The Genetics of Stay at Home Vs “Exploratory” Butterflies

Science Daily has a fascinating bit on butterflies called Butterflies That Explore and Colonize New Habitats Are Genetically Different from Cautious Cousins.This extended quote from the press release is fascinating: In the new study, another gene variant also stood out as an important indicator of butterfly flight ability. New-population females were more often missing a [...]

The Independent Origins of Blood/Oxygen Transport Mechanisms

This is pretty cool. Science Daily PhysOrg mentions research in PNAS An extended excerpt from Science Daily PhysOrg:

What Do You Do With A Giant Squid?

Eat it, of course: Does this mean that Cthulhu will not return until sperm whales are extinct? National Geographic has more pictures…

Fossil Octopi from the Upper Cenomanian: Three New Species

The journal Paleontology has an interesting paper describing three new species of fossil octopi. The new fossils date to the Upper Cenomanian (the Cenomanian is part of the Cretaceous and dates to ~99-93 MYA). The paper can be found here.

Interesting Science News

Some interesting news from around the internet. Jenifer Neils reviews a couple of books on looting – including one I reviewed – and provides an interesting take on both.

Has The Common Ancestor Of Deep Sea Octopi Been Found?

According to this BBC News article it has.

Best Science Images for 2008: Long Finned Squid

National Geographic mentions that the winners in the 2008 International Science and Engineering Visualization Challenge have been announced and have some of the photos. My favorite is below the fold.

Right Whale Bay of Fundy Blog

Like every blogger I accumulate more links to interesting blogs and websites than you can shake a stick at. I am also, like many bloggers, behind in updating my blogroll. Just today I received an email telling me about a fascinating blog called the Right Whale Bay of Fundy Blog. This is a blog by [...]

Bee Porn and Male-Male Courtship in Drosophila melanogaster

PNAS has a couple of interesting articles in the most recent edition. The first, The evolution of imperfect floral mimicry touches on a subject that fascinated Darwin. I don’t have access to the paper, but here is the abstract:

Octopi Porn

National Geographic has an interesting video on the sex lives of octopi – apparently there is a certain amount of mimicry and guile involved…. The video is based on this article:

I’m a Bit Late To The Fray, But The Best Phylum = Arthropods

The question has come up on ScienceBlogs as to which class of invertebrates are the best, coolest, etc. Like PZ I had though about saying Cephalopods (because of those nice octopi that helped the archaeology community find some pottery), but in the end I had to go with Arthropods. Let me give you a few [...]

Whales, Squid, and Echolocation

Science Daily has an interesting article up about the evolution of echolocation in toothed whales. The research behind the article was published in Lethaia.

Studies in Mutualism: The Senita Moth

Science News Daily has an interesting story about the mutualism between the senita moth and the senita cactus. At least that’s what the title of the piece proclaims. The article is actually about the struggle of one scientist to make sense of the phenomena.

That’s Just Mean!

National Geographic has a story about an orchid that has evolved to resemble a female wasp:

The Return of the Bottle Opening Octopus

PZ mentioned this, back on April 10th, now there is video. Apparently, the octopus likes to play with screwdrivers and squirt water at passersby as well…