Pitcher plant seminar this Thursday!

As you all know, you should have read (or will read in the next 10 days) the article in your Packet by Stephanie Pain entitled "Gotcha! flesh-eating pitcher plants are proving to be far more devious hunters than anyone imagined."  

Nephenthes sp. by L. Shappell

It just so happens that this week a botanist from the New York Botanical Garden, Dr. Robert Naczi, will be speaking about pitcher plants!  This seminar, entitled "Systematics of Western Hemisphere Pitcher Plants (Sarraceniaceae): Old Problems and New Data from Symbiotic Arthropods" is open to the public." (Yes, this will help you study for your exam).

 

Date: Thursday, Feb. 17, at 4pm (free snacks and drinks at 3:30pm)

Location: Alampi Seminar room in the Marine and Coastal Sciences (IMCS) building (across from food science building), Cook Campus.

News article: fossils, DNA, frogs, & teeth!

The tree frog in question (Wikimedia commons)

A student forwarded me this interesting New York Times article about a frog species that has evolved to have teeth on its lower jaw.  This trait, lost at least 230 million years ago (MYA) in frogs, appears to have reemerged approximately 5-17 MYA in a marsupial tree frog.  

Read The Times article highlighting this research: A Frog Evolved to Regain the Teeth Its Ancestors Jettisoned.

Or better yet, go to the source article by Dr. Weins! Re-evolution of lost mandibular teeth in frogs after more than 200 million years, and re-evaluating Dollo's law.

This research was originally published in the peer-reviewed scientific Journal Evolution by John J. Weins (2011).  The full article includes figures with phylogenetic trees illustrating relatedness among species based on genetic DNA results and teeth presence/absence.  

Eusociality: the what, how, and why of a controversial topic.

An article written by Nowak et al. (2010) entitled The Evolution of Eusociality explains the role that haploidy and diploidy are hypothesized to play in the inclusive fitness theory.

Figure 4: Solitary and primitively eusocial wasps. (Nowak et al., 2010).

Another comprehensive review of this topic is discussed in Cooperation, Conflict, and the Evolution of Complex Animal Societies by Rubenstein & Kealey (2010).  This article is a bit easier to understand so I would suggest reviewing this one prior to reading Nowak et al.  Additionally, some of the vocabulary words in this article are enabled with a click-and-define feature that should help with reading comprehension.  

The below images are from the Rubenstein & Kealey article.

Figure 1: Group-living is widespread in the animal kingdom.

Figure 3: Patterns of relatedness in haplodiploid and diploid species.

And finally, my former undergraduate assistant was tricked by a mimic.  He got sick after eating an Indian Strawberry (Duchesnea indica) even though I told him not to.  Perhaps the Indian strawberry is a "model" species that the common strawberry (Fragaria virginiana) "mimics"?  

This is an imagine of Indian strawberry. 
Note: the upright growth habit. (Photo by Mike_tn of Flickr)

The edible plants community seems conflicted as to whether Indian strawberry is indeed edible or not, but, when in doubt, don't eat it!

Is it a model or a mimic?

This week we talked a bit about mechanisms used by prey to deceive predators.  Here are a couple of neat examples: 

Batesian Mimicry & Müllerian Mimicry

I found a website that has interesting photographs comparing Batesian models vs. mimics!  Click the link to find out if the butterfly (left) is a model or a mimic.

To the right, is an example of Müllerian mimicry, demonstrated by a group of unpalatable butterflies.