An African Cichlid. Source: Flickr user orlyscis
Deep in Africa’s Rift Valley lakes, a story of extinction and evolution is unfolding at an incredible rate, while elsewhere, islands have their own stories of divergent evolution writ large in their fossils. Speciation is an unending process that has shaped our planet’s history in many ways, and continues to do so today.
In this episode, Jesse and Orad tackle the topic of speciation — from its different types to its more extreme cases — along with special guest (and regular behind-the-scenes team member) Aimee Gillespie!
Next episode
Our next show will be about the history of lighting and how the simple light bulb has changed over the years. Post questions below or contact us here!
Note: due to scheduling conflicts with our guest, we will not be able to discuss the planned topic (material toughness) quite yet, but stay tuned!
References
Here are some scientific references we used while researching this show:
- Evolution: Dreampond Revisited from Nature, 7 July 2010.
- An article in the BBC about human hobbits.
- The National Academy of Sciences paper on the formula for how big animals can get as a function of the land mass of the island they’re on.
- A paper from the 26 May, 2006 issue of BioEssays on why we don’t see phylum-ation, and the Cambrian explosion.
Mailbag
- Brooke from Guelph comments on our blog:
“I loved your comment: ‘It’s almost like the physics knows your watching.’ That’s so telling of the need for us to inspect and better understand the relationship between the scientist and the world. And the rest of us, too.”
This episode was researched, written, hosted and recorded by Orad Reshef, Jesse Corbeil and Aimee Gillespie. Sound editing was done by Jesse Corbeil and Orad Reshef.