Review of Edward J. Larson's "Evolution: The Remarkable History of a Scientific Theory"

Cover Image from Amazon.com. 

When I picked up this book at my local public library, my low expectations for what I assumed to be another pop-science introduction to an extraordinarily simple scientific principle were balanced by the both book's small size and the fact that it was free. But this book surprised me. Rather than a labored summary of the principles of natural selection, we are presented with a compelling social history. We are shown, for example, how the Enlightenment made room for scientists to develop (pre-Darwinian) theories on the succession of species, and how lingering strands of religious faith influenced those theories. Given the opportunity for a century and a half of retrospection, readers will ask themselves how the interpretation of empirical evidence might be similarly shaped by cultural context and the beliefs of the interpreter through history and to the present day. While theories of evolution are elaborated upon as they increase appreciation for the history of evolutionary understanding, Larson's Evolution is not primarily an introduction to these theories, but more of a case-study in the history and philosophy of science. I would recommend it as a quick read for aspiring scientists and other truth-seekers who want to take a critical perspective on their reality.

What is a minnow?

People often ask me what constitutes a minnow. There are multiple answers, largely because the word "minnow" is much older than the science of taxonomy. This makes the set of minnows a biological granfalloon whose members may share certain features (such as small size) without sharing their recent evolutionary history.

Fathead minnow (Pimephales promelas)--a small baitfish and both a cyprinid and a leuciscin. Image by former Wikipedia user Rankin1958. Distributed under Creative Commons ShareAlike 3.0.

If you forced a fish biologist to choose a group of fishes that fits the term (and you would have to force them, for the reasons given in the previous paragraph), they would probably choose either the carp family, cyprinidae, or a subgrouping of the cyprinids known as leuciscinae. All of the baitfishes that anglers commonly refer to  as "minnows" are classified within leuciscinae, but this group has the disadvantage of being nastily esoteric when compared to the entire carp family. When the definition is extended to include all of the cyprinids, we can also add the "topminnow" (Poeciliopsis occidentalis) and the "white cloud mountain minnow" (Tanichthys albonubes), among other less famous minnows. Generally speaking, context will determine whether reference is being made to the cyprinid family or a smaller group within it. 

White Cloud Mountain Minnow (Tanichthys albonubes)--A cyprinid, but not a leuciscinid. Photo by sannse. Distributed under Creative Commons ShareAlike 3.0.

Of course, minnows can also be any type of small fish. Since the term was not created with taxonomy in mind, this is also a perfectly acceptable usage. 

The set of minnows is indeed a fuzzy one, and we may have to settle on deciding that while some fishes definitely are minnows, no fishes definitely are not, and the matter has much more to do with popular usage of the word than evolutionary relatedness. To the linguistics mobile! 

On mammoth guts

I think this is very cool: we are able to tell what woolly mammoths ate because sometimes their poop happened to land in permafrost, where it proceeded not to decompose for thousands of years. There are still little bits of undigested plant material. Fecal pollen grains lend themselves especially well to identification because their outer casings are virtually indestructible, meaning they undergo little to no digestion before being passed.
 Rarely, the entire animal was frozen when it died (though not in perfect condition), and now scientists are starting to starting to sequence not only mammoth DNA but also the DNA of their intestinal microflora. The combined insights of these animals' diet and microbial symbionts are helping to illuminate the evolution of the mammalian microbiome and the dietary factors that influence it over a much longer span of time that has previously been possible.

Image from Nova's Science Now, http://www-tc.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/sciencenow/0306/images/03-mamm-01.jpg