Editor’s Selections: Cheating Wasps, Evolving Robots, GM-doh!, and Trashing the Ocean
January 28th, 2010 Administration No Comments
Jarrett Byrnes focuses on posts in ecology, environmental sciences, and evolution. He blogs at I’m a chordata, urochordata!
- So, you’re a wasp. You’ve evolved a nice mutualism with local fig trees. Time to relax? No! Time to figure out how to cheat the system! But be careful, because those figs will fight back.
- Want to test evolution via natural selection? Why not do it with robots! What could possibly go wrong.
- When one things of Genetically Modified (GM) plants, they think about the consequences of new genes in the environment. However, heavy application of herbicide in fields of GM herbicide resistant crops can exert such a strong selective pressure on weeds that they become herbicide resistant, too. Ah, unintended consequences.
- Dr. M reports on unfortunate new work showing that popular fishing grounds are essentially treated like garbage cans. And most of it is from recreational folk.
