Avid Biologist

What's an avid biologist to do in a desk job? Blog about how awesome biology is!

[davidorogenic-deactivated201910]

Prehistoric whale evolution, illustrated by Tiffany Turrill.

[avidbiologist]

True fact- I was never all that passionate about the question "What would you do if you had a time machine?" until I realized that I could go back in time and SEE WHAT THE EVOLUTIONARY STAGES OF WHALES REALLY LOOKED LIKE. 

Artistic interpretations are awesome, but how awesome would it be to see the REAL THING. 

And now everyone knows where I'll be if I ever get my hands on a working time machine. No regrets. 

[avidbiologist]

The Year of the Anglerfish. 

I predict that anglerfish will gain in popularity in 2013. This AWESOME youtube video already has 5 million views, and only had 3 the last time I checked a few days ago... 

In 2009, Hank Green uploaded a song about anglerfish, and I believe that is where I first learned about the biological anomaly of sexual parasitism in anglerfish (clarification from the ze frank video: only a few deep sea anglerfish species exhibit sexual parasitism, not all the ones shown in the video). 

You guys, SEXUAL PARASITISM IS SO COOL.

Superficially, it's interesting because you can anthropomorphize the issue into 'haha these men are utterly useless and the female anglerfish is this big ugly alpha female'. 

BUT aside from that, anglerfish are extremely interesting because no other species does this. No other species has developed this strategy to deal with the empty loneliness of the deep sea. 

Also thinking about the evolutionary steps necessary to get there is an exercise in mind-bending. Luckily, looking at current species can help us here- aside from the handful of species that exhibit pure sexual parasitism, some exhibit partial parasitism where sometimes the males attach but don't dissolve, or else attach briefly to mate and then swim away. From there, the smattering of steps necessary to create the need for male parasitism is somewhat understandable. 

Still, there are a lot of interesting questions to ask about this situation- for example, how does the female's immune system get bypassed by the male? The blood of fish is not quite as intense as the blood of mammals, but presumably there are some form of antibody-detecting mechanisms to keep fish from getting sick, so how do they get bypassed when the male and female's circulatory systems fuse? 

I don't know if these questions are answered; they weren't when I wrote a research paper on them a few years ago, but the awesome thing about biology is that research is always going on and there are always new things to discover! And who knows, maybe with its newfound popularity the anglerfish will become a hot topic in science. 

[avidbiologist]

Why Biology?

I figured I would start out this blog with an explanation. This thing, however long it lasts, is intended to foster my love for biology (and writing) while I start a full-time administrative assistant position that, unfortunately, has nothing to do with biology or science. 

I graduated in May 2012 with a BA in Biological Sciences. Generally when I tell people that, they ask me why I'm not in medical school. I assume it's because the thought of someone enjoying biology, truly enjoying it and dedicating themselves to it seems unlikely. If you're a humanities major you're obviously in it for the passion, but if you're a science major there's usually an ulterior motive. At least, that's the general thought.

When I started at my small liberal arts college, I had no idea what I wanted to do.  When asked my intended major, I had at least 8 on my list, some more likely than others but all pulling on my interests at least a little bit. 

But it was biology that finally lured me in. I had a lifelong love and interest in animals, and biology gave me the tools to further understand them. I had watched so many nature documentaries in my childhood that learning the concepts behind what I'd seen on the tv was familiar yet enlightening. In labs I was allowed to explore the practicality of the concepts I'd been taught in lecture; I could poke around counting beetles, or wade into the pond muck, and it was for science! The theory of evolution made so much sense it left me a little breathless, and I loved puzzling out what made each strange adaptation potentially advantageous. When I got to keep hermit crabs as pets for an Animal Behavior experiment in my sophomore year, I was sold. In fact, I was so obsessed that by the next year it became a party trick to regale my horrified and amused friends with stories of sex across species from anglerfish to bonobos ( I've found that biology and English majors are both trained to be pretty nonchalant about sex, but in very different ways). 

Mind you, I had a fair number of rough times with my chosen subject. Cellular biology continues to elude and frustrate me, possibly because by nature it can't be as "hands-on" as much of organismal bio can. My genetics class senior year was one I particularly dreaded; the logic that came so easily to me when imagining why birds of paradise exist was absent when it came to imagining the process of unzipping DNA. Despite this, I struggled through my cell bio classes (as well as my chem classes) and stayed with the subject. 

Now here I am, with a head full of biology that I (mostly) love but won't use for some time,  so here's my solution. A blog! This blog will hopefully be a mix of personal experiences with biology and some commentary on current articles/papers in the bio world. Let's see if this experiment works!