amoebae. Nepotism has deep roots...

Swapping bodies

This experiment (succintly described by Ed Yong) is possibly the craziest psychology experiment i have ever heard of, and very very cool. In brief, a couple of psychologists, using pretty simple camera setups and mannequins, convinced people that a mannequin's body (and then another human's body) was their own. Eventually, the subjects were so convinced that these other bodies were their own that when the mannequin bodies were threatened with a knife, their own bodies showed typical physiological fear and stress responses (sweat on the neck, etc.). Brings up so many interesting issues and implications about how we sense the world and ourselves in it, video games and reality, I don't even know where to begin. Maybe I should rename this blog "we are living in the future."

Recession = bad news for cuddly critters

So, we've been in a recession for nearly a year now, which jives pretty well with what most of us feel I think. Beyond our pocketbooks, though, I think the recession is gonna be bad news for lots of agendas in environmental policy (For example, the international policy toward sustainable use of bluefin tuna, which seems to have gotten waylaid because of economic concerns). It seems inevitable that in the wake of the current economic crisis, investment in long-term environmental concerns, such as sustainable use of resources, will take a backseat to more immediate and pressing economic concerns, and that we will see a retraction away from what seemed like an increasing momentum in the direction of everything sustainable, organic, local, efficient and generally green. Although i don't really see any plausible way of avoiding this retraction, I fear the fallout that we will see from this in the coming decades. Or maybe this crisis will provide an opporunity for economic restructuring based on renewable energy? A man can hope...