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#evolution

51 posts47 participants11 posts today

A quotation from Marcus Aurelius

Constantly observe everything coming into being through change, and accustom yourself to the thought that universal nature loves nothing so much as to change the things that are and to create new things in their likeness. For everything that exists is, in a sense, the seed of what will arise from it.
 
[Θεώρει διηνεκῶς πάντα κατὰ μεταβολὴν γινόμενα καὶ ἐθίζου ἐννοεῖν, ὅτι οὐδὲν οὕτως φιλεῖ ἡ τῶν ὅλων φύσις ὡς τὸ τὰ ὄντα μεταβάλλειν καὶ ποιεῖν νέα ὅμοια. σπέρμα γὰρ τρόπον τινὰ πᾶν τὸ ὃν τοῦ ἐξ αὐτοῦ ἐσομένου.]

Marcus Aurelius (AD 121-180) Roman emperor (161-180), Stoic philosopher
Meditations [To Himself; Τὰ εἰς ἑαυτόν], Book 4, ch. 36 (4.36) (AD 161-180) [tr. Hard (2011 ed.)]

Sourcing, notes, alternate translations: wist.info/marcus-aureleus/2668…

15-Apr-2025
A tale of two hummingbird bills


There are two species of streamertail #hummingbirds on the island of #Jamaica, #WestIndies—one with red-billed males (Trochilus polytmus) and the other with black-billed males (T. scitulus). This is a puzzling situation, as many evolutionary biologists have argued that avian #speciation is unlikely to occur on small oceanic #islands.

eurekalert.org/news-releases/1

“It may be difficult, but we ought to admire the savage instinctive hatred of the queen-bee, which urges her to destroy the young queens, her daughters, as soon as they are born, or to perish herself in the combat; for undoubtedly this is for the good of the community; and maternal love or maternal hatred, though the latter fortunately is most rare, is all the same to the inexorable principles of natural selection.”

A very good discussion with Cecilia Padilla-Iglesias and Karen Kramer on the #huntergatherer sexual division of labour debates, and why we impose our ideas about status for women. Do you imagine women need to hunt to have power?...because the Hadza wouldn't think so.

#gender #women #power #evolution #anthropology

open.spotify.com/episode/2ZGAD

SpotifyHunting, Gathering, and the Fluidity of Gender RolesSAPIENS: A Podcast for Everything Human · Episode

The Evolution of Biological Information: How Evolution Creates Complexity, From Viruses to Brains by Christoph Adams, 2024

Why information is the unifying principle that allows us to understand the evolution of complexity in nature. More than 150 years after Darwin’s revolutionary On the Origin of Species, we are still attempting to understand and explain the amazing complexity of life.

@bookstodon
#books
#nonfiction
#biology
#evolution
#information
#complexity

Reading a paper about cloth moth evolution. Really interesting!

At the end of the intro, they hypothesize co-evolution between humans and synanthropic moths. Well, that sounds very unlikely but ok I guess?

Like, recent adaptations maybe, but co-evolution seems a bit extreme.

Also I would expect it to be only in the moth, it sounds unlikely that there would be any impact on human evolution besides cultural practices...

Ich bin davon überzeugt, dass die Natur zu uns spricht, zumindest in dem Sinne, dass sie uns zu Erkenntnissen führen kann, die wir ohne sie vielleicht gar nicht gemacht hätten. So wie die Botschaft dieser eben aufblühenden Traubenhyazinthe:
degriesch.blogspot.com/2025/04
#Frühling #BlaueBlume #Evolution

degriesch.blogspot.comTraubenhyazintheDegriesch: Das Aufblühen einer Trauenhyazinthe vom Rohen ins Reife.