Biologists From England

"Nature’s rules are universal, and nature has no taste."

"The party really is over....The attitude that has been so appropriate this past 10,000 years, and has allowed the most exploitative-experimental people to rise inexorably if fitfully to the top, has simply ceased to be appropriate. Yet our economies are geared to the exploitative-experimental approach, and so are our political systems. So all of a sudden, or so it seems, our political and economic institutions and philosophies are out of synch with the biological and physical realities of the planet. It might be unrealistic to devise new systems that are radically different, with a radically different motivation; but if we do not do this, then we cannot seriously contemplate long-term survival. Surely it cannot be the case that the only “realistic” course is to head pell-mell for disaster? Is that what the level-headed, sober-suited people are arguing? Our position seems not merely precarious, but ludicrous."

"We cannot claim to take the environment seriously until we acknowledge that a million years is a proper unit of political time. That is the general lesson of history."

"Every society has cause to know that the beneficence of the Earth cannot be taken for granted."

"The effect of natural selection over time is to change the composition of the gene pool."

"A knowledge of our own history is a significant part of culture and, at present, that knowledge is absurdly curtailed."

"I find that as my knowledge grows, so my appreciation deepens."

"This intricate picture has not been easy to put together. It has required a succession of insights over three centuries, each one demanding a huge leap of imagination, and the Earth scientists, though little recognized, have been among the most imaginative of all. But because the insights did require such imagination, each has met with incredulity. No scientists have been more comprehensively scorned than those who have sought to explain how the world behaves. Time after time, however, the most extraordinary ideas have turned out to be right, and the conservative notions have proved inadequate."

"Nature is endlessly inventive, yet endlessly reinvents."

"The crucial notion that the world has not always been the way it is now."

"In particular, to suggest that the creature which is measurably superior in any particular respect is ipso facto morally superior is bad science (since it is not in the brief of science to make such judgments) and also bad moral philosophy (since this is merely a variation on the deeply suspect theme of “might makes right”)."

"In short, we are innately bad at introspection."

"In practice, the attempt to relate the evidence on the ground directly to the Noachian Flood was more or less abandoned after the 1820s."

"Natural selection is not concerned with dignity—only with reproductive success."

"The point is simply to realize that the Earth does indeed behave in extraordinary ways—and incredulity is no defense."

"... The male emperor penguin brooding his mate's egg over the Antarctic winter cannot be relieved by his mate because the growth of the ice shelf puts the sea and food beyond reach. So, in the interests of producing an offspring, he fasts for months—a feat any human would find impossible. Other potential solutions to this problem, such as shorter stints of breeding and trekking repeatedly across the ice shelf during the winter, presumably proved to be less successful. The penguins that fasted all winter were the ones whose ancestors had best survived with this adaptation. Examples like this emphasise how dependent is the organisation of behaviour on the ecology of the species. Differences between individuals in the processes of development are to be expected."

"... But what would happen if genetic determinism could be destroyed once and for all? Will men cease to be patriarchal? And will the rich distribute their possessions to the poor? Fat chance."

"The growing interest in mating preferences in animals has been generated in part by the renewed vitality of evolutionary biology. A characteristic that successfully attracts a member of the opposite sex might become increasingly common in the population simply because it is likely to be transmitted to offspring which in turn may be better than others in winning mates This evolutionary process, which is a part of what is called sexual selection, could be an important source of genetic change."

"Hybrid vigour is so dramatic when it occurs that it seems to make the arguments for outbreeding depression implausible. Nevertheless, some empirical evidence supports the view that outbreeding too much can carry genetic costs in certain species."

"The Cambridge Bird Club published David Lack's first book, The Birds of Cambridgeshire, a year after he completed his studies at Magdalene College, Cambridge. Although it provides few hints as to the ultimate influence this British ornithologist was to have on 20th century ecology, it does contain some glimpses into a mind that was the product of a changing scientific landscape in the field of ornithology, and indeed in biology as a whole. The Birds of Cambridge is not simply a compilation of the species that had been recorded in the county. Instead, Lack devoted almost half of the book to chapters describing the major habitats in the county, observations on migration, historical changes in the county's avifauna, and the resident status of the 160 regularly occurring species. He expressly deemphasized rare and accidental species, a significant departure from the typical emphasis of ornithology at the time."

"Lack's life-long passion for birds began at an early age in the marshes of rural Norfolk. At nine, he compiled his first life list, and at fifteen he began his first bird diary, having seen exactly 100 species. These schoolboy notebooks reveal the remarkable attention to detail in field observation that distinguished his later work. In 1929, Lack went up to Cambridge, but apparently he did not enjoy his formal academic training, from biologists of the day such as Saunders, Carter and Salt. Later (Lack, 1978) he reminisced that his zoology course contained 'nothing about evolution, ecology, behavior or genetics, and of course nothing about birds'! However, he enlivened his dry undergraduate programme by running the Cambridge Bird Club and going on expeditions to places like Greenland and St Kilda."

"... Female song is uncommon in birds."

"The limicoline species in June and July, and the passerine species in late autumn, cross the North Sea primarily with easterly winds and hardly at all with westerly winds, whereas in spring they often set out against the wind. This might merely be due to a stronger migratory urge in spring than autumn, but it also seems possible that westerly winds deter migration in autumn because they are so often associated with rain and other unfavourable conditions."

"... It is uncommon among birds for the female to be as brightly coloured as the male. ... A brightly colored female would be much more dangerous for a species which nested in the open."

"Young Robins commonly disperse to breed between 1 and 4 miles from their place of birth, but only 5 per cent, have been found more than 8 miles from their birth-place. Once a Robin has taken up a territory, it rarely moves more than a mile, only 3 per cent, being found 1–3 miles away and another 3 per cent, over 10 miles away."

"In Lapland, all species start breeding 1–2 months later than in Britain, and the breeding season is much less extended. As compared with Britain, the Corvidae and predatory birds of Lapland lay early relative to the small passerines, but among the small passerines, and also among the predators, the different species tend to breed in the same order relative to each other as they do in Britain."

"... 'duetting' is uncommon in birds, but has been recorded for various tropical species."

"... many large insects come out at dusk. By doing so they escape many enemies, but not all, since here the nightjar tribe takes over, many of which are larger than the largest swifts."

"Indian religions have more spirituality and a greater sense of the Infinite than our western creeds and more liberality. They are not merely tolerant but often hold that different classes of mankind have their own rules of life and suitable beliefs and that he who follows such partial truths does no wrong to the greater and all-inclusive truths on which his circumstances do not permit him to fix his attention ... and are more penetrated with the idea that civilization means a gentle and enlightened temper - an idea sadly forgotten in these days of war."

"In Buddha, says Sir Charles Eliot, “the world is not thought of as the handiwork of a divine personality, nor the moral law as his will. The fact that religion can exist without these ideas is of capital importance.”"

"“Though these narratives,” says Sir Charles Eliot, “are compilations which accepted new matter during several centuries, I see no reason to doubt that the oldest stratum contains the recollections of those who had seen and heard the master.”"

"Michail Fischberg was well aware of the value of genetics in developmental biology, and when I joined him, he had just started using Xenopus as a laboratory animal, on the grounds that it could be grown to sexual maturity within a year and that, as it is wholly aquatic, it is easy to keep in the laboratory. Xenopus can deliver eggs throughout the year, in contrast to the limited-season availability of eggs from Rana and European newts, the organisms of choice for European embryologists. The history of how a frog that naturally occurs only in Africa has come to be one of the half-dozen most used animals for research is bizarre (Gurdon & Hopwood 2000)."

"For these early results in Xenopus to be reproduced in mammals took nearly 40 years (Campbell et al. 1996; Wilmut et al. 1997) in sheep. A very important feature of these first successful mammalian nuclear transfer in sheep was the use of unfertilised eggs, as was actually used in amphibia. Earlier work with mice (McGrath and Solter 1984) used fertilised eggs. Although fertilised eggs can be used (Egli et al. 2007), synchronisation between nucleus and egg is harder to achieve than with the use of unfertilised eggs. A very elegant and important experiment that confirmed the general principle that cell differentiation proceeds with the retention of a complete set of genes was carried out using nuclei with a rearranged genome from mature mouse B or T donor cells (Hochedlinger and Jaenisch 2002). In the course of time, somatic cell nuclear transfer to eggs has been successful in the eggs of mice and other mammals (Wakayama et al. 1998). In each species there seem to be some technical requirements which have to be identified and overcome."

"My own view of development is that one has to try to narrow things down to single entities, whether it's a cell or a nucleus or a molecule, and I'm often ridiculed because I always ask people what concentration their molecule is at, and they'll say that it doesn't matter. I'd say that concentration and time are the two critical things in development. You need to know the concentration, and you need to know how long it has to be there to make a difference – because for cells, a particular concentration of a molecule for a few seconds may not be the same as that concentration for 10 minutes. So I would take the view that what we really lack in developmental biology at the moment is any ability to determine the concentration of proteins, analogous to the measurement of nucleic acids using PCR."

"Cells specialise in ways determined by the concentration of signal that they receive ... The best example of signaling between cells is by the signal molecule activin, discovered in embryos by Makoto Asashima and J. C. Smith."

"Gurdon's (1962) nuclear transplantation experiments showed that genes were neither lost nor permanently inactivated during development. Upon transfer of an intestinal cell nucleus into an enucleated egg, entire swimming tadpoles developed. However, the frequency of this event was low, unless nuclei were first injected into oocytes (DiBerardino et al., 1986), a step that might allow reprogramming by stripping the DNA of mitotically heritable regulatory influences. Thus, although these experiments provided strong evidence that differentiation was reversible, they did not determine whether genes were silenced by active or passive mechanisms in the course of development."

"There is real wisdom there about respecting the environment that more enlightened people, supposedly, have forgotten all about."

"Eating a fish from a river used to be a birth right, but those days are long gone. Now it’s our duty to put them back."

"You do get these similar stories everywhere. And I think part of that is because the underwater world is so unknown. The human mind doesn’t like a vacuum. We will populate that vacuum with the contents of our own head, and often that’s scary stuff. It’s a blank canvas. Often what happens is that real creatures get mixed up. They’ll get our own baggage mixed up with their reality, and part of my job is to sort that out."

"Fear has a useful function: it concentrates the mind. And the appropriate reaction is to work to understand the thing that is causing the fear whether it’s a large fish or anything else. This way both parties are more likely to survive the encounter unscathed."

"The thing about rivers, is if you work with them, if you give them a little bit of help, it’s surprising how much they respond. And I think that is cause for hope. If we can just change our attitudes just a little bit, from being out-and-out exploitative to just sort of drawing back a little bit, and just giving them a little bit of thought and help… they do have this incredible regenerative power."

"We live in the information age where in theory everybody knows anything. You ask somebody where your fish comes from, they don’t know. You go, “Is that because you can’t tell me or because the system is designed to obscure that fact?” Which unfortunately is the case a lot of the time."

"Newton's conversatism is evident in everything connected with his life—his views upon most subjects, his personal habits, attire, etc., but curiously enough we find him among the first to adopt the ideas of Darwin and Wallace on evolution and one of their staunch supporters in the stormy discussions which rent the British Association in the early sixties."

"Certainly humans can be destructive and shortsighted; they can also be forward-thinking and altruistic. Time and time again, people have demonstrated that they care about what Rachel Carson called "the problem of sharing our earth with other creatures," and that they're willing to make sacrifices on those creatures' behalf. Alfred Newton described the slaughter that was occurring along the British coast; the result was the Act for the Preservation of Sea Birds..."

"Newton's Dictionary of Birds, published in four parts by Adam & Charles Black, London, between 1893 and 1896, and as a single bulky volume in 1896 was his magnum opus (Dawson 2008), a monumental work that inspired awe and admiration from all reviewers. ... Newton's main achievements are threefold: (1) helping to initiate the British Ornithologists’ Union and its journal The Ibis, (2) promoting the conservation of birds and (3) his Dictionary of Birds."

"Here is a zoological anecdote. Mr. G. X. is very ugly and hairy. He went to call at a house a few days ago and found only a little girl in the drawing-room. He began to say something civil to her but she would not answer. At last he said, "You don't know who I am!" "Yes, I do," she replied, "I gave you a bun at the Zoological Gardens last Sunday—and, you naughty man, you had no clothes on!""

"To attempt the taking of an Ornithological Census of these islands was a favourite idea of Mr. John Wolley's; so much so, indeed, that I believe he used to regard its accomplishment as the chief requirement of British ornithology. ... Two of the expressions which have lately become very familiar to the ears of naturalists are the "Struggle for Life," and "Preservation of Favoured Races" therein. Each of these points, as it seems to me, would be greatly elucidated by the carrying-out of Mr. Wolley's idea.""

"One species, L. excubitor, derives it trivial designation from the use made of it as a sentinel by falconers when catching wild Hawks. The mode employed is well described by Hoy (Mag. Nat. Hist. iv. p. 342), but it can only be briefly described here. The Hawk-catcher lies hidden in a hut, watching through a small hole the Butcher-bird which is tethered some yards off, and by its actions not only gives him notice of the approach of a Bird-of-Prey, but also indicates of what kind the stranger is. Thus the sentinel is but slightly troubled at a passing Kite, Eagle, or Buzzard; but beats itself on its perch with screams at the sight of a Harrier, while on the appearance of a Falcon or Sparrow-Hawk it drops with cries of distress into a retreat that has been been considerately prepared for it. On this the falconer, by pulling long strings, displays first one and then a second tethered Pigeon, and the instant the Hawk clutches this last, draws a bow-net over both, thus securing his prize."

"Conceptual simplicity, recursiveness, and formal separation of levels of selection are attractive features of these equations. But, of course, being able to point to a relevant and generally non-zero part of selective change is far from showing that group selection can override individual selection when the two are in conflict. Moreover, even the possibility of devising model circumstances in which a positive group-selection term (first term) outweighs a negative individual selection one (second term, assuming no further levels), gives no guarantee that ‘altruism’ can evolve by group selection: we have to consider whether the population can get into the specified state, and, if it can, whether its present trend will continue."

"The incursions of barbaric pastoralists seem to do civilizations less harm in the long run than one might expect. Indeed, two dark ages and renaissances in Europe suggest a recurring pattern in which a renaissance follows an incursion by about 800 years. It may even be suggested that certain genes or traditions of the pastoralists revitalize the conquered people with an ingredient of progress which tends to die out in a large panmictic population for the reasons already discussed. I have in mind altruism itself, or the part of the altruism which is perhaps better described as self-sacrificial daring. By the time of the Renaissance it may be that the mixing of genes and cultures (or of cultures alone if these are the only vehicles, which I doubt) has continued long enough to bring the old mercantile thoughtfulness and the infused daring into conjunction in a few individuals who then find courage for all kinds of inventive innovation against the resistance of established thought and practice. Often, however, the cost in fitness of such altruism and sublimated pugnacity to the individuals concerned is by no means metaphorical, and the benefits to fitness, such as they are, go to a mass of individuals whose genetic correlation with the innovator must be slight indeed. Thus civilization probably slowly reduces its altruism of all kinds, including the kinds needed for cultural creativity"