With the birth of my son I have decided that it’s necessary to work closer to home. I wanted to thank everyone here at Nature Network for welcoming me into the fold. I enjoyed my time here immensely and made connections with people that I hope to maintain for many years to come.

I can assure you that I will continue to be a regular part of the community. I look forward to continuing our discussions both on the comments pages here and at my new home: http://scienceblogs.com/primatediaries. To update your RSS feed please click here.

Thank you again and I wish you all the very best!

Mother-infant bonds predicted by hormone levels in humans and other mammals

Image: Statue in Zamora, Spain / heidi.vilppola

My son is expected to be born any day now and it has been a fascinating experience watching my partner’s changes during these past nine months. I’ve been reading a great deal about evolutionary perspectives on birth and childrearing lately (and I highly recommend primatologist Meredith Small’s Our Babies, Ourselves). With that so much on my mind of late I thought this post from October 2007 was rather appropriate.

A common tactic by evolution deniers is to claim that if a complex behavior can’t be measured than the scientific method must be a flawed approach towards understanding the world. Nevermind that no one challenges the science of physics just because we can’t predict the complex motions of a leaf in a windstorm. But when it comes to matters of emotion somehow natural explanations are off limits. This is readily apparent in the common argument that, “if you think biology is such a good explanation of behavior, then prove that your mother loves you.” However, as it turns out, we can address this challenge of motherly love and demonstrate a plausible scientific explanation by measuring the levels of the important hormones involved.

Image: Battle of the Sexes / Ben Clifford

In most species the arms race between the sexes has resulted in variations on a consistent theme: the “ardent” male vs. the “coy” female. Males, who often bear little responsibility for investing time or resources in their offspring, seek to mate with as many females as conditions allow. In contrast, females are generally much more selective about whom they choose to share their genes with in the next generation. This usual (and grossly oversimplified) dichotomy has remained virtually unchanged since Darwin first proposed it in On the Origin of Species.

However, there are dramatic exceptions to this trend. On one end, females of many species have evolved a strategy of facultative polyandry. This adaptation has been selected for under multiple environmental or social conditions: to diversify the female’s genetic portfolio through mixed paternity in their litter or clutch, to elicit benefits from multiple fathers, or to disguise paternity in an effort to avoid male infanticide. On the other side, males of some species have adapted coercive or violent mating strategies in order to prevent females from making an informed choice, especially when that choice isn’t them. In both of these extremes neither sex has “won” the war between the sexes; it has been a conflict constantly being waged with each new generation, sometimes favoring males and other times females, but was thought to never reach a final conclusion.

In a study released today by Chang S. Han and Piotr G. Jablonski in the journal PLoS ONE, a war that was never supposed to end has now found a dramatic example of supplication before the winning side.

This week the Vatican has endorsed genetically modified crops as a solution to end global hunger. Since the Vatican has consistently been opposed to any technology (including condoms) that has “scientists meddling with God’s creation” this is a rather dramatic change in their stance.

The Primate Diaries has been nominated for a Quark! Please go to Three Quarks Daily 2009 Science Prize and vote for The Primate Diaries: Male Chauvinist Chimps.

This post was selected as PLoS ONE’s Pick of the Month and now has the chance to win a national prize. The top rated entries will be judged by evolutionary psychologist Steven Pinker.

To read this article please click here. Thank you very much for supporting this blog and I hope to continue producing thought provoking and entertaining posts in the future.

In the current issue of Wired, Kevin Kelly writes that socialism is coming back in a big way: on the web.

Instead of gathering on collective farms, we gather in collective worlds. Instead of state factories, we have desktop factories connected to virtual co-ops. Instead of sharing drill bits, picks, and shovels, we share apps, scripts, and APIs. Instead of faceless politburos, we have faceless meritocracies, where the only thing that matters is getting things done. Instead of national production, we have peer production. Instead of government rations and subsidies, we have a bounty of free goods.

The primatologist, neuroscientist, famed science writer and my personal hero has just been awarded the Lewis Thomas Prize at Rockefeller University. Considering that this has been an especially busy week I thought I would repost something that I wrote about him from an earlier date.

According to the announcement today:

Robert writes with a voice that is both self-deprecating and reverent of humanity,” says Paul Nurse, the university’s president. “Through his candor, his incisiveness and his humor, Robert evinces the delight that is inherent in scientific exploration and discovery. It is a great pleasure to recognize him with the Lewis Thomas Prize.

I am extremely grateful to him for helping me land my first professional science writing job and I would like to offer him my sincere congratulations.

[Read on below the fold.]

Darwinius masillae and the fallacy of a “missing link”

See thro’ this air, this ocean, and this earth
All matter quick, and bursting into birth:
Above, how high progressive life may go!
Around, how wide! how deep extend below!
Vast chain of being! which from God began;
Natures ethereal, human, angel, man,
Beast, bird, fish, insect, who no eye can see,
No glass can reach; from infinite to thee;
From thee to nothing.—On superior powers
Were we to press, inferior might on ours;
Or in the full creation leave a void,
Where, one step broken, the great scale’s destroyed:
From Nature’s chain whatever link you like,
Tenth, or ten thousandth, breaks the chain alike.

- Alexander Pope, Essay on Man (1734)

Alexander Pope, in this portion from his Essay on Man, demonstrated in lucid prose the social significance that the great chain of being, or scala naturae (“ladder of nature”) had for centuries of philosophers and naturalists. Now, the analysis of a Middle Eocene primate dubbed Darwinius masillae, published in PLoS ONE by Jens Franzen and colleagues, has elicited a firestorm of media commentary as journalists scramble over one another in their rush to label this exquisite fossil discovery as yet another “missing link” in Pope’s great chain. However, as Nature’s editor Henry Gee has succinctly pointed out, the concept of the missing link is an antiquated concept that has no place in modern paleontology.

[Read on below the fold.]

A few of the books in my collection.

On this day seven years ago I was sitting down for my final exam in evolutionary biology. The room was sweltering as several hundred students exerted their already overtaxed brains with a few final moments of cramming. However, the news of that morning was pushing aside any desire I had to practice calculating the Hardy-Weinberg equilibrium or to review how pleiotropic effects alter the Punnett square. That morning the evolutionary biologist and historian of science who had most inspired my future goals had succumbed to cancer. By that point I had read most of his popular books and articles and had decided to pursue a similar path in my own life (my first professional article was coincidentally published that very month).

In those final minutes before mental regurgitation was to commence, I found myself rising to my feat and marching to the front of the auditorium. With my biology professor staring at me in confusion, and my heart pounding as 400 eyes bored holes into my back, I grabbed a dry erase marker and wrote in large letters and with trembling hands “In Memoriam – Stephen Jay Gould”. By the time I’d returned to my seat, avoiding everyone’s gaze in that long walk, I noticed that my professor had written underneath, “Evolutionary biologist at Harvard.” It was only then that it occurred to me that few in the room may have heard of a man who had left such a powerful impression on me. So allow me to introduce him to those of you who may not have encountered, or fully appreciated, his work previously.

[Read on below the fold]

"Science is an integral part of culture. It's not this foreign thing, done by an arcane priesthood. It's one of the glories of the human intellectual tradition."

On May 20, 2002 the scientific world lost a major proponent for science and reason. Stephen Jay Gould was a scientist, a historian and a writer who communicated his passion for evolution to an audience around the globe. For many people outside of the sciences, his books may have been the only source they ever read about evolution from a working biologist. His ability to connect with readers from diverse backgrounds and his willingness to challenge so many sacred cows of biological theory will ensure a distinguished legacy for his life’s work. He is largely responsible for my own interest in evolutionary biology and the history of science and I would like to dedicate this fourth edition of Scientia Pro Publica to his memory.