This past week, I had an interesting new scientific paper come across my desk, on the systematics of fir trees – genus Abies in the Pine family. I realize fir tree systematics is not what the average person might consider compelling reading, but if you look past the statistical tests and lines of code, systematics can be great reading for the imagination. In this paper, the researchers reconstructed the speciation pulse (a period of time…

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My recent work with Botany One writing news briefs for newly published botany research has had me reading a lot of scientific articles, and it just so happens that twice in the last couple of weeks, they’ve dealt with new research on palms. Having worked mostly on legumes as a researcher, I’d never given much thought to these fascinating plants, beyond the fact that they look good on a tropical beach. But there’s a lot to…

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I recently saw a Twitter thread where people who had worked in scientific labs were sharing the most egregious lab safety violations and/or injuries they’d witnessed. It was eye-opening to see the variety of things that can go wrong, even when completing routine tasks. Research is often so intensely repetitive, that it’s easy to believe that just because you’ve done something without incident a thousand times, nothing will go wrong on the thousand and first.…

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Hey folks! Long time no see! I’m back from ‘new baby’ land and looking forward to getting some new and interesting posts up here. As some of you may know, I’ve transitioned from scientific research to freelance science writing. That means that most of my writing time goes to trying to earn my living. But I love this blog and getting to share thoughts and information on biology and evolution with all of you too…

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[This post originally appeared on Science Borealis.] Following his recent keynote address at the Canadian Society of Microbiology conference in Waterloo, Ontario, my Science Borealis colleague, Robert Gooding Townsend and I chatted with Ed Yong, author of the New York Times bestseller, I Contain Multitudes, about getting started in science communication, using humour in your writing, and whether science blogging is dead, among other topics. Here is that conversation, edited for brevity and clarity. RGT:…

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The awesomely named Obamadon gracilis.  Image: Reuters What do Barack Obama, Marco Polo, and the band Green Day have in common? They all have at least one organism named after them. Obama has several, including a bird called Nystalus obamai and an extinct reptile named Obamadon gracilis. Green Day’s honorary organism is the plant Macrocarpaea dies-viridis, “dies-viridis” being Latin for “green day.” Many scientists also have species named after them, usually as recognition for their…

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When I was a kid growing up on a farm in southwestern Ontario, sumac seemed to be everywhere, with its long, spindly stems, big, spreading compound leaves, and fuzzy red berries. I always found the plant beautiful, and had heard that First Nations people used the berries in a refreshing drink that tastes like lemonade (which is true… here’s a simple recipe). But often, we kids were warned by adults that this was “poison sumac,”…

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Who among us hasn’t looked at the big round eyes of a child or a puppy gazing up at us and wished that they’d always stay young and cute like that? You might be surprised to know that this wish has already been partially granted. Both you as an adult and your full-grown dog are examples of what’s referred to in developmental biology as paedomorphosis (“pee-doh-mor-fo-sis”), or the retention of juvenile traits into adulthood. Compared…

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This post originally appeared on Science Borealis “Imagine if living things were as easy to modify as a computer Word file.” So begins John Parrington’s journey through the recent history and present-day pursuits of genetic modification in Redesigning Life. Beginning with its roots in conventional breeding and working right up to the cutting edge fields of optogenetics, gene editing, and synthetic biology, the book is accessible to those with some undergraduate-level genetics, or secondary school…

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We think of scientific progress as working like building blocks constantly being added to a growing structure, but sometimes a scientific discovery can actually lead us to realize that we know less than we thought we did. Take vision, for instance. Vertebrates (animals with backbones) have complex, highly-developed “camera” eyes, which include a lens and an image-forming retina, while our invertebrate evolutionary ancestors had only eye spots, which are comparatively very simple and can only…

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