Recently in Evolution Category

The Dimensions of Biodiversity project that Carl Schlichting, Cindi Jones, John Silander, Andrew Latimer, Justin Borevitz, and I are working on is featured in a recent Discovery article on the NSF website. Here are the first couple of paragraphs of the article:

Climate change is on your porch and in your backyard and living room--anywhere you bedeck with flowering plants.

Global warming affects favorite flowers of garden and vase. This is true of plants around the world, including the proteas and the pelargoniums native to South Africa.

Head over to the NSF site if you'd like to read the whole thing.

Related articles

• Post-doc available (darwin.eeb.uconn.edu)

Much about James Franklin Crow, who died on 4 January two weeks short of his 96th birthday, challenges our sense of scale. Over seven decades, he contributed to an astonishing array of topics in genetics, and the list of his students and postdocs reads like a who's who. One of them, the pioneering geneticist Motoo Kimura, wrote that getting Crow as his adviser after a period of uncertainty was such a joy it was like "meeting Buddha in Hell". Crow also played the viola for 45 years with the Madison Symphony Orchestra. He once performed with the great violin soloist Yehudi Menuhin.

That's the opening paragraph of Alexey Kondrashov's wonderful piece remembering the life and work of James F. Crow. Please visit Nature and read the whole thing. Jim was a remarkable individual.

Related articles

• James F. Crow, 1916-2012 (darwin.eeb.uconn.edu)
• James F. Crow, 1916-2012 (blogs.discovermagazine.com)
• James F. Crow, Population Genetics Pioneer, Dies at 95 (nytimes.com)
• James F. Crow in Genetics | Gene Expression (blogs.discovermagazine.com)
• Jim Crow died (whyevolutionistrue.wordpress.com)
• Classical music news: Retired University of Wisconsin-Madison professor James Crow - famed geneticist, devoted viola player and classical music fan and philanthropist - dies at 95 in Madison. (welltempered.wordpress.com)

I was greatly saddened when I learned yesterday that James F. Crow died earlier this week. Jim was a link to everyone who had a hand in the development of genetics, from Mueller, Sturtevant, Fisher, Wright, and Haldane to Kimura and too many others to mention. I can't claim to know him well. Our paths crossed only a few times, but he was extraordinarily generous and kind. I was especially flattered that he came to a talk I gave last April when I visited the University of Wisconsin. He asked a difficult, incisive question and in his gentle way encouraged me to think more carefully about my results.

The January issue of Genetics began a series of articles, "Honoring Our Colleague James F. Crow, an Outstanding Gentleman, Citizen, and Scientist".

Why honor Jim? The answer is obvious to the many who have the privilege to know him: a gentleman and scholar of the highest order, he represents the best of our field. (source)

John Hawks sums up the feelings of those who knew him the best, his colleagues at the University of Wisconsin.

Several years ago, colleagues from several departments here at the University of Wisconsin-Madison succeeded in a long-time ambition of Jim's to found an Institute for the Study of Evolution. He had envisioned that the institute should be named for Sewall Wright, who had been important to Jim himself and forms a major part of the legacy of genetics and evolution. But the future institute's members insisted instead to name the new entity in honor of Jim. It is a fitting legacy for a great evolutionary geneticist.

Jim was a treasure, and he will be greatly missed.

Related articles

• James F. Crow, 1916-2012 (blogs.discovermagazine.com)
• Classical music news: Retired University of Wisconsin-Madison professor James Crow - famed geneticist, devoted viola player and classical music fan and philanthropist - dies at 95 in Madison. (welltempered.wordpress.com)
• Jim Crow died (whyevolutionistrue.wordpress.com)
• James F. Crow in Genetics | Gene Expression (blogs.discovermagazine.com)

Regular readers will remember that I spent most of July and August in South Africa measuring plants and collecting specimens as part of a large, NSF-funded Dimensions of Biodiversity project. The project focuses on the plant genera Protea and Pelargonium, and we seek both to understand functional trait variation within these and to relate it to the community context in which the plants are embedded.

We are now seeking new post-doctoral research associate to join us on the project. The person we hire will be required to spend a long period of time in South Africa starting in June or July 2012 and will be responsible for design, implementation, and analysis of field and greenhouse experiments that explore the relationship between leaf traits, leaf physiology, and leaf longevity. (See the job ad for a more detailed description of the position and the project web page for more information about the project. Click on the "Dimensions of biodiversity" tag at the bottom of this post or in the tag cloud for some blog posts about the project.)

We'll start reviewing applications in late January. Please pass this ad along to anyone you know who might be interested.

I guess I should say "Justin Timberlake, eat your heart out" except that (a) I barely know who Justin Timberlake is and (b) the only reason I know this video has anything to do with him is that it told me so itself.

What I can say is that Nathaniel Krefman, a graduate student at UC Berkeley, does a superb job of making sticklebacks (Gasterosteus aculeatus) exciting. As Carin Bondar says, Awesome work Nathaniel!

On Friday, the American Institute of Biological Sciences (AIBS) and the National Evolutionary Synthesis Center (NESCent) will co-sponsor a symposium at the annual meetings of the National Association of Biology Teachers. If you're just hearing about this now, you probably won't be able to make it to Anaheim for the symposium -- but don't despair. There will be a webcast.

To view the live, free webcast, simply go to http://dukeuniversity.acrobat.com/nabt2011 at 1:30 pm Pacific/4:30 pm Eastern and log in as a guest.  (Note: We suggest you do this in advance to test the connection and make sure you can access the site without problems.  When you log in successfully you'll see a "Congratulations" message.  If you have problems, please contact eog@nescent.org.)

For more information about the event, including a list of speakers and a schedule, head over to http://www.aibs.org/events/special-symposia/changing_humans.html.

New York Polyphony will premiere a secular mass based on the writings of Charles Darwin. Missa Charles Darwin was composed by Gregory Brown, and the premiere will take place at Woods Hole on 18 November 2011. There will be a preview at TEDxWoodsHole on 15 October 2011.

The Missa Charles Darwin is a multi-movement composition scored for unaccompanied male vocal quartet. Based on the standard five-movement structure of the Mass, the Missa Charles Darwin honors the compositional and harmonic conventions of its musical antecedents. Unlike traditional Mass settings, however, the sacred texts have been replaced with excerpts from On The Origin Of Species, The Descent of Man, and Darwin's extant correspondence.

The latest from Baba Brinkman's Rap Guide to Evolution Music Videos series (sponsored by the Wellcome Trust).