Punctuated Equilibrium and the New Academic World That We Live In (along with the rest of society)

Catastrophe

Three weeks ago I was lecturing and running labs like a regular professor. I had never gotten around to learning Canvas or Blackboard, because my Excel program was working just fine for recording and posting grades. I never had use for Zoom, since all my classes were face-to-face in a physical classroom. Things were fine and there didn't seem to be any compelling reasons to spend weeks in training for something I wasn't planning on using.

I knew about online courses of course, and two decades ago I even taught some, after a fashion. At the time they were called telecourses, and they left me suspicious of the academic value of online instruction. In essence the students watched canned videos on geology, and needed to learn the geology for themselves by reading the textbook and answering review questions. It was very low-tech, and most students didn't retain much information in the particular learning environment. There were innovative people on our campus who were working hard to improve the process, but before the innovations could really improve that particular form of instruction, the recession put an end to all of the telecourses and I never really looked back. In the end, classes had met a need for certain students with special needs, such as lack of day-care, or medical issues that prevented them from coming on campus. But it didn't really help most of them.

Something doesn't feel right here...

Two weeks ago everything changed. As part of our state effort to control the COVID-19 pandemic we went remote. In an instant. I had my entire load, five classes and three labs, switched over to online  instruction. It's now what I do, using Canvas, Blackboard, and Zoom after a steep learning curve over the course of just a few days. I'm not complaining, mind you. I'm grateful to be working. I just can't believe how completely life changed, how the academic landscape was suddenly transformed. I'm functioning and the classes are continuing, but it wasn't a pretty process. There are lots of glitches, but it is happening.

Something about the process made me think about life. Not my life, or the lives of those around me, but the whole adventure of life on our planet. There was something familiar in the way events unfolded around me. And then it hit me: we had just survived a punctuated equilibrium evolutionary catastrophe. And I'm sure that requires a bit of explanation.

One of the greatest advances in biology and paleontology was the result of research by Charles Darwin and Alfred Wallace into evolutionary processes. Darwin is better known for describing the theory of natural selection, but Wallace had come to much the same conclusions from his independent research in Indonesia, and it is proper that both men be given equal credit. One of the expectations of the model is that evolution was a gradual process, and that eventually the fossil record would fill with all kinds of transitional species. This has come to be called phyletic gradualism. The problem is that as the decades rolled on, transitional species were found but not in the large numbers predicted by the theory. Most species just simply appear in the rocks as fully-formed separate species. It bothered many paleontologists.

Alfred Wallace (1823-1913)

In 1972, Niles Eldredge and Stephen Jay Gould proposed an alternative hypothesis that could explain the 'sudden' appearance of new species in the fossil record. Termed punctuated equilibrium, the model suggested that evolved species did not change much as long as the environment they inhabited didn't change either (stasis). But in the event of a catastrophe like an asteroid impact, or unusually intense period of volcanism, or the onset of an ice age, the environment would be severely impacted, and the species would have to change as well, or go extinct. This could involve a higher rate of evolution, but it could also involve long-term changes in peripheral isolates, organisms living at the edge of their environmental tolerances.

Think of coyotes, a widespread species across North America. Most live somewhere in the 'average' climate of the region, not too hot or cold, not too dry or humid. But to the north, there would be populations living in very cold environments at the edge of their tolerances. Over time natural selection would produce individuals with heavier coats of fur, and perhaps the ability to store more energy in the form of fat stores. They might not be numerous, and it would be unlikely that many of them would ever become part of the fossil record. But they could be considered a different species, especially if their range no longer merged with the average coyote. They are the fat furry coyotes.

But then a series of intense volcanic eruptions blocks out sunlight for several decades, and a climate feedback loop causes an ice age. In the suddenly cold conditions, the 'average' coyotes can't adapt, and they disappear. The fat furry coyotes from the far north are able to thrive and spread quickly into the former range of the 'average' coyotes. Much later on, the fossil record would then be filled with 'average' coyotes through many feet of sediments, but then they would appear to have been suddenly replaced by a new species, the fat, furry coyote. But in reality the fat-furrys were 'pre-adapted'.

So what happened to us?

It's the old pre-catastrophe environment! The Paleozoic classroom.

We've been in a period of stasis for a long time. Professors professed. Classes passively took notes. There have been gradual transitions in teaching style; slide projectors have been replaced by PowerPoint presentations. Passive listening has often been replaced by group problem-solving. Note-taking has been replaced by voice-recording. But by and large, students work in the presence of a professor, and no one had any reason to think it would ever really change.

But out there in the periphery, some changes were taking place. Some teachers and administrators thought the technology had brought us to a place where teachers didn't have to be in the physical presence of their students. They trained for and taught courses remotely. Most acknowledged that remotely-taught courses provided valuable benefits for some students, but only a few underwent the rather rigorous training required to teach remote classes in an effective manner.

But then the catastrophe occurred. We've had catastrophes before on our campus. We shut down for two weeks a year or two ago because our wildfires had polluted the air far, far beyond healthy levels. But we didn't change anything. When the air cleared, we went back to our old ways. But almost no one was thinking of the possibility of a world-wide catastrophe that would require that nearly all human beings would need to isolate themselves for weeks and months at a time. It was inconceivable.

But it happened. And in the new academic environment, conditions dictated that the only form of instruction left to us was remote online education. In this new environment, the pre-adapted, the online instructors, thrived and flourished. The rest of us learned something else. Evolution is chaotic and imperfect.

Most species have organs and structural features that they don't really need or use. Humans have a tail. Many whale species have useless femurs embedded deep within their bodies. Embryonic birds often have teeth that disappear before hatching. They are deeply imperfect organisms, but they have enough adaptations in their genetic make-up that they are able to survive. This produces cobbled-together organisms with quirks and modifications that give them just enough of an edge to survive in their habitat. And sometimes those useless bits and pieces end up being an adaptation that allows survival after all. It gives us Duck-billed Platypuses, animals with a 'bird'-like beak which lay eggs like a reptile, but have hair like a mammal. And they get by.

Source: World Wildlife Fund

That's me right now. A duck-billed platypus. I have just enough of a skill in understanding computer key-boards that I was able to cobble together enough presentations and online quizzes and labs that we only lost a week or so instruction. And I'm learning to comb my hair and put on pants before sitting down for a zoom session with my students. And in a week I am taking 17 students to Yosemite National Park...in virtual reality.

It's been upsetting, and has required long hours to achieve any kind of success. There is a lot of uncertainty and fear. But we ARE adapting to the new normal that has been imposed on us, and I have to say I am really proud of my students. They are a bit more pre-adapted than I am to this learning style, and they have stepped up admirably to the new reality.

And I am an old platypus learning to fly...

To all my teaching friends: take care of your students, they're depending on you, but care of yourselves too. And to all the students: hang in there. We'll get through all this together. Stay healthy and safe. And to those who face true catastrophe in the coming weeks and months because of the corona virus, may you find hope and peace in tragedy.

Our Children Will Say "Why Didn't You Tell Us?", and We'll Say We Tried: The Government Isn't Just Denying Climate Change.

I'm reposting my blog from January 27 of this year. It is a story that needs to be told again. At the time I wrote it shortly after the inauguration, it could have been described as alarmist...that I wasn't giving the new president a chance. But the reality is that after 10 months, we are being endangered by the actions of this administration. Word comes today from National Public Radio that scientists applying for grants from the National Science Foundation are removing the words "global warming" or "climate change" from their proposals. They are censoring themselves. This is beyond concerning.

The budgets at NASA, NOAA, the National Weather Service, and the National Park Service have been deeply slashed to literally blind us to the effects of climate change. Those who work for these agencies doing climate change research have been marginalized if not outright fired. The appointees to the EPA, the Department of Energy and other agencies are climate change deniers. And yet the effects of climate change continued unabated during the past year. We have seen the amped up hurricanes that devastated Texas, Florida, and Puerto Rico. We saw the worst fires in California history destroy thousands of homes. We have sweltered through unprecedented heat waves.We see entire forests dying from the attacks of bugs that are normally killed in cold winter conditions. The Great Barrier Reef in Australia is dying in front of our eyes. The Arctic ice is at record low levels and declining. Sea level continues to rise. And we are in the process of withdrawing from the Paris Climate Accords, the only country in the world that is doing so.

I am not a major voice in the political debate. My blog reaches hundreds of people, although on a good day it will reach thousands. But we have to stand up to this denial, and I hope that those of you who have followed my blog over the years will make your voice heard. We still have tools, we can still protest, we can still contact those who "represent" us in Congress. In many cases, we still have the right to vote (although that right is seriously threatened as well).

Please read what follows to understand why we must stand up to this administration:

Is Trumpism/Pencism the New Lysenkoism? The Need to Defend Science From "Alternative Facts"

Drought-killed trees in Yosemite Valley, California

Imagine what it must have been like living under communist rule in the Soviet Union during Joseph Stalin's regime. I can't even begin to imagine the unspeakable horrors that led to the deaths of tens of millions of people for a variety of reasons, but events this week have brought to mind a particular episode that is unfamiliar to the public at large, but which had a profound effect on Soviet agriculture. It was no doubt among the reasons for the failure of the totalitarian rule over the Soviet Union. Why? Because they were never really able to feed their own people, especially wheat. The Soviets had plenty of arable land. Why did this happen? There were always profound inefficiencies in the Soviet economy, but the heart of the problem was a single man: Trofim Denisovich Lysenko.

Trofim Denisovich Lysenko, 1898-1976. Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trofim_Lysenko

How could one man do so much damage? It had to do with how science was done in the Soviet Union under communist rule. Scientific research, at least in agriculture, was done from the top down. The government decided what was true, and directed that research must confirm what the government knew was true. If that didn't happen, scientists and researchers faced arrest, re-education, and possible death. And in the Soviet Union, from the 1920s until 1965, Lysenko was in charge of agriculture.

Simply stated, Lysenko didn't accept the theory of evolution by natural selection. He denied Mendelian genetics or even the presence of genes in plants and animals. He instead believed an earlier hypothesis called Lamarkism as well as his own bizarre ideas about inheritance. In essence, he believed that organisms could pass down their experiences to their offspring. A simple model to illustrate this would be an experiment in which dogs had their tails surgically removed, generation after generation. After enough time had passed, puppies would start being born without tails. These were called acquired characteristics. In essence, he insisted that the best strains of cold-weather wheat could be achieved by repeatedly subjecting the seeds of warmer climate strains with cold temperatures. They would then acquire the ability to grow in colder climates.

And so, under his direction, farmers were ordered to grow inferior wheat strains for decades, and the results were no surprise. Production suffered, and over the years the Soviets had to import wheat from other countries, including the United States. The study of DNA, genetics, and natural selection continued unabated in other parts of the world, and agricultural yields ballooned as a result. Yet despite these failures, Lysenko continued as the Director of Genetics for the Academy of Sciences for decades. And he had true power. Under his reign, more than 3,000 geneticists who didn't toe the Lysenko line were arrested, and many of them were executed.

Athabasca Glacier in Jasper National Park in Alberta, Canada. The glacier has been receding for decades

So why are we talking about Lysenko tonight? I can barely keep up with the daily outrages of the new Trump/Pence administration, but one of the most chilling news stories during the transition period and inaugural week has been the attack on science and scientific research. Global warming and climate change have been declared to be false, and Trump officials have taken steps to end government research into this most pressing environmental issue. They have demanded the names of climate researchers at the Environmental Protection Agency, the National Park Service and other departments, suggesting a coming purge (update: this has happened). They announced a gag order on dissemination of the results of research by government experts, even outside of government channels. They have attempted to restrict information flow via the social media. There have been hints of draconian budget cuts in scientific research.

The cause, of course, is not a belief in some other cause of warming. Many of Trump's followers deny that warming is even happening. Because Trump, Pence, and the others in the administration do not believe in global warming, they have decided that it must not be investigated. They are trying to use their position of power to alter the direction of scientific research to conform to their own preconceived beliefs. That runs absolutely counter to the trajectory and goal of scientific exploration, and very much counter to the role of science in America throughout its history. Scientific research and discovery has been a driver that has allowed the American economy to thrive. For a country to promote scientific research that is directed from above towards categorically wrong conclusions is courting disaster, and the implications are worldwide in scope.

I am encouraged at the response of the scientific community. There has been a concerted effort to protect and preserve the research that has been conducted in the past, and researchers are beginning to realize that they will have to become politically active, despite a tendency to avoid it in the past. Resistance has been growing in the social media. To be clear, this is not a Democratic-Republican issue, or a liberal-conservative issue. It is a battle between factual truths and willful ignorance. It is also an economic issue, as the opposition is richly funded by corporations who stand to profit handsomely by denying the existence of global warming. Unfortunately, we will all lose in the end.

I've tended to avoid politics in this blog, but that has to change now. Until the Trump/Pence administration acknowledges the critical role of independent scientific research, they must be challenged at every turn. The stakes are simply too high for Americans and the rest of the world. It doesn't matter what Trump and Pence believe. They may believe warming hasn't happened, but sea level will continue to rise anyway. Coral reefs will continue to die off. Glaciers will continue to melt. Storms will become more intense, as will droughts. The world will get hotter, and each year will decrease our chances to deal effectively with the issue. For Pence and Trump to be willfully ignorant about science is appalling. To ignore the advice and counsel of experts in the many fields of science is absolute folly.

Source: https://www.earthmagazine.org/article/comment-crazy-times-arctic

I fear we have entered into a new age of Lysenkoism. Yes, that is a term. And it would be a tragedy.

Is Trumpism/Pencism the New Lysenkoism? The Need to Defend Science From "Alternative Facts"

Drought-killed trees in Yosemite Valley, California

Imagine what it must have been like living under communist rule in the Soviet Union during Joseph Stalin's regime. I can't even begin to imagine the unspeakable horrors that led to the deaths of tens of millions of people for a variety of reasons, but events this week have brought to mind a particular episode that is unfamiliar to the public at large, but which had a profound effect on Soviet agriculture. It was no doubt among the reasons for the failure of the totalitarian rule over the Soviet Union. Why? Because they were never really able to feed their own people, especially wheat. The Soviets had plenty of arable land. Why did this happen? There were always profound inefficiencies in the Soviet economy, but the heart of the problem was a single man: Trofim Denisovich Lysenko.

Trofim Denisovich Lysenko, 1898-1976. Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trofim_Lysenko

How could one man do so much damage? It had to do with how science was done in the Soviet Union under communist rule. Scientific research, at least in agriculture, was done from the top down. The government decided what was true, and directed that research must confirm what the government knew was true. If that didn't happen, scientists and researchers faced arrest, re-education, and possible death. And in the Soviet Union, from the 1920s until 1965, Lysenko was in charge of agriculture.

Simply stated, Lysenko didn't accept the theory of evolution by natural selection. He denied Mendelian genetics or even the presence of genes in plants and animals. He instead believed an earlier hypothesis called Lamarkism as well as his own bizarre ideas about inheritance. In essence, he believed that organisms could pass down their experiences to their offspring. A simple model to illustrate this would be an experiment in which dogs had their tails surgically removed, generation after generation. After enough time had passed, puppies would start being born without tails. These were called acquired characteristics. In essence, he insisted that the best strains of cold-weather wheat could be achieved by repeatedly subjecting the seeds of warmer climate strains with cold temperatures. They would then acquire the ability to grow in colder climates.

And so, under his direction, farmers were ordered to grow inferior wheat strains for decades, and the results were no surprise. Production suffered, and over the years the Soviets had to import wheat from other countries, including the United States. The study of DNA, genetics, and natural selection continued unabated in other parts of the world, and agricultural yields ballooned as a result. Yet despite these failures, Lysenko continued as the Director of Genetics for the Academy of Sciences for decades. And he had true power. Under his reign, more than 3,000 geneticists who didn't toe the Lysenko line were arrested, and many of them were executed.

Athabasca Glacier in Jasper National Park in Alberta, Canada. The glacier has been receding for decades

So why are we talking about Lysenko tonight? I can barely keep up with the daily outrages of the new Trump/Pence administration, but one of the most chilling news during the transition period and inaugural week has been the attack on science and scientific research. Global warming and climate change have been declared to be false, and Trump officials have taken steps to end government research into this most pressing environmental issue. They have demanded the names of climate researchers at the Environmental Protection Agency, the National Park Service and other departments, suggesting a coming purge. They announced a gag order on dissemination of the results of research by government experts, even outside of government channels. They have attempted to restrict information flow via the social media. There have been hints of draconian budget cuts in scientific research.

The cause, of course, is not a belief in some other cause of warming. Many of Trump's followers deny that warming is even happening. Because Trump, Pence, and the others in the administration do not believe in global warming, they have decided that it must not be investigated. They are trying to use their position of power to alter the direction of scientific research to conform to their own preconceived beliefs. That runs absolutely counter to the trajectory and goal of scientific exploration, and very much counter to the role of science in America throughout its history. Scientific research and discovery has been a driver that has allowed the American economy to thrive. For a country to promote scientific research that is directed from above towards categorically wrong conclusions is courting disaster, and the implications are worldwide in scope.

I am encouraged at the response of the scientific community. There has been a concerted effort to protect and preserve the research that has been conducted in the past, and researchers are beginning to realize that they will have to become politically active, despite a tendency to avoid it in the past. Resistance has been growing in the social media. To be clear, this is not a Democratic-Republican issue, or a liberal-conservative issue. It is a battle between factual truths and willful ignorance. It is also an economic issue, as the opposition is richly funded by corporations who stand to profit handsomely by denying the existence of global warming. Unfortunately, we will all lose in the end.

I've tended to avoid politics in this blog, but that has to change now. Until the Trump/Pence administration acknowledges the critical role of independent scientific research, they must be challenged at every turn. The stakes are simply too high for Americans and the rest of the world. It doesn't matter what Trump and Pence believe. They may believe warming hasn't happened, but sea level will continue to rise anyway. Coral reefs will continue to die off. Glaciers will continue to melt. Storms will become more intense, as will droughts. The world will get hotter, and each year will decrease our chances to deal effectively with the issue. For Pence and Trump to be willfully ignorant about science is appalling. To ignore the advice and counsel of experts in the many fields of science is absolute folly.

Source: https://www.earthmagazine.org/article/comment-crazy-times-arctic

I fear we have entered into a new age of Lysenkoism. Yes, that is a term. And it would be a tragedy.

This is One of the Rarest Forests on our Planet, and Yet One of the Most Widespread

This is one of the rarest forests on our planet. I know of a number of different species that are represented by extremely limited habitats; there are the Dawn Redwoods of China (a grove of maybe 5,000 individuals), the Wollemia "Pine" of Australia (only a 100 or so in the wild), and the Ginkgo biloba (a few scattered possibly wild groves). But I also have a rare native tree in my own backyard, one that is found in just five widely scattered groves: on Cedros and Guadalupe Islands offshore of Baja Mexico, and in Cambria and Ano Nuevo along the California Coast. The fifth, the one I visited this last weekend, is here on the Monterey Peninsula, south of San Francisco.

Natural distribution of the Monterey Pine (http://evolution.berkeley.edu/evolibrary/article/montereypines_01)

The species is, strangely enough, the Monterey Pine (Pinus radiata). The pine is well known to many as a Christmas tree species or as a landscaping ornamental, and it is grown as a lumber species on some 10 million acres worldwide, mainly in Australia, New Zealand, Spain, South Africa, and Chile. It's a common tree. And also practically unrecognizable in its own native habitat. The trees that are grown for timber, landscaping and Christmas are highly modified organisms in the genetic sense (GMOs). They look little like the spindly knotted trees that grow on their native landscape.

We may often prefer to choose "organic" or "natural" foods for our diet, but practically none of the foods that we grow for our consumption look much like their wild forbears. Bananas, for instance, were practically inedible with giant seeds. Corn was little more than a grass, as was wheat. But these practically inedible natural species have a great value to our civilization: genetic diversity.

Our food supply is vulnerable to disruption from any number of diseases and disorders: such things as fungi, bacteria or viruses could kill off vast sectors of our agricultural products because they are genetically homogeneous. The currently favored banana variety, for instance, may be wiped out in just a few years by a  fungus. 

And so it is with the Monterey Pine. Silvicultural methods have taken the pine and transformed it into a rapidly growing tree with few knots in the lower two-thirds of the tree. But the pines that grow on plantations across the world do not have the genetic diversity of the forests in the isolated stands in California and the Baja islands.

The native groves of Monterey Pine are under environmental assault, from development pressures, and from disease. The Pitch Canker fungus weakens the trees, making them susceptible to beetle attack. There is not much in the way of a coordinated treatment for the trees. None of the native groves are on protected federal land, and only one grove is within a state park. For the most part the native groves exist at the pleasure of the private corporations that own the land.  

Although they have been far too willing to cut down Monterey Pine forests to make villas and golf courses, the corporation that owns the forests in these pictures knows it has some fiscal responsibility to its shareholders to preserve some intact forests of these trees. They make a lot of money charging tourists like myself who pay $10 to follow Seventeen Mile Drive to see the forests along with the beautiful coastline, the wildflowers, and the mansions of the rich inhabitants of the area. 

Strangely enough, the Monterey Peninsula plays hosts to more than one extremely rare native forest. The Monterey Cypress (Hesperocyparis macrocarpa) is found in natural groves only at Cypress Point on the peninsula, and at Point Lobos State Reserve. The trademarked tree called the "Lone Cypress" is perhaps the most famous single tree in the California (I think the sadly deceased Jeffrey Pine on the summit of Sentinel Dome in California was a close competitor for the honor). Like the pine, it has become widespread due to planting as an ornamental.

For more on the evolution and distribution of the Monterey Pine, see http://evolution.berkeley.edu/evolibrary/article/montereypines_01.

What happens when a Canada Goose goes on a tropical vacation?

Can you imagine a four foot long goose? That's what happens when a Canada Goose decides to take a tropical vacation and chooses to stick around.

I've been developing another blog over the last few months as an outlet for my new hobby, bird photography (Geotripper's California Birds). I'm not an expert (yet), nor a hard-case birder (yet), but my friends and coworkers have come to recognize that if I'm walking around somewhere, I am inevitably carrying a camera. The blog is mostly about my bird observations in California and the west, but I started getting interested in birds during my travels in Hawaii beginning in 2002. I consider these two separate projects, but sometimes the subject matter overlaps. Evolution is one of those subjects, as is hot spot volcanism (i.e. Hawaii). What follows is today's post from the California Birds blog:

Perhaps 500,000 years ago, a pregnant Canada Goose, or a small flock of geese took a wrong turn. A really wrong turn. Somehow, flying along the coast of North America, the leader maybe decided to take a short cut, and it went poorly. Soon the shoreline was lost to view, and for days, not a single bit of land could be seen. I can imagine the flock becoming smaller and smaller as the weaker members fell behind and were lost.  After days of nothing but ocean, an island came into view. The tired geese landed and began looking for food. None of the plants were particularly familiar, but some proved edible and a few of the geese survived. For all we know, some of them rested up and left for further journeys, but a few stayed around. They took up residence on the volcanic island in the tropics of the Pacific Ocean, a vastly different environment than their summer home in the Canadian Arctic. The isolated volcanic edifices are today called the Hawaiian Islands.

During the millennia that followed, different flocks of geese took up residence in different ecological niches, such as lava flows, grassy slopes, and woodlands. Isolated groups began to diverge, and before long at least three species developed on the islands. One of them, the Giant Hawaiian Goose (species name not yet established), was big, almost four feet long. A lack of predators on the island made flight an energy-intensive but unneeded luxury, so the wings became smaller as the bird evolved to larger size. The goose was flightless. This worked fine for a long time, but humans ultimately arrived on the islands, and probably exterminated them, either by hunting, or by introduction of egg-eating rats, or by habitat destruction.

The second species was the nene-nui (Branta hylobadistes). It was also a big bird, but had larger wings so that it was still capable of weak flight. Like the Giant Hawaiian Goose, it became extinct soon after the arrival of humans on the islands. It has been characterized as a bird in evolutionary transition, in the midst of losing the ability to fly, but it went extinct first. Possibly because it couldn't fly well.

I didn't mean that as a flippant remark. Evolution is a process that has provided the incredible diversity on our planet, and isolated islands have provided the crucible in which much of the planet's diversity has arisen. But birds and other animals that have adapted to very specific situations are vulnerable when those situations are changed. The two extinct Hawaiian geese species were secure on the Hawaiian Islands, but the arrival of humans changed their environment too much and too fast. They were certainly easier to capture than a bird that could escape by flying.

The flying goose, the one that survived was the nene (Branta sandvicensis). The nene's wings were smaller than its Canadian ancestors, because it didn't need to migrate thousands of miles during the change of seasons. But it retained enough flying ability to escape from the island's human invaders. It differed from the Canada Goose in several other respects, including longer legs, reduced webbing between its toes, and a more erect posture. It is adapted to living on lava flows and grasslands, and was less dependent on wetlands than other geese.

It survived, but no longer thrived. Rats ate their eggs and chicks, and later on cats and mongooses were brought to the islands. The species was devastated, dropping from an estimated 25,000 when first European contact was made in 1778 to thirty individuals in 1952. A captive breeding program began, and populations were established on their ancient habitats on Maui and Kauai (where mongooses were never introduced). The wild population is now around 800, with another thousand or so in captivity. They are still highly endangered, but their prospects are slowly improving. They have been named the state bird of Hawaii.

My travels in Hawaii were part of the inspiration for my new-found love of bird watching and bird photography. I've seen the nenes (pronounced "nay-nay") on Maui at Hosner Grove (the top picture), and on the flank of Kiluaea in Hawaii Volcanoes National Park on the Big Island (the other two pictures). It is awe-inspiring to observe the descendants of a few very unlucky Canada Geese (or lucky?) who made a wrong turn 500,000 years ago and survived a terrifying journey over a very large ocean. I'm glad were trying to help them survive, instead of driving them to extinction.

Are you interested in learning a bit more about these fascinating creatures? Here is a link for a National Geographic article on the evolution of the Hawaiian geese and their Canadian cousins, and the scholarly article of the research into the vanished species:

 http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2002/02/0206_020206_canadiangeese.html

 http://www.pnas.org/content/99/3/1399.full

Dispatches from the Road: A Geologist does Birdwatching

One of the joys of visiting the Hawaiian Islands are the chances to see the unique birds. Although residents may get used to seeing the Myna birds and Zebra Doves, almost every bird in sight is unique to me, the mainlander from California. Not only are the birds unusual and colorful, they represent one of the best ways to see evolution and natural selection in process.

The islands are one of the most isolated landmasses on the planet, and prior to the arrival of humans they played host to a diverse group of island castaways and survivors (birds who arrived by accident, and colonized the new volcanic islands). Single species of birds found a range of food sources, and adaptations soon appeared in different populations. Eventually a group of finches called honeycreepers evolved into more than fifteen distinct species. Darwin would perhaps have found them more compelling than the finches of the Galapagos. Many dozens of other unique bird species can be found here (and many more, found as fossils only, are extinct).

I "collect" birds when I am on the islands (on digital imagery, of course), and I get excited whenever I "capture" a new one. The picture above is my first half-decent shot of an Ae'o, the Hawaiian Black-Necked Stilt. They are related to stilts on the North American continent, but show distinct differences. It is endangered, with only about 1,300 of them on the islands. They have been quite shy in my previous encounters, but a zoom lens is a wonderful thing.

Natural selection is acting in the present day as well. Animals adapt to changes in their environment, and few changes are more drastic than the arrival of humans. The ancient Polynesians brought new animals to the islands 1,500 years ago, and the bird species who could not compete with the new arrivals disappeared. The survivors will eventually adapt to the new invaders.

The process of competition accelerated in the 1800's and 1900's as ever more birds arrived with humans. Escaped pet birds, and misguided attempts at pest control resulted in most of the native birds being driven into refuges high in the forested mountains. Most visitors, especially the ones who stay only on Oahu, never see the native species. The Mynas are Indian, and the Zebra Doves are Australian.

Just the same, some of the introduced species are very pretty, and I saw a new one yesterday on the cliffs at the Pali Overlook above Kailua. The old highway is now a trail being reclaimed by the jungle. We heard a lot of birds singing, and for a split second, the singer appeared just long to get two fuzzy photographs.

The beautiful yellow and red bird turned out to be a Red-Billed Leiothrix, a 1918 Chinese import. It is also called a Peking Nightingale. It lives in dense forests and is said to be hard to spot sometimes, despite the bright colors.

If you ever get the chance to come out to the islands, get away from the cities! It is a precious and beautiful place to explore, from the shoreline to the tops of the highest volcanoes.

Hummingbirds and Evolution

This is what jealousy looks like: my wife, not me, took this gorgeous picture of a hummingbird in our yard today among the newly blooming flowers. I had to find an excuse, however flimsy, to share it with you.

There are between 325 and 340 species of hummingbirds in the world, all in the Americas. There is almost no fossil record, which is no surprise at all, given the small size and delicate nature of their bones. Just two specimens older than Pleistocene are known, in 30 million year old rocks from Germany, which is a bit of a surprise, given their present distribution. The ancient species are modern in their appearance.

To say that the birds are highly specialized is an understatement: their energy budget must be near the limits for terrestrial animals of any sort, their flight abilities are unique to say the least (the only bird that can fly backwards), and they have unique adaptations in their overnight activities that keep them from starving overnight (basically they hibernate). I found various notes on the "Google" that suggest these birds are "proof" of intelligent design, as they are too miraculous to ever have evolved. Oh...whatever. Some sources mention that the average hummingbird is always just hours from starvation. A bird that has to consume more than its own weight in nectar every day seems to suffer from an inefficient design parameter. I dunno...I just wanted to post a pretty picture for you all!

Photo of the day by Mrs. Geotripper.

Hope for Taz, and Natural Selection in Action

A form of cancer has been devastating wild populations of the Tasmanian Devil in their homeland on the island south of Australia. Devil Facial Tumor Disease is being spread among the creatures as they fight and scratch each other; the tumors cause horrific disfigurement of their faces, ultimately making eating impossible. Something like 70% of the Tasmanian Devil population has died out since the disease was discovered in 1996. Estimates were that the entire species could be wiped out within 25 years.

There have been recent news reports that a colony of the Taz has been found that is resistant to the cancer. This is wonderful news, and if it is correct there may be a future for the species. The Taz is a unique animal. I'm not sure I would use the word "cute" to describe them, but they are part of one of the world's most interesting ecosystems, and they have much to teach us about how evolution shapes the world. I wrote extensively about the marsupials in one of my earliest posts (The Long Strange Journey of the Marsupials), and I continue to be fascinated by paleontological research in the Australian region.

The story of the day tells us of a different aspect of how evolution works. A common misunderstanding of natural selection is that animals somehow change in response to changes in their environment. If it gets drier, animals somehow magically develop a way of surviving on less water. If the vegetation changes, the animals survive by changing in a way as to better digest the new leaf types. If drought leaves foliage out of reach, giraffes develop longer necks to reach the higher leaves. In other words, animals somehow change themselves in order to survive. Natural selection doesn't work this way at all, and this model, Lamarkian evolution, was discredited long ago.

What does happen is that natural variations exist within species: some are taller, some smaller, some are darker, some lighter, some have slightly thicker fur or longer feathers, and these variations result from the recombination of genes in the the reproductive process (you don't look exactly like your parents; you have aspects of both of them and are a unique variation of their genetic material). Sometimes these variations are introduced by mutations in the DNA sequence. When the environment changes, some individuals are better adapted to survive those new conditions. It is the animals that possess these variations in advance of the change that are the ones who survive. They tend to be the ones that are able to pass along their genes to future generations.

No one could have predicted the rise of Devils Facial Tumor Disease, least of all the animals themselves. But in a small subset of the species there was a genetic trait already in existence that recognized the tumor cells as foreign. Who knows why or how it developed? That part doesn't matter. What matters is that the variation exists. And now the species may survive, and the descendants of this colony will be the ones who are able to pass their genes on. It is a great example of natural selection and evolution in action. And I hope a positive future for one of my favorite animals.

Today's picture was taken at a wild animal park outside Sydney, Australia. The photo may have been featured in the movie Inconvenient Truth, though I haven't found it there yet (you can find my name in the movie credits, though!).

Earth: The Alternative Story

I look at my posts for the last week and I see that I have been on quite a rampage of "munching Cheetos in the basement" blogging, complaining about treatment of geologic topics in the media. It was set off when I experienced the full brunt the appalling coverage of the impending tsunami in Hawaii (and the aftermath), and soon after came comments on headlines about the demise of the dinosaurs, the continuing lack of full opportunity for women (and minorities) in geology-related industries, and finally a bit on the manufactured doubt industry and climate change deniers.

Truth be told, people who know me well know that I am a pretty even-tempered person in person, and very few of my students have ever seen me angry. Those who have seen me angry have remarked about what a quiet experience it is. Very...quiet. But a couple of things brought me to a slow simmer and the tsunami business just caused my temper to boil over. I am reminded of an old Gary Larson Far Side cartoon about a herpetologist that gets an accumulated case of the willies after working for decades in the reptile house of a zoo. Or even better, the famous XKCD comic "Someone is wrong on the Internet". One doesn't want to be shrill, but things have just gotten so...ridiculous.

Like the denizen of the insane asylum who is "feeling MUCH better now", I'm beginning to think about returning to the Other California series, but I just wanted to deal with one more of THOSE topics. It's like I want to kick the beehive one more time...it has to do with the value of a good science education.

A poll by the University of Texas/Texas Tribune published a couple of weeks ago indicated that 30% of Texans believe that humans and dinosaurs coexisted, and another 30% don't know. This is a sad commentary on the state of education in Texas, not to mention the rest of the country, and is obviously a religious issue as well (people who reject basic scientific knowledge on this topic generally do so because of a conflict with their religious beliefs).

We discussed this topic in my historical geology class this week. We've had seven weeks of basic stratigraphic principles, rock identification, analysis of sedimentary structures and environments, and some background material on paleontology. Evolution was the topic at hand, and being that I live in an exceedingly conservative part of California, I am quite sure I have some religiously conservative students. I've never tried to squelch their questions, nor have I attacked their beliefs, but I do insist that they at least understand why geologists, biologists and paleontologists accept evolutionary theory (and that's theory, mind you, not hypothesis). Our interactions are generally congenial.

I did try something new this week though. In an act that would make a creation-scientist proud (or perhaps very nervous), I presented the entire creation-science model to a classroom full of students with a certain level of geologic expertise. This has always been the wish of the creation-science community, that teachers "teach both sides of the issue". I don't think they've ever fully considered the ramifications of what happens when people with just a minimum of geologic knowledge hear the whole story. Keep in mind, we aren't "introducing God" into the science classroom, this is all "science".

Let's see, the earth starts. That's right, it starts, because it all happened only 6,000 years ago, and there was no evolution of the crust or anything like that. Life is present from the very beginning, and all life is living under a cloud. Well, actually a canopy of lots and lots of water vapor. The vapor prevents bad energy rays from the sun from striking the living things, so the living things live much longer, the humans for nearly a thousand years. There weren't any carnivores; T-rex ate leaves, and so did every other creature that we think of as animal devourers. The canopy also screws up radioactive carbon, so carbon-dating is inaccurate (unless it gives the right dates, that is). It's not clear how uranium, rubidium and potassium dating methods were affected. The surface of the earth is very smooth and covered with vegetation. If there are any seas at all, they are shallow. No major mountains to speak of.

Then something goes very wrong, and, well, all hell breaks loose. The canopy collapses into an incredibly vast rainstorm that goes on for several weeks (40 days maybe? Can't say for sure). A vast amount of water that was stored within the earth becomes superheated and blasts to steam at various seams in the crust as supersonic geysers shoot even more water in the atmosphere. The earth's crust destabilizes, and vast amounts of basalt come pouring out, producing what would become oceanic crust at a rate of around 3 feet per second, roughly 50 miles a day. In just a few months, this is enough to form our ocean basins. The smooth crust is broken up, and lots and lots of mud swirls around in the maelstrom of water, laying down tens of thousands of feet of sediment in just a few weeks or months. The continents rise, crash into each other, form giant mountain ranges, and deep subduction zones start swallowing up the crust. Water drained off the higher areas, carving deep canyons (like the Grand Canyon) in a few days, while the mud and lime layers were still soft.

Meanwhile, everything and everyone dies. All those things that died were left behind as fossils. The fact that there seems to be an order to the appearance of species in the rocks (fish first, amphibians later, reptiles after that) is an artifact due to the fact that the more intelligent species knew to climb hills while the water was rising, so they didn't get entombed until later in the flood. Of course, life still exists on the planet, so somehow all the species survived the "hydraulic cataclysm". One suggestion is that some humans gathered all the species on a big boat of some sort, and released the animals after the water drained away from the higher parts of the continents. The strange distribution of animals (marsupials in Australia, giraffes in Africa, llamas in South America) resulted from various humans taking their favorite animals with them as they repopulated the earth.

Now, a boat containing all the millions of species on the planet is an impossibility that even a young child can figure out. So it wasn't "species" that went on the boat, it was "kinds". Species are an artificial human convention anyway; they don't have meaning in the real world. These "kinds", or baramin, included a dog kind, a cat kind, a sauropod kind, and so on. In the aftermath of the flood, the dog kind diverged genetically (but not evolved; this isn't evolution) into foxes, wolves, coyotes and...good ole dogs. The cats changed into tigers, lions, and jaguars. And so on. This happened in a few centuries after the "hydraulic cataclysm". The dinosaurs lived on, too, but then there was another disaster.

Because the vapor canopy was gone, the sun was shining on the earth surface and the climate became exceedingly unstable. Within a few hundred years of the flood, an ice age covered much of the planet, and wiped out the dinosaurs and a whole bunch of other strange beasts that we only find as fossils today. Other incredible canyons in the world, like Yosemite, were carved by the glaciers in a few tens of years through solid granite.

Finally things settle down, maybe 3,500 years ago. Volcanoes slow down, earthquakes happen less often, sea-floor spreading declines to a few inches a year. And that's all you need to know.

If I have gotten some minor details wrong, don't bother me about it because life is too short to argue endlessly. It it seems fanciful, you can check out the details with groups like the Institute for Creation Research. But for some reason, they never seem to put the whole story in one place. It might draw too much attention towards the conflicts this story has with the basic laws of astronomy, physics, chemistry, geology, and logic. And it will draw lots of derision too, just like it did in my historical geology class last week. You have work very hard to "believe" this model, much less accept the so-called evidence.

If you feel I have insulted your religious beliefs, you would be wrong. This isn't about religion. This is about an alternative "scientific" history of earth and life that would be taught in public schools under the banner of "equal time" if local governmental entities like the Texas Board of Education had free rein on their collective desire to stop the teaching of evolution (I am happy to hear that the worst member of the creation-science faction lost his primary race to someone else a few days ago).

Once again, this is also a rant of sorts about media treatment of science. I have grown accustomed to seeing stories of evolution "balanced" by an interview with a creation-scientist as if their model has some kind equivalency with actual science. It doesn't. Not even close. And believing really, really hard won't make it so either.

UPDATE: One of my students (commenting on my Facebook version) makes a really good point: "You know how little kids sometimes play pretend, and as they get more competitive with one another, they backtrack and add stuff to the game, changing the original 'rules'? Creation 'science' reminds me a lot of that... "

Science Dies Ugly Death! Only 4 in 10 Americans believe in continental drift! (wait a second...)

Diagram of Pangea courtesy of the U.S. Geological Survey

Check out a poll and excellent discussion by Devilstower in which Research 2000 asked about plate tectonics (for DailyKos). Worded like similar polls by Gallup about evolution, they asked whether the respondents "believed" Africa and America were once connected ("Do you believe that America and Africa were once part of the same continent?"). If this sounds like a poorly worded question, it was, and they did it on purpose. First, look at the results:

YES NO NOT SURE
ALL 42% 26% 32%
DEM 51% 16% 33%
REP 24% 47% 29%
IND 44% 23% 33%
OTH/REF 42% 25% 33%
NON VOTERS 46% 22% 32%

WHITE 35% 30% 35%
BLACK 63% 13% 24%
LATINO 55% 19% 26%
OTHER/REF 56% 19% 25%

18-29 48% 20% 32%
30-44 40% 28% 32%
45-59 43% 24% 33%
60+ 39% 30% 31%

NORTHEAST 50% 18% 32%
SOUTH 32% 37% 31%
MIDWEST 46% 22% 32%
WEST 43% 24% 33%

Wording in a poll is everything, and for a long time major polling organizations have been asking badly designed questions about science, especially those on evolution, by wording their questions poorly, and then reporting the results with a misleading emphasis. Following the point made by Devilstower, a headline may very well read "Only 4 in 10 people believe..." but this ignores that fact that a full third of the respondents understood that they didn't have enough knowledge in the subject to give an informed answer. The real news in this poll is that only a quarter of the respondents were wrong in their perception of the science and that their ignorance was influenced by region, political affiliation and race (the interesting point in this poll result is how poorly whites did in comparison to blacks and hispanics, if you want to interpret the results literally).

Devilstower does a great job of explaining the inflammatory nature of the use of Africa in the question. Other questions in the poll were highly political ones, including an approval poll for congress and the president. It helps to explain the disparity of the findings in regards to the Southern states. Would the disparity still apply if Europe were substituted for Africa in the question?

The big problem with the poll is the use of the word "believe". People believe in deities. People hold opinions that animal testing is wrong. People believe it's wrong to torture prisoners. But does one believe in gravity? Can a person believe they don't need oxygen to live? They can choose not to believe these things, but it doesn't change the fundamental fact that they will fall if they jump off a cliff, or suffocate if they try breathing water. In the most proper sense scientists don't deal with beliefs. They deal with experimentation and confirmation of physical facts. Hypotheses can't be believed in, they have to undergo testing. They will usually be confirmed or disproven, and it doesn't fall to a vote about belief, whether by the scientists themselves, or by the public at large.

This misunderstanding about being able to pick and choose what science to "believe" is at the heart of issues like human-induced global warming or evolution. I have a lot of respect for the people who responded in this poll by saying they didn't know. I just hope they take the next step and try to learn something about it. Education is everything in facing the complex problems of our society.

What's Wrong With This Picture? A Short Rant

(slight paraphrase)

"We have to do this the scientific way

Observe....

Theorize...

Try and prove it....."

I was grading papers tonight. Given that I fall asleep easily while doing this means that I need distractions, so I was watching an old episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation. In the first season episode "Home Soil" the good doctor Beverly Crusher delivered this stunner of a statement about "science". As much as Star Trek was a half-decent attempt at good science fiction (don't ask a physicist, maybe), the statement above represents the kind of television/movie silliness that science teachers have fought against for decades: a fundamental misunderstanding of how we gain knowledge in an objective manner.

The term "theory" has been misused for a long time, I suppose because it is harder to get actors to say "hypothesis" in a convincing manner. And to get the science right means cluttering up a crisp script where everything has to happen in the 47 minutes or so that isn't commercials in an hour-long broadcast (and yes, I know all about 47 and Star Trek). How many times have you heard someone say that an explanation is "just a theory"? Or, "here's my theory about why something happened the way it did". These statements only work when the word "theory" is replaced by "hypothesis".

Theories, on the other hand, are models that are accepted and understood by scientists as to the way the universe works: atoms are theoretical; so is gravity. And evolution. We don't "believe" in atoms or evolution, we accept them on the basis of years of research and exploration. And the world and universe behave exactly as if these phenomena are in operation. One can choose not to believe in gravity, but trip over a rock and you will land on your face anyway.

In any case, the Creation-Science/Intelligent Design movements use a method much like that at the start of the post: Decide upon the truth, and garner all the evidence that supports this truth. You can try to call this approach "science", but it is not science.

So, to assist the Star Trek writers, here is Beverly Crusher's statement, updated to reflect the way things work in scientific research. Sorry I'm 20 years too late for this episode...

"We have to do this the scientific way...."

"Observe the phenomena, collect evidence and organize all the data, formulate as many possible explanations (hypotheses) as we can, and design tests that can disprove our hypotheses. If one explanation is finally supported by the evidence and cannot be disproven, we will accept the explanation and act accordingly, knowing even then that our explanation could be disproven if new evidence emerges".

Sorry script-writers, science is sometimes hard to jam into a sentence (and this, among many reasons, is why I am not writing scripts for a living). I welcome any of my readers to try to make this more succinct. But I wish Hollywood would try a bit harder; it would be better for us all.

Thus endeth a short mini-rant...

I Don't Believe in Evolution Either...

I'm off to Death Valley for what promises to be a wet and wild weekend in drought-stricken California. The storm door is open across the state, and I am sincerely hoping that the rain and snow can ease the dry conditions. That remains to be seen, of course. I just don't know why the storms seem to be always coming on the Presidential Birthday weekend when I take the students on our long field trip.

In addition to a presidential birthday, it also happens to the be the 200th birthday of Charles Darwin. When I am making my way across the desert in the next few days, I will have a few opportunities to meditate on the intellectual advances that he and Alfred Wallace introduced to the world of science.

Like the Ethical Paleontologist, I would like to state here in no uncertain terms that I DO NOT BELIEVE IN EVOLUTION. Of course, I also don't believe in gravity, and I most certainly do not believe in atoms. What I DO believe, especially in the subject area of higher beings, is actually not your business, and is not germane to a discussion about evolution. If you would like a serious discussion about such issues, you are free to contact me in other ways.

Of course, despite my professed non-beliefs listed above, the world continues to behave EXACTLY AS IF evolution, or gravity, or atoms exist. My continued existence is in fact possible only because each of these phenomena do exist, and science has provided a framework for understanding each of them. In the case of evolution, my continued existence is actually threatened as I continue to fight off an infection that has proved resistant to antibiotics (don't worry, it's not that serious yet).

Death Valley National Park is a place to witness a few incredible examples of evolutionary change in action, both in the past and in the present day. The park contains something like seven vertical miles of sedimentary deposits that preserve one of the most complete fossil records of the development of life from over a billion years ago to the end of Paleozoic time to be found anywhere. The first picture above is a trilobite that same or crawled in the Cambrian coastline around 520 million years ago. Thousands of species evolved over millions of years before they went extinct around 250 million years ago.

The innocuous-looking fish in the second photo are cyprinodon pupfish, one of the most unlikely living creatures to be found in the driest place in North America. Sorry for the photo quality; they aren't easy to photograph. The pupfish are the ancestors of a species that lived in the Colorado River system and in fresh-water lakes that filled these desert valleys during the Pleistocene Ice Ages. As the ice ages ended, the lakes dried up, and doubtless many species and individual fish perished, but in a few watercourses and springs a few of the pupfish survived. In the last few tens of thousands of years, some of the fish populations thrived in freshwater springs, but others were trapped in increasingly salty ponds and creeks (like Salt Creek on the floor of Death Valley). The fish adapted to the conditions, eventually forming at least four or five species, and perhaps a dozen subspecies. No other fish is known to survive in water as salty as one of the species, and one of the species is known to survive in 100 degree conditions. No other fish is that hardy. Others survive in freezing conditions.

The most familiar species is the Devils Hole Pupfish. The entire species lives in a single water-filled cavern opening in the Ash Meadows area east of the main park. In that one hole, they have survived for thousands of years. Their population crashed a few years ago, down to a few dozen, but they may be recovering (several have been taken to other refugia to preserve the species in case of disaster).

They are luckier than the Tecopa Pupfish. The entire species was wiped out in an afternoon when bulldozers destroyed the springs they lived in to build a hot springs spa in the 1940's. What a shame to lose out due to human interence after so many thousands of years.

Happy birthday, Mr. Darwin! You enriched our understanding our world in many ways!

So, What's Been Happening in the World? And Why is it always Florida?

Sort of like Lois Lane in Superman II, after she had her memory wiped by the Man of Steel, I re-enter the world after five days in the wilds of Death Valley blissfully ignorant of world news (the picture above is from deep in Titus Canyon; you must see this place!). I go on the internets and find that there have been elections and primaries, $100/barrel oil prices, earthquakes, and Florida education officials thinking they are cute by linking the word "theory" with the word "evolution" (as was pointed out in Princess Bride..."You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means. "). Check out some of the updates on this issue at http://www.flascience.org/wp/.

The contributors at the Panda's Thumb (http://pandasthumb.org/) have been on top of the Florida evolution controversy. On the one hand, the state education standards for the first time include the words "theory of evolution", instead of the timid "change over time". This could be considered a victory of sorts, except that as always there is a huge difference in what "theory" means to scientists, and what it means to laypeople. Evolution is indeed a theory, in that it has been confirmed by loads of evidence, it explains the origin of many diverse phenomena, and competing hypotheses have fallen by the wayside over the last century or two. On the other hand, when I ask students to use the word "theory" in a sentence, I tend to get "We don't have to believe that, it's just a theory".

You can be sure that this perception will exploited by the creation-science crowd. We have a great deal of educating to do....