[furball4paws]

This article has evolutionary implications, i.e.:

Why do the fossil record and genetic data often give different times for when dprcies emerged?

For example, genetics evidense suggests that rats and mice split 41 million years ago. The fossil evidence suggests 12.5 million years.

The suthors developed a master equation that corrects for size and temperature on mutations. That correction puts the genetic and fossil divergence of species, including rats and mice in the same time frame.

[furball4paws]

PH - this is hardly an evolution paper, but it does have evolutionary implications. It seems to be a slow day, so.....

AG - I know you math and biology.

[big bad easter bunny]

http://www.sciencenews.org/articles/20050212/bob9.asp

[DrNo]

Interesting piece; thanks for posting it!

I remember the 2/3 law well; a prominent Anthropologist, R. Carneiro, made an interesting argument/analysis regarding its relevance for social organization in the 1970s.

[Old Professer]

"dprcies" is the most creative spelling species I have ever seen; either that or I am a total loss of what you meant to type.

Just how big are you finger tips? (sd; re)

[Old Professer]

I am always hitting two keys at once myself, and the wrong letter always come up or they arrive in pairs. :)

[elfman2]

"For example, genetics evidense suggests that rats and mice split 41 million years ago. The fossil evidence suggests 12.5 million years. "

Why assume one split? A split 41 million years exists in the genome, and one 12.5 mil is captured in fossils.

[elfman2]

"For example, genetics evidense suggests that rats and mice split 41 million years ago. The fossil evidence suggests 12.5 million years. "

Hmm. I read that another explanation was proposed beyond what I suggested.

"The DNA of small, hot organisms should mutate faster than that of large, cold organisms, the researchers argue. An organism with a revved-up metabolism generates more mutation-causing free radicals, they observe, and it also produces offspring faster, so a mutation becomes lodged in the population more quickly.

When the researchers use their master equation to correct for the effects of size and temperature, the genetic estimates of divergence times—including those of rats and mice—line up well with the fossil record, says Allen, one of the paper's coauthors."

And I suspect there’s a lot more involved.

[blam]

Excellent article. I just gave my copy of SN to my brother to read this article.

[sourcery]

Life on the Scales

[Ernest_at_the_Beach]

CO see the article on the spacing between trees.

[Junior]

Ping.

[RightWhale]

This kind of scaling is similar to fractal scaling where the power laws resemble fractional dimension. Mandelbrot would see that the forest acts like a single tree.

[gitmo]

The team plans to use its metabolic framework to investigate why the tropics are so much more diverse than temperate zones are and why there are so many more small species than large ones.

Most evolutionary biologists have tended to approach biodiversity questions in terms of historical events, such as landmasses separating, Kaspari says. The idea that size and temperature are the driving forces behind biodiversity is radical, he says.

They will have a hard time describing the high diversity found in the depths of the oceans. Very low termperature, primarily exothermic species, and a remarkably high diversity in sizes of species.

[VadeRetro]

Fascinating! Now I know why my metabolism is so slow. I got too big.

[LiteKeeper]

YEC INTREP

[LibWhacker]

Saw this on Piquepaille's blog today . . . Fascinating subject. Piquepaille also recommends that everyone "save some time to read another long article, Ecology's Big, Hot Idea, published by PLoS Biology, which states that 'the way life uses energy is a unifying principle for ecology in the same way that genetics underpins evolutionary biology.'" Well worth the read.