jim mallet
@wtf-r-species
natural historian, PhD Texas, native Londoner. (Profile pic from Mauro Cutrona
I once calculated the selection pressure in the decline from linear regression of the logit phenotype frequency
Oh, this I found amusing! Claudia Solís-Lemus documents how current phylogenetic network representation and inference methodologies are now introgressing amongst each other to refine a truer and more realistic representation of hybridization and evolution. Syst. Biology doi.org/10.1093/sysb...
There seem to be only 4 captures of this file, one in 2003, and three in 2005! ... 4/2
Here's what Haffer wrote about Mayr's sojourn during WWII as a German "enemy alien" in New York City, at the time he fell under the influence of Theodosius Dobzhansky, then a professor at Columbia University.
A propos of nothing, I came across an event in Berlin from my archives. I met with the ornithologist and Amazon explorer, Jürgen Haffer. He's famous for his 1970s proposal of the "Pleistocene Refugium" hypothesis. On 23 May 2009, and we swapped anecdotes about our experiences in the rainforest.
I have a different one: in 2016, I was walking back to the car with my son from the Boston Children's Museum when we encountered this Lego fill-in for bricks. How many of these are there?
In spite of his stoutness, Lankester was fit, and likely walked the couple of miles to the funeral at Highgate Cemetery from UCL, a pleasant walk through Regent's Park and a little further North through Highgate. Or maybe he took a "Hackney Carriage" (the taxi of those days, in 1883).
50% due to environment... Also ~ 50% improved husbandry more or less helped also in breeding of Holstein cattle for milk yield in the USA. The genetic component was classic QGen breeding design via half-sib analysis. From my lecture notes and Bill Hill 2010 Phil Trans Roy Soc Lond B.
A good friend and colleague, Richard ffrench-Constant, from Exeter - Penryn Cornwall campus, has recently died. He was very important 14 years ago in the Heliconius Genome Consortium paper 2012, as his University website showed: news-archive.exeter.ac.uk/2012/may/tit...
Did you show this graph? If it's 50% agronomic and 50% genetic, did it involve application of Fisherian QGen principles? I think this was the case for milk yields in cattle, where sires were selected on the basis of half-sib analysis. I can find the data if interested.
one of the wonders of being at harvard is the historical delight of taking out an old library book and finding it is dedicated by the author, G. Ledyard Stebbins Jr., to a well-known harvard scientist Ernst Mayr.
“Coast TM Pro Pocket Mechanic,” ca. 2015. Imitation of Swiss Army Knife, only much bigger (of course!), harder to open, and less stainless—note rust spots.
Here's how I feel tonight! From a t-shirt company, though I'm not going to buy from them. But I like the art.
37 y ago, UK Conservative policy switched due to "Greening of the Thatcher." Maggie Thatcher, grocer's daughter with a First Class Honours degree in chemistry at an elite college, Oxford University, was convinced by scientific arguments of biodiversity loss. www.washingtonpost.com/archive/poli...
I can't think why, but the Xi-Trump meeting reminded me of the Wish You Were Here album cover.
Sponge must be ancestor to Cnidaria, not Cnidaria ancestor to sponge, from this synteny diagram:
Extraordinary parallel evolution across 120 My of Lepidoptera mimicry in the Neotropics. Ben Chehida et al. 2026. Parallelism in color patterns, but also Ivory and optix genes re-used, and even inversions around Ivory! doi.org/10.1371/jour...
@heliconians April issue of Genetics has a category of papers: Knowledgebase and Database Resources. These include CartograPlant, The Caenorhabditis Genetics Center Curated Special Collections, CottonGen 2025, Genome Database for Vaccinium, GrainGenes, Maize Genetics and Genomics Database, ... (1/2)
@heliconians The grad student, photographed by his supervisor during fieldwork.
Genomic analyses in Drosophila do not support the classic allopatric model of speciation: doi.org/10.1093/evle...
@heliconians It's nice to see a Heliconius butterfly on the cover of "Evolution" again! Elizabeth Hodge et al. 2026, on why Heliconius are smarter than other butterflies. doi.org/10.1093/evol...
Genomics and species delimitation: which genealogical divergence index should you choose?!!! Graphs of hotness of species-ness versus scaled genomic measures of actual gene flow and divergence time. doi.org/10.1093/sysb...
Density-dependent feedback and higher-order interactions enable coexistence in phage-bacteria community dynamics url: academic.oup.com/ismej/articl...