evolution

A Moth’s Dark Side Evolution

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A mutation giving rise to the black form of peppered moths has been discovered and is estimated to have occurred around 1820. Photo by Ilik Saccheri

The story of moth populations turning from light grey to sooty black in England during the Industrial Revolution is a popular schoolbook lesson of evolution, but an explanation for the genes responsible for the change had not been clear until now. Ed Yong reports for Nat Geo’s Phenomena blog:

In the early 19th century, coal-fired power stations belched a miasma of soot over the English countryside, blackening trees between London and Manchester. The pollution was bad news for the peppered moth. This insect, whose pale speckled body blended perfectly against the barks of normal trees, suddenly became conspicuous—a white beacon against blackened bark, and an easy target for birds.

As the decades ticked by, black peppered moths started appearing. These mutants belonged to the same species, but they had traded in their typical colours for a dark look that once again concealed their bodies against the trees. By the end of the century, almost all the moths in Manchester were black.

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The History of Organic Design

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organic design

Carl Aubock II [Austrian, 1900-1957] Ashtray, Model No. 3597, 1948. Ashtray Model No. 4736, 1947. PHOTO: CoExist 

What about the world of design is organic? Literally, yes it involves environmental concerns, also the premise of using Nature as the basis for design. Design that grows – inside out – as the elements of Nature. CoExist delves into the history of organic design:

In the 1930s, the central belief of the organic movement was that furniture and architecture should reflect a harmony between people and nature. In furniture design, this meant natural materials like wood, and smooth, rounded forms. The bent plywood furniture of legendary French designer Jean Prouve came out of this period, as did Marcel Breuer and his laminated birch plywood armchair with a calfskin cushion. These designers prided themselves on being dedicated to their craft, and their pieces were painstakingly made and not easily reproduced. “They saw it as a unique work that refers to nature,” says Olshin. “These pieces tend to be unique one-of-a-kind studio work that’s not easily produced in mass quantities.”

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Should Animal Deaths Worry You?

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Dead starfish line the shore of the German island of Sylt. Mass wildlife die-offs have been interpreted as omens of an impending environmental collapse. PHOTOGRAPH BY DANIEL FRIEDERICHS

Dead starfish line the shore of the German island of Sylt. Mass wildlife die-offs have been interpreted as omens of an impending environmental collapse. PHOTOGRAPH BY DANIEL FRIEDERICHS

Mass-mortality events are sudden, unusual crashes in a population. If you think that you are hearing about them more often these days, you’re probably right. (Elizabeth Kolbert described frog and bat die-offs in a 2009 article; her subsequent book won a Pulitzer Prize recently.) Even mass-mortality experts struggle to parse whether we’re witnessing a genuine epidemic (more properly, an epizootic) of these events. They have also raised another possibility: that we are in the throes of what one researcher called an “epidemic of awareness” of spooky wildlife deaths.

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Predatory Selection

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© BBC

Writing for the BBC Earth section, Colin Barras explores “how the ‘art of killing’ changed the world.” Did multicellular organisms arise because single-celled ones were too easily attacked? Did skeletons evolve primarily as protection against predators? And, maybe the hardest question to answer with certainty: did animals move from water to land because it would be easier to avoid getting eaten? Read the excerpted introduction below and follow the link to learn about these theories and others from Barras.

If you’ve ever seen a lion or a polar bear on the hunt, you know how powerful predators can be. Life may well have been troubled by these killer species since its very beginning, over 3.5 billion years ago, and they have wrought untold death and destruction. As a result they get a bad press: even the word “predator” stems from the Latin term to rob or plunder. Small wonder that, when people imagine paradise, it normally doesn’t have any predators in it.

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