Captain, Governor, and Weatherman

Captain, Governor, and Weatherman

Captain, Governor, and Weatherman Robert Fitzroy became captain of the HMS Beagle at the ripe old age of 26. This was because the previous Captain, Pringle Stokes, had shot himself in 1828. The life of a naval captain wasn’t an easy one. The voyages away from home and...
What’s Stomata With You?

What’s Stomata With You?

What’s Stomata With You? Here’s something I bet you’ve never thought about. At least if you’re not really into the mechanics of plant biology. Did you know that plants carefully regulate the loss of water depending on humidity?   They do this through small,...
A “Whiff” of Oxygen

A “Whiff” of Oxygen

A “Whiff” of Oxygen Ready for a whiff of oxygen that’s 2.5 billion years old?   Our Earth wasn’t always the oxygen-rich planet it is today. That didn’t happen until 2.4 billion years ago. That’s the time complex organisms marched onto the scene and evolved...

Carrion My Wayward Plant

A friend of mine recently posed a question on his podcast about carrion plants.  If you don’t know what one is, the carrion plant emits an odor that is very similar to rotting flesh.This odor attracts flies which serve to pollinate the flower. The question posed...

Artificial Selection

We don’t know why dogs became man’s best friend, but we have some ideas.  And those ideas take us back anywhere from 10,000 to 40,000 years ago.They are perhaps the perfect visual example when it comes to witnessing the power of the gene pool and how a selection...