Can plants sense kins?

Ok I admit that story has already been all over the media. When I first read about it, I just didn't think it was that interesting so I didn't post it. However now that I've actually read the paper I have a few comments. Firstly its 4 pages long and has 2 figures, wow it's a big conclusion for such a simple experiment. Second I want to explain Hamilton's kin selection idea since it is the basis of that paper. It essentially boils down to this: "if individuals have the capacity to recognize kin (kin recognition) and to adjust their behavior on the basis of kinship (kin discrimination), then the average relatedness of the recipients of altruism could be high enough for this to be favored."
Now because I have a huge man-crush on Dawkins, and I would carry his half-ape half retarded fish babies, I have to mention Dawkin's views of kin selection. In writings on Kin Selection there are often references to Richard Dawkins’s article ‘12 Misunderstandings of Kin Selection’, in Zeitschrift für Tierpsychologie, 51 (1979), 184-200. Basically Dawkins doesn't think that kin selection is a special type of natural selection. He opposes the view that natural selection can be exerted on a group, since only the individual survives and reproduces and not a group. There is more to his arguments, but It's worth actually reading it.

So how does this relate to plants. Well kin selection is a complex process usually associated to social animals. Plants on the other hand, can't see, smell or move, or at least are limited in their ways to sense kinship. And if you can't recognize a kin, how can you have altruistic behavior? Now it's well known that when plants are in close proximity, they will exhibit more aggressive competitive behaviors, in order to secure resources. Rather than using its energy to grow or flower, it will allocate more to roots to cover larger areas. Now this group asked a simple question, will the plant be as competitive with its root system if the other plant in the pot is from the same species. Surprisingly it wasn't as agressive, suggesting it knows about the plants in its environment, but how? Anyways, I like this experiment because it would make for an awesome science-fair type experiment, or a good way to teach kids about evolution, kin selection
and natural selection.

Useless appendages

Here is a funny compilation of vestigial structures that are totally useless. One of them caught my eye (I swear it's not the male nipple): "With all of the pain, time, and money that are put into dealing with wisdom teeth, humans have become just a little more than tired of these remnants from their large jawed ancestors. But regardless of how much they are despised, the wisdom teeth remain, and force their way into mouths regardless of the pain inflicted. There are two possible reasons why the wisdom teeth have become vestigial. The first is that the human jaw has become smaller than its ancestors' and the wisdom teeth are trying to grow into a jaw that is much too small. The second reason may have to do with dental hygiene. A few thousand years ago, it might be common for an 18 year old man to have lost several, probably most, of his teeth, and the incoming wisdom teeth would prove useful. Now that humans brush their teeth twice a day, it's possible to keep one's teeth for a lifetime. The drawback is that the wisdom teeth still want to come in, and when they do, they usually need to be extracted to prevent any serious pain."

Red hair was sexually selected

We recently had a debate as to which animals have colour vision. Being avid fly fishermen, we debated wether the colour of the fly really does anything. Can fish see colour? Obviously tropical fish are very colourful but can they appreciate it? Well it turns out, that fish may in fact see more colours than we do. Some of them can see ultraviolet as well as infrared. In fact if you look at reef fish with a UV filter, all kinds of new interesting patterns emerge. The goldfish for example has 4 different cones sensitive to different wavelengths. This brings up the question as to why evolution drives the selection for colour vision. Our ability to see red, green and blue is actually a recent event in our common ancestors with primates. The proposed hypothesis for the evolution of red vision is that it enabled the foraging of ripe fruits in the green background of the vegetation. From then on, red hair, and red appendages were positively selected for in primates by sexual selection. Red hair effectively became sexually desirable, and a red bottom for example, would be a very good cue of the receptivity of the female monkey.

Grant proposal

I've been working all weekend on a grant on Williams syndrome for a class. Over the course of that weekend I read over the internets twice, and I found this great scientific proposal which we should replicate in the bay: Breeding M&M candies.

"Whenever I get a package of plain M&Ms, I make it my duty to continue the strength and robustness of the candy as a species. To this end, I hold M&M duels. Taking two candies between my thumb and forefinger, I apply pressure, squeezing them together until one of them cracks and splinters. That is the"loser," and I eat the inferior one immediately. The winner gets to go another round.
I have found that, in general, the brown and red M&Ms are tougher, and the newer blue ones are genetically inferior...
Occasionally I will get a mutation, a candy that is misshapen...

When I reach the end of the pack, I am left with one M&M, the strongest of the herd. Since it would make no sense to eat this one as well, I pack it neatly in an envelope and send it to:

M&M Mars, A Division of Mars, Inc.
Hackettstown, NJ
17840-1503 U.S.A.

along with a 3x5 card reading, "Please use this M&M for breeding purposes."

This week they wrote back to thank me, and sent me a coupon for a free 1/2 pound bag of plain M&Ms.
I consider this "grant money." I have set aside the weekend for a grand tournament. From a field of hundreds, we will discover the True Champion. There can be only one."

You are what you eat

I was at the National Zoo in DC yesterday. I haven't been to a zoo in probably 15 years, but it's nice to know that 2.5 science degrees later, I can still learn a thing or two from such an outing. In this instance, I discovered that the beautiful but deadly 'poison dart frogs' are not naturally toxic. Raised in captivity, these amphibians are harmless. The reason for their toxicity is the accumulation of alkaloid compounds from ants and other arthropods that they consume. This is true of frogs from Madagascar as well as those from Australia or South America. Geographically isolated, the ants that are the source of the toxin for frogs from these regions are not closely related, making this a cool example of convergent co-evolution of arthropod and frog species.