Archetype

Archetype turns one year old

I have now been keeping this blog for as long as it takes the Earth to makes a full revolution around the Sun. And for some strange cultural reason, this entitles me to reflect about it.

It has been a highly enjoyable experience so far. My readership has grown beyond my modest expectations, currently averaging about 100 visitors a day. I have gotten the most traffic whenever one of the much more popular bloggers direct readers to this site– this has been specially so everytime I get the Myrmecos bump, but there are a few other people to thank.

When I started, I decided that if I could post at least once a week I would be satisfied (so far the case). › Continue reading

Tags: anniversary

Counterintuition in Biology

Over at Evolving Thoughts, the mighty white gorilla from the Antipodes (that sometimes goes under the nom de plume John Wilkins) has paused from his grand World Tour 2009 to write a nice and succinct reflection on the nature of concepts and definitions in Biology. He writes:

We ought not to think that a conception or definition or hypothesis that works in one part of biology must work in all others, and yet biologists themselves often behave as if this were true. That is another challenge: why is this? The answer, I believe, is that biology is both highly diverse, and also massive.

Read the rest in his post: Counterintuition: Bdelloid Rotifers « Evolving Thoughts.

Tags: John Wilkins, Species concepts

Myrmecoid – New on my Blogroll

I don’t think there is any argument about the fact that ants are the coolest creatures to ever put foot on this planet insects around. But in case you are still not convinced just think about all those insects that either try to look like ants or make whatever possible to hang out with the cool.

On that note, Taro Eldredge is a former Cornell University undergrad that just moved to the University of Kansas to start graduate studies and just moved his blog to WordPress (btw, what would be the opposite of a double wammy?). His research interest is in staphylinid beetles of the sort that live as guest of ant and termite colonies.

Check out his blog at Myrmecoid – ??????

Tags: Blogroll, Staphylinidae

New on my blogroll

I had stumble across myrmician the macrophotographer on the web before. He has a very nice collection of Australian ants, spiders and other invertebrates on Flickr.

I just learned he is also a Ph.D. student at Pert, researching the effects of salinity levels on terrestrial arthropods. He started a clever-looking blog where he mixes photography and science. After one month posts are looking good. Besides, you know that anyone with that avatar can’t be a bad blogger.

(Hat tip to himself )

Macromite’s Blog: scanning electron micrograph perfection

A spruced-up version of a dirty box mite. 2009 © DEWalter.

A new blog just sprung into life. Macromite’s Blog:

› Continue reading

Tags: Mites, SEM

Cladistics wars 2.0

There is a skirmish going on at Dechronization blog right now¹. This is a coauthored blog about phylogenetics. I like used to like this blog (its was right there on my blogroll —->²). There are surprisingly very few blogs about phylogenetic methods these days, despite the wide use that phylogenies currently have  in evolutionary biology and beyond (e.g., linguistics). I will complain that, for nine authors, they post little, sometimes not a single post during a month.

› Continue reading