Just when it looked like biologists had finally settled on the true placement of sea spiders on the evolutionary tree, a new study of these bizarre arthropods has come to a dramatically different conclusion.
The findings may bring scientists a step closer to understanding how evolution produced today’s immense diversity of invertebrates.
The sea spider is a puzzle.
Biologists traditionally place it within the same group as spiders and scorpions because its frontal grabbing appendages are similar to arachnids’ muscular mouth appendages, called chelicerae.
But whereas chelicerae grow out of the middle part of arachnid heads, sea spider grabbers seem to sprout from the front.
Because the only arthropods with appendages mounted on the front of their heads are extinct species from 500 million years ago, it seemed likely that sea spiders are living fossils that have retained an extra head segment adorned with appendages.
The living fossil theory got a boost last fall with a study of sea spider development led by Amy Maxmen, a biologist at Harvard University (ScienceNOW, 19 October 2005).
When Maxmen’s team examined sea spider larvae, they found that the nerves that control the frontal grabbers are wired up to the frontmost part of the brain rather than to the middle, as they are in arachnids.
But a new study throws cold water on the theory. Michaël Manuel, a biologist at the University of Pierre and Marie Curie in Paris, and colleagues studied a gene, called Deformed, that guides appendage development in sea spiders.
In arachnids, the Deformed protein steers the development of chelicerae; so if it is also in charge of the development of sea spiders’ grabbers, then that would support their close relationship.
The patterns of Deformed expression indicate that sea spider frontal grabbers are indeed modified versions of the chelicerae of today’s spiders rather than primitive frontal appendages from days of yore.
Back in the good old days [before 1979], the regal Shah [of Iran] served as the poster boy for US power companies selling nuclear reactors TO A SKEPTICAL AMERICAN PUBLIC!
Shah of Iran interview, including belief in ‘Jewish conspiracy’: here.
Iraq supports Iran’s right to pursue nuclear research, its new foreign minister said today, taking a position at odds with that of the Bush administration.
The foreign minister, Hoshyar Zebari, spoke during a visit to Baghdad by Iran’s foreign minister, Manoucher Mottaki, that marked the reconciliation of two countries that fought a long and bloody war two decades ago.
An earlier post, from 8 May 2006, from the Google cache of my ModBlog: After the loss of Tony Blair at the English local elections, many voices, also within his Labour party, call for his resignation.
Also, the last words on Blair’s Cabinet reshuffle to draw attention away from himself not resigning while he should, are not said.
Including on his sacking of Foreign Secretary Jack Straw, a slavish Rightist Blair and Condoleezza Rice and Bush loyalist, but apparently, according to Blair and Bush, still not slavish enough.
The treatment of Jack Straw throws new and alarming light on the dismissal of Robin Cook
Monday May 8, 2006
It wouldn’t be the first time that the Bush administration has played an important role in persuading Tony Blair to sack his foreign secretary.
It was little discussed at the time, but Robin Cook’s demotion in 2001 also followed hostile representations from Washington and private expressions of doubt in Downing Street about his ability to work with a Republican administration.
That Guardian article also writes:
Mr Straw has said repeatedly that it is “inconceivable” that there will be a military strike on Iran and last month dismissed as “nuts” a report that George Bush was keeping on the table the option of using tactical nuclear weapons against Tehran’s nuclear plants.
But Mr Blair, who sees Iran as the world’s biggest threat, does not agree with his former foreign secretary. …
His fate was sealed when the White House called Mr Blair and asked why the foreign secretary kept saying these things.
In any case, Mr Straw had boxed himself in on Iran to the extent that he would have had to resign if a military strike became a reality.
The incident happened Wednesday at Chicago`s Field Museum during a media preview of ‘Tutankhamen and the Golden Age of the Pharaohs,’ which opens to the public Friday.
During remarks from one of the show`s national sponsors, Randy Mehrberg, executive vice president of Chicago-based Exelon Corp., said he was standing in for CEO John Rowe, and that Rowe was such a fan of antiquities, he had a 2,600-year-old sarcophagus in his office.
That infuriated Zahi Hawass, secretary general of Egypt`s Supreme Council of Antiquities, the Chicago Tribune reported.
‘I don`t think this is right,’ Hawass said.
‘An artifact like this is not supposed to be in an office or a home, but in a museum.
How can he sponsor an exhibit like King Tut and keep an artifact like this in his office?’
An Exelon spokeswoman told the Tribune the sarcophagus ‘is something John owns personally and it was acquired in a legal manner.’ ”
This is the entire piece on the Monsters and Critics website, but more details can be found at the Chicago Tribune site (free subscription required): here …”
However, it does raise the big controversy of the relationship of the Kenneth Lay’s (and their friends, like George W Bush) in this world, to art and science.
FAO says human activities, not wild birds, spread H5N1
26-05-2006
The UN’s Food and Agriculture organisation says it is unreasonable to blame wild birds as the source of H5N1, in the absence of rigorous research into their role in the ecology and dynamics of the virus. (Avian flu: Don’t place all the blame on wild birds, 22 May 2006)
Mystery is surrounding the huge declines of birds that migrate thousands of miles from Africa to Europe each spring.
Scientists fear that their dwindling numbers may be a warning of widespread environmental damage.
Climate change, drought and desertification in Africa, and massive pesticide use on African farmland may all be to blame for the declines of once common UK birds such as the Spotted Flycatcher Muscicapa striata, Northern Wheatear Oenanthe oenanthe, Wood Warbler Phylloscopus sibilatrix and European Turtle-dove Streptopelia turtur, a BirdLife Europe-wide study led by the RSPB (BirdLife in the UK) concludes.
At the same time, birds such as the European Roller Coracias garrulus, Pallid Harrier Circus macrourus and Lesser Kestrel Falco naumanni have also vanished from regular breeding sites on the continent.
All three are now classified as near- or globally threatened.
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