Convergent Evolution Upends Honeyeaters' Taxonomy 186
grrlscientist writes in with a beautiful piece of science, beautifully explicated. The poignant bit is that the birds in question are all extinct. "Every once in awhile, I will read a scientific paper that astonishes and delights me so much that I can hardly wait to tell you all about it. Such is the situation with a newly published paper about the Hawai'ian Honeyeaters. In short, due to the remarkable power of convergent evolution, Hawai'ian Honeyeaters have thoroughly deceived taxonomists and ornithologists as to their true origin and identity for more than 200 years."
Who is this grrlscientist? (Score:3, Funny)
The link to the name is to a newer entry in the blog in question, which is not surprisingly hers.
Her slashdot page is here [slashdot.org]. I see no comments, I wish she would join more discussions, her journals are interesting enough.
Where'd all these girls come from lately, anyway? It's as if all these women were wondering where to get a man who wouldn't be too scary, and then "oh wow, I know a place where there's lots and lots of guys and they're all scared of US! Too bad they're all nerds, but you can't have everything..."
Re:Who is this grrlscientist? (Score:5, Funny)
The Internet: where Men are Men, Women are Men, and 14 Year Old Girls are FBI Agents.
Something about stats I think... (Score:5, Funny)
Maximum likelihood phylogram constructed from analysis of up to 421 nucleotide sites of b-fibrinogen introns 5 and 7 combined. At nodes are Bayesian posterior probabilities and ML bootstrap values (100 repetitions).
There are two kind of people in the world...the kind that thinks the new Day the Earth Stood Still is science fiction, and the kind that thinks it would have been if Klaatu had said to Barnhardt something like that.
Re:Who is this grrlscientist? (Score:2, Funny)
. . . who are also men.
Re:Predictive power of evolution! (Score:2, Funny)
Re:Nothing New (Score:2, Funny)
If it's just a funny-looking giant-panda-family relative then it gets a different genus and we figure out how to save it. If it's a racoon-family relative we see how quickly we can hunt the thing into extinction.
Re:Predictive power of evolution! (Score:2, Funny)
It's really a nice number. You may be aware of its factors (2*11497)... Yes, it's quite pleasant here. Thanks for inquiring and have a pleasant day. ~~G
Re:Who is this grrlscientist? (Score:5, Funny)
We've come to be your new estrogen-based overlords, and we're offering free iPods to the first 100 people who welcome us.*
So, if I understand the article... (Score:1, Funny)
it would be reasonble that, given Ninjas and Pirates are both active in the same space, i.e. on the Internet, then over time, we're going to see their populations converge into some type of hybrid hooked-hand peg-legged metal star thrower with stealth parrots on their shoulders?
Re:very curious (Score:5, Funny)
He has a masters in readology. He really wasn't commenting on the article. Just his inability to read it.
Re:Slashdotter's are still human... (Score:1, Funny)
Sometimes you just have to settle for a mate with six toes or seven nipples. If your standards are low enough, there's plenty of pussy to go around.