Comments on The Beagle Project Blog: Detecting natural selection: a pika's tale

This article was fun to read and informative. As ...

2008-10-01T12:09:00.000+01:00

This article was fun to read and informative. As a head nodder due to my biology class, I enjoyed reading about how natural selection is not the sole reason for change within a population. I enjoyed learning that pika are cute furry animals related to rabbits. Maybe if global warming continues the leptin in the pika species will become less important as a cold stress reliever. Through natural selection due to climate change, maybe the cold adapted leptin gene would become very scarce in the pika species. The article was very enjoyable.

www.missbakersbiologyclass.com/blog

Wow, thanks for that comment, R N B. You have made...

2008-02-06T14:14:00.000Z

Wow, thanks for that comment, R N B. You have made my day if not my month and after that, I am most definitely going to keep blogging on peer reviewed research!

That was excellent. That was the clearest explana...

2008-02-06T12:06:00.000Z

That was excellent. That was the clearest explanation of the whole "natural selection" versus "genetic drift" argument that I have seen. Real evidence always helps. If only you had been there as a referee between Gould and Dawkins, I think you could have stopped a lot of bloodshed. Sorry that's overdramatic analogy, but that was a really fine exposition of a complex argument to very simple language, everything that "blogging on peer-reviewed research" should be.

I don't agree with you on everything though. There might have been a typo ("in" vs "is"), the explanation of how to use "w" could have been explained more, and I think that the critters are less "cute" and more "fat rat". But still, well done, thanks.

Excellent post, Nunatak. I am a complete layman on...

2008-02-05T13:27:00.000Z

Excellent post, Nunatak. I am a complete layman on this subject, unable to either scratch or nod my head, but I found your exposition interesting, clear and informative.

Thank you.

Thanks for the correction and the link to Greg Lad...

2008-02-05T05:39:00.000Z

Thanks for the correction and the link to Greg Ladens blog - very helpful.

I'm with you chaps re sexual selection: it's just ...

2008-02-04T21:26:00.000Z

I'm with you chaps re sexual selection: it's just a sub-species of natural selection - but a very interesting sub-species.

I agree with Karen, sexual selection is a populati...

2008-02-04T16:31:00.000Z

I agree with Karen, sexual selection is a population level selective force and its only natural! ;p

Adrian, Thanks for your comment. Two reasons I did...

2008-02-04T15:53:00.000Z

Adrian, Thanks for your comment. Two reasons I didn't talk about sexual selection in this post: 1) the post was already super long (though that is a cop-out of sorts because surely I could've included some kind of snippy little clause about it) and 2) I happen to agree with Greg Laden that sexual selection is really a subset of natural selection especially if viewed in a neodarwinian context:
http://gregladen.com/wordpress/?p=144

Well Done Karen! A superb post and article to kick...

2008-02-04T03:35:00.000Z

Well Done Karen! A superb post and article to kickstart you entry into peer-reviewed blogging. They are cute... for a vertebrate...

Nice first post on peer reviewed scientific resear...

2008-02-04T02:32:00.000Z

Nice first post on peer reviewed scientific research. My 12 year old daughter also loves pikas, and we spent quite some time observing and photographing them up near Angel Glacier in Jasper National Park, Alberta, Canada.

Note that Darwin also recognised sexual selection, even though it is hidden away in the fourth chapter, Natural Selection!

Here's a cute pika:http://www.flickr.com/photos/72...

2008-02-04T00:35:00.000Z

Here's a cute pika:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/7230309@N05/2239994347/

Fantastic post pitched at exactly the right level....

2008-02-03T22:16:00.000Z

Fantastic post pitched at exactly the right level.

Now, if you could just knock out two or three of those every day, I'd really start learning stuff.