Tangled Bank #6

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Welcome to the 6th edition of Tangled Bank. The entries range from evolutionary psychology to immunology; from bellicose birds to bollocks.

  • First, Jon Christensen of Conservation News writes about Enriqueta Velarde’s work with Heermann’s Gulls and Elegant Terns and their relationship to anchovies and spring sardines. Christenson suggests that, indeed, Predicting Fisheries is for the Birds (scroll-down to Wednesday, June 16, 2004 entry).

  • Next, can our Pleistocene minds explain the failure of students (contra Piaget) to achieve formal operational abilities such as prepositional logic, inductive logic, hypothesis testing, and reasoning about proportions, combinations, probabilities, and correlations? Jeremy E. C. Genovese of Cleveland State University argues that the Piagetian view of learning needs an evolutionary update in Piaget, Pedagogy, and Evolutionary Psychology

  • In our next short but fascinating entry Mobbing Mentality, Mike from 10,000 Birds explains the strategies involved in avian altercations.

  • As a guest blogger for the Invasive Species Weblog, Jason South of Borneo Chela summarizes the natural history and social complications involved in a particularly cute non-native invader of North America in a two-part post: Monk Parakeets I and Monk Parakeets II (these posts were dually nominated by Jennifer Forman Orth). Furthermore, in Hibernation in a Tropical, and Monogamous, Mammal, South explores the sexual life and metabolic economy of the (again adorable) Fat-tailed Dwarf Lemur.

  • When Highway Robbery Pays (scroll to Friday, June 25, 2004), by microbiology graduate student “Syaffolee”, reviews the mechanisms of self/nonself distinction in the immune system and the role of “Robinhoods” in preventing the autoimmune disease multiple sclerosis.

  • Finally, in Pharyngula, the indefatigable P.Z. Myers writes A Father’s Day testimonial to the testicle! His entries encompass testicle anatomy, development, evolution and even *shudder* recipes. Gentle readers, I assure you that these are the most intriguing posts on balls you will read this week.

    • Tangled Bank #7 will be hosted by Radagast, at Rhosgobel, July 14.

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