Evolution: A Game of Chance | Observations

One of the toughest concepts to grasp about evolution is its lack of direction. Take the classic image of the evolution of man, from knuckle-walking ape to strong, smart hunter:

human-evolution.gif

We view this as the natural progression of life. Truth is, there was no guarantee that some big brained primates in Africa would end up like we are now. It wasn’t inevitable that we grew taller, less hairy, and smarter than our relatives. And it certainly wasn’t guaranteed that single celled bacteria-like critters ended up joining forces into multicellular organisms, eventually leading to big brained primates!

Evolution isn’t predictable, and randomness is key in determining how things change. But that’s not the same as saying life evolves by chance. That’s because while the cause of evolution is random (mutations in our genes) the processes of evolution (selection) is not. It’s kind of like playing poker – the hand you receive is random, but the odds of you winning with it aren’t. And like poker, it’s about much more than just what you’re dealt. Outside factors – your friend’s ability to bluff you in your poker game, or changing environmental conditions in the game of life – also come into play. So while evolution isn’t random, it is a game of chance, and given how many species go extinct, it’s one where the house almost always wins.

Of course chance is important in evolution. Evolution occurs because nothing is perfect, not even the enzymes which replicate our DNA. All cells proliferate and divide, and to do so, they have to duplicate their genetic information each time. The enzymes which do this do their best to proof-read and ensure that they’re faithful to the original code, but they make mistakes. They put in a guanine instead of an adenine or a thymine, and suddenly, the gene is changed. Most of these changes are silent, and don’t affect the final protein that each gene encodes. But every once in awhile these changes have a bigger impact, subbing in different amino acids whose chemical properties alter the protein (usually for the worse, but not always).Or our cells make bigger mistakes – extra copies of entire genes or chromosomes, etc.

These genetic changes don’t anticipate an individual’s needs in any way. Giraffes didn’t “evolve” longer necks because they wanted to reach higher leaves. We didn’t “evolve” bigger brains to be better problem solvers, social creatures, or hunters. The changes themselves are random*. The mechanisms which influence their frequency in a population, however, aren’t. When a change allows you (a mutated animal) to survive and reproduce more than your peers, it’s likely to stay and spread through the population. This is selection, the mechanism that drives evolution. This can mean either natural selection (because it makes you run faster or do something to survive in your environment) or sexual selection (because even if it makes you less likely to survive, the chicks dig it). Either way the selection isn’t random: there’s a reason you got busier than your best friend and produced more offspring. But the mutation occurring in the first place – now that was luck of the draw.

Mistakes made by genetic machinery can lead to huge differences in organisms. Take flowering plants, for example. Flowering plants have a single gene that makes male and female parts of the flower. But in many species, this gene was accidentally duplicated about 120 million years ago. This gene has mutated and undergone selection, and has ended up modified in different species in very different ways. In rockcress (Arabidopsis), the extra copy now causes seed pods to shatter open. But it’s in snap dragons that we see how the smallest changes can have huge consequences. They, too, have two copies of the gene to make reproductive organs. But in these flowers, each copy fairly exclusively makes either male or female parts. This kind of male/female separation is the first step towards the sexes split into individual organisms, like we do. Why? It turns out that mutations causing the addition of a single amino acid in the final protein makes it so that one copy of the gene can only make male bits. That’s it. A single amino acid makes a gene male-only instead of both male and female.

Or, take something as specialized as flight. We like to think that flight evolved because some animals realized (in some sense of the word) the incredible advantage it would be to take to the air. But when you look at the evolution of flight, instead, it seems it evolved, in a sense, by accident. Take the masters of flight – birds – for example.

There are a few key alterations to bird bodies that make it so they can fly. The most obvious, of course, are their feathers. While feathers appear to be so ideally designed for flight, we are able to look back and realize that feathers didn’t start out that way. Through amazing fossil finds, we’re able to glimpse at how feathers arose, and it’s clear that at first, they were used for anything but airborne travel. These protofeathers were little more than hollow filaments, perhaps more akin to hairs, that may have been used in a similar fashion. More mutations occurred, and these filaments began to branch, join together. Indeed, as we might expect for a structure that is undergoing selection and change, there are dinosaurs with feather-like coverings of all kinds, showing that there was a lot of genetic experimentation and variety when it came to early feathers. Not all of these protofeathers were selected for, though, and in the end only one of these many forms ended up looking like the modern feather, thus giving a unique group of animals the chance to fly.

There’s a lot of variety in what scientists think these early feathers were used for, too. Modern birds use feathers for a variety of functions, including mate selection, thermoregulation and camouflage, all of which have been implicated in the evolution of feathers. There was no plan from the beginning, nor did feathers arise overnight to suddenly allow dinosaurs to fly. Instead, accumulations of mutations led to a structure that happened to give birds the chance to take to the air, even though that wasn’t its original use.

The same is true for flying insects. Back in the 19th century, when evolution was fledging as a science, St. George Jackson Mivart asked “What use is half a wing?” At the time he intended to humiliate the idea that wings could have developed without a creator. But studies on insects have shown that half a wing is actually quite useful, particularly for aquatic insects like stoneflies (close relatives of mayflies). Scientists experimentally chopped down the wings of stoneflies to see what happened, and it turned out that though they couldn’t fly, they could sail across the water much more quickly while using less energy to do so. Indeed, early insect wings may have functioned in gliding, only later allowing the creatures to take to the air. Birds can use half a wing, too – undeveloped wings help chicks run up steeper hills – so half a wing is quite a useful thing.

But what’s really key is that if you rewound time and took one of the ancestors of modern birds, a dino with proto-feathers, or a half-winged insect and placed it in the same environment with the same ecological pressures, its decedents wouldn’t necessarily fly.

That’s because if you do replay evolution, you never know what will happen. Recently, scientists have shown this experimentally in the lab with E. coli bacteria. They took a strain of E. coli and separated it into 12 identical petri dishes containing a novel food source that the bacteria could not digest, thus starting with 12 identical colonies in an environment with strong selective pressure. They grew them for some 50,000 generations. Every 500 generations, they froze some of the bacteria. Some 31,500 generations later, one of the twelve colonies developed the ability to feed off of the new nutrient, showing that despite the fact that all of them started the same, were maintained in the same conditions and exposed to the exact same pressures, developing the ability to metabolize the new nutrient was not a guarantee. But even more shocking was that when they replayed that colony’s history, they found that it didn’t always develop the ability, either. In fact, when replayed anywhere from the first to the 19,999th generation, no luck. Some change occurring in the 20,000 generation or so – a good 11,500 generations before they were able to metabolize the new nutrient – had to be in place for the colony to gain its advantageous ability later on.

There’s two reasons for this. The first is that the mutations themselves are random, and the odds of the same mutations occurring in the same order are slim. But there’s another reason we can’t predict evolution: genetic alterations don’t have to be ‘good’ (from a selection standpoint) to stick around, because selection isn’t the only evolutionary mechanism in play. Yes, selection is a big one, but there can be changes in the frequency of a given mutation in a population without selection, too. Genetic drift occurs when events change the gene frequencies in a population for no reason whatsoever. A massive hurricane just happens to wipe out the vast majority of a kind of lizard, for example, leaving the one weird colored male to mate with all the girls. Later, that color may end up being a good thing and allowing the lizards to blend in a new habitat, or it may make them more vulnerable to predators. Genetic drift doesn’t care one bit.

Every mutation is a gamble. Even the smallest mutations – a change of a single nucleotide, called a point mutation – matter. They can lead to terrible diseases in people like sickle cell anemia and cystic fibrosis. Of course, point mutations also lead to antibiotic resistance in bacteria.

What does the role of chance mean for our species? Well, it has to do with how well we can adapt to the changing world. Since we can’t force our bodies to mutate beneficial adaptations (no matter what Marvel tells you), we rely on chance to help our species continue to evolve. And believe me, we as a species need to continue to evolve. Our bodies store fat because in the past, food was sporadic, and storing fat was the best solution to surviving periods of starvation. But now that trait has led to an epidemic of obesity, and related diseases like diabetes. As diseases evolve, too, our treatments fail, leaving us vulnerable to mass casualties on the scale of the bubonic plague. We may very well be on the cusp of the end of the age of man, if random mutations can’t solve the problems presented by our rapidly changing environment. What is the likelihood that man will continue to dominate, proliferate, and stick around when other species go extinct? Well, like any game of chance, you have to look at the odds:

99.99% of all the species that have ever existed are now extinct.

But then again – maybe our species is feeling lucky.

* If you want to get into more detail, actually, mutations aren’t completely random. They, too, are governed by natural laws – our machinery is more likely to sub an adenine for a guanine than for a thymine, for example. Certain sections are more likely to be invaded by transposons… etc. But from the viewpoint of selection, these changes are random – as in, a mutation’s potential selective advantage or disadvantage has no effect on how likely it is to occur.

Originally posted Nov 1st, 2010.

ResearchBlogging.orgReferences:

Airoldi, C., Bergonzi, S., & Davies, B. (2010). Single amino acid change alters the ability to specify male or female organ identity Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1009050107

XU Xing, & GUO Yu (2009). THE ORIGIN AND EARLY EVOLUTION OF FEATHERS: INSIGHTS

FROM RECENT PALEONTOLOGICAL AND NEONTOLOGICAL DATA Verbrata PalAsiatica, 47 (4), 311-329

Perrichot, V., Marion, L., Neraudeau, D., Vullo, R., & Tafforeau, P. (2008). The early evolution of feathers: fossil evidence from Cretaceous amber of France Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, 275 (1639), 1197-1202 DOI: 10.1098/rspb.2008.0003

Marden, J., & Kramer, M. (1994). Surface-Skimming Stoneflies: A Possible Intermediate Stage in Insect Flight Evolution Science, 266 (5184), 427-430 DOI: 10.1126/science.266.5184.427

DIAL, K., RANDALL, R., & DIAL, T. (2006). What Use Is Half a Wing in the Ecology and Evolution of Birds? BioScience, 56 (5) DOI: 10.1641/0006-3568(2006)056[0437:WUIHAW]2.0.CO;2

Blount, Z., Borland, C., & Lenski, R. (2008). Inaugural Article: Historical contingency and the evolution of a key innovation in an experimental population of Escherichia coli Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 105 (23), 7899-7906 DOI: 10.1073/pnas.0803151105

2012 Resolution: The Girl That I Intend To Be

It’s 8:09 PM here in Hawaii – hours until we say goodbye to 2011 and hello to 2012. We’re one of the last to experience the ushering in of the new year, and thus I have had a lot of time to think about my new year’s post. I wanted to sum up 2011 in a grandiose manner. More than just a tally of the year’s accomplishments, I wanted this post to be a resonating last word. But every time I tried to sit down and write, I found myself blocked. That’s the funny thing about writing – the more complete, profound and impressive you want your words to be, the more totally inept you become at writing them.

Well, here I am anyway. I’ve spent the past few days reflecting on the past year, and thinking about my hopes for the next one. In accordance with proper US traditions, I feel obliged to write down some resolutions. It’s probably a silly endeavor – the science has found that new year’s resolutions are indifferent at best. Still, it can’t hurt to try. So here are my hopes and goals for 2012:

  • Take at least 10 minutes every week to reflect on the positive. No matter how bad things are, or how stressful life might get, studies have shown that taking time to focus on what you’re thankful for can improve your health and happiness. So I resolve to take that time and truly contemplate the things in my life that make me happy.
  • Read. I have a number of books that have been gathering dust on my bookshelf for the past few months because I ‘don’t have time’ or ‘have so many more important things to do.’ Well screw it. I love reading – it’s my personal escape from the rest of the world. So, I resolve to read more. A lot more.
  • There’s this great song by Sara Bareilles, and in it, she has this line that always hits me: “I’m not the girl that I intend to be. But I dare you darlin’, just you wait and see.” I think we all are like that to some extent; we have all these high hopes or ideals that we strive to live up to, and end up falling short because we simply don’t care enough to push for it. Well, I resolve to be the person I intend to be, at least as much as I can. Nothing extraordinary, just the best version of me that I can be.

So there you have it. My three new year’s resolutions. What about you? What are your hopes for the new year?

Happy 2012 everyone, and have a wonderful year.

Science Sushi – A Year In Review

It’s almost 2012, and as we all know the world will be ending. I figure it’s as good a time as any to look back. So far this year…

…I have posted 33 posts

…which have gotten 269 comments

…with visitors from more than 15 countries across the globe

…and have been syndicated at BlogHer, Ecology.com and more

The three most popular posts of the year:

3. Instant Zombie: Just Add Salt

2. Time – And Brain Chemistry – Heal All Wounds

1. Mythbusting 101: Organic Farming > Conventional Agriculture

…and last, but certainly not least, my post Why Do Women Cry? Obviously, It’s So They Don’t Get Laid was chosen to be published in Open Lab 2012

Overall, I’d say it’s been a pretty good year – especially since it’s only been six months here at SciAm. Here’s to next year being even better!

Evolution: Watching Speciation Occur | Observations

This is a repost from April 24th, 2010. Watching Speciation Occur is the second in my Evolution series which started with The Curious Case of Dogs

We saw that the littlest differences can lead to dramatic variations when we looked at the wide variety in dogs. But despite their differences, all breeds of dogs are still the same species as each other and their ancestor. How do species split? What causes speciation? And what evidence do we have that speciation has ever occurred?

Critics of evolution often fall back on the maxim that no one has ever seen one species split into two. While that’s clearly a straw man, because most speciation takes far longer than our lifespan to occur, it’s also not true. We have seen species split, and we continue to see species diverging every day.

For example, there were the two new species of American goatsbeards (or salsifies, genus Tragopogon) that sprung into existence in the past century. In the early 1900s, three species of these wildflowers – the western salsify (T. dubius), the meadow salsify (T. pratensis), and the oyster plant (T. porrifolius) – were introduced to the United States from Europe. As their populations expanded, the species interacted, often producing sterile hybrids. But by the 1950s, scientists realized that there were two new variations of goatsbeard growing. While they looked like hybrids, they weren’t sterile. They were perfectly capable of reproducing with their own kind but not with any of the original three species – the classic definition of a new species.

How did this happen? It turns out that the parental plants made mistakes when they created their gametes (analogous to our sperm and eggs). Instead of making gametes with only one copy of each chromosome, they created ones with two or more, a state called polyploidy. Two polyploid gametes from different species, each with double the genetic information they were supposed to have, fused, and created a tetraploid: an creature with 4 sets of chromosomes. Because of the difference in chromosome number, the tetrapoid couldn’t mate with either of its parent species, but it wasn’t prevented from reproducing with fellow accidents.

This process, known as Hybrid Speciation, has been documented a number of times in different plants. But plants aren’t the only ones speciating through hybridization: Heliconius butterflies, too, have split in a similar way.

It doesn’t take a mass of mutations accumulating over generations to create a different species – all it takes is some event that reproductively isolates one group of individuals from another. This can happen very rapidly, in cases like these of polyploidy. A single mutation can be enough. Or it can happen at a much, much slower pace. This is the speciation that evolution is known for – the gradual changes over time that separate species.

But just because we can’t see all speciation events from start to finish doesn’t mean we can’t see species splitting. If the theory of evolution is true, we would expect to find species in various stages of separation all over the globe. There would be ones that have just begun to split, showing reproductive isolation, and those that might still look like one species but haven’t interbred for thousands of years. Indeed, that is exactly what we find.

The apple maggot fly, Rhagoletis pomonella is a prime example of a species just beginning to diverge. These flies are native to the United States, and up until the discovery of the Americas by Europeans, fed solely on hawthorns. But with the arrival of new people came a new potential food source to its habitat: apples. At first, the flies ignored the tasty treats. But over time, some flies realized they could eat the apples, too, and began switching trees. While alone this doesn’t explain why the flies would speciate, a curious quirk of their biology does: apple maggot flies mate on the tree they’re born on. As a few flies jumped trees, they cut themselves off from the rest of their species, even though they were but a few feet away. When geneticists took a closer look in the late 20th century, they found that the two types – those that feed on apples and those that feed on hawthorns – have different allele frequencies. Indeed, right under our noses, Rhagoletis pomonella began the long journey of speciation.

As we would expect, other animals are much further along in the process – although we don’t always realize it until we look at their genes.

Orcas (Orcinus orca), better known as killer whales, all look fairly similar. They’re big dolphins with black and white patches that hunt in packs and perform neat tricks at Sea World. But for several decades now, marine mammalogists have thought that there was more to the story. Behavioral studies have revealed that different groups of orcas have different behavioral traits. They feed on different animals, act differently, and even talk differently. But without a way to follow the whales underwater to see who they mate with, the scientists couldn’t be sure if the different whale cultures were simply quirks passed on from generation to generation or a hint at much more.

Now, geneticists have done what the behavioral researchers could not. They looked at how the whales breed. When they looked at the entire mitochondrial genome from 139 different whales throughout the globe, they found dramatic differences. These data suggested there are indeed at least three different species of killer whale. Phylogenetic analysis indicated that the different species of orca have been separated for 150,000 to 700,000 years.

Why did the orcas split? The truth is, we don’t know. Perhaps it was a side effect of modifications for hunting different prey sources, or perhaps there was some kind of physical barrier between populations that has since disappeared. All we know is that while we were busy painting cave walls, something caused groups of orcas to split, creating multiple species.

There are many different reasons why species diverge. The easiest, and most obvious, is some kind of physical barrier – a phenomenon called Allopatric Speciation. If you look at fish species in the Gulf of Mexico and off the coast of California, you’ll find there are a lot of similarities between them. Indeed, some of the species look almost identical. Scientists have looked at their genes, and species on either side of that thin land bridge are more closely related to each other than they are to other species, even ones in their area. What happened is that a long time ago, the continents of North and South America were separated, and the oceans were connected. When the two land masses merged, populations of species were isolated on either side. Over time, these fish have diverged enough to be separate species.

Species can split without such clear boundaries, too. When species diverge like the apple maggot flies – without a complete, physical barrier – it’s called Sympatric Speciation. Sympatric speciation can occur for all kinds of reasons. All it takes is something that makes one group have less sex with another.

For one species of Monarch flycatchers (Monarcha castaneiventris), it was all about looks. These little insectivores live on Solomon Islands, east of Papua New Guinea. At some point, a small group of them developed a single amino acid mutation in the gene for a protein called melanin, which dictates the bird’s color pattern. Monarcha castaneiventris megarhynchus (chestnut) and a subspecies on neighboring satellite islands, Monarcha castaneiventris ugiensis(black)Some flycatchers are all black, while others have chestnut colored bellies. Even though the two groups are perfectly capable of producing viable offspring, they don’t mix in the wild. Researchers found that the birds already see the other group as a different species. The males, which are fiercely territorial, don’t react when a differently colored male enters their turf. Like the apple maggot flies, the flycatchers are no longer interbreeding, and have thus taken the first step towards becoming two different species.

These might seem like little changes, but remember, as we learned with dogs, little changes can add up. Because they’re not interbreeding, these different groups will accumulate even more differences over time. As they do, they will start to look less and less alike. The resultant animals will be like the species we clearly see today. Perhaps some will adapt to a lifestyle entirely different from their sister species – the orcas, for example, may diverge dramatically as small changes allow them to be better suited to their unique prey types. Others may stay fairly similar, even hard to tell apart, like various species of squirrels are today.

The point is that all kinds of creatures, from the smallest insects to the largest mammals, are undergoing speciation right now. We have watched species split, and we continue to see them diverge. Speciation is occurring all around us. Evolution didn’t just happen in the past; it’s happening right now, and will continue on long after we stop looking for it.

  1. Soltis, D., & Soltis, P. (1989). Allopolyploid Speciation in Tragopogon: Insights from Chloroplast DNA American Journal of Botany, 76 (8) DOI: 10.2307/2444824

  2. McPheron, B., Smith, D., & Berlocher, S. (1988). Genetic differences between host races of Rhagoletis pomonella Nature, 336 (6194), 64-66 DOI: 10.1038/336064a0
  3. Uy, J., Moyle, R., Filardi, C., & Cheviron, Z. (2009). Difference in Plumage Color Used in Species Recognition between Incipient Species Is Linked to a Single Amino Acid Substitution in the Melanocortin?1 Receptor The American Naturalist, 174 (2), 244-254 DOI: 10.1086/600084
  4. Phillip A Morin1, Frederick I Archer, Andrew D Foote, Julie Vilstrup, Eric E Allen, Paul Wade, John Durban, Kim Parsons, Robert Pitman, Lewyn Li, Pascal Bouffard, Sandra C Abel Nielsen, Morten Rasmussen, Eske Willerslev, M. Thomas P Gilbert, & Timothy Harkins (2010). Complete mitochondrial genome phylogeographic analysis of killer whales (Orcinus orca) indicates multiple species Genome Research

Image Credits:

Salsify plate showing two new species from the New Zealand Plant Radiation Network (taken from Ownbey, 1950 in which the species were described)

Flycatchers image by Robert Boyle, as featured on Science Now

The Benefits of Thanks

Today is Thanksgiving – a day to relax, take a step back, and honestly express gratitude.

Gratitude. By definition, it is the state of being grateful or thankful. It is universally seen as a positive human attribute. You can hear how highly gratitude is thought of over and over again in sayings from all over the world:

A thankful heart is not only the greatest virtue, but the parent of all the other virtues. -Roman saying

The truly rich are those who enjoy what they have. – Yiddish proverb

If you’re not thankful then you’re a wizard. – African Proverb

Perhaps the merits of gratitude have been parised for centuries in so many cultures for good reason. Studies have shown that expressing gratitude is connected to a wide variety of positive outcomes.

Gratitude may help us deal with stress, for example. Over the past decade, evidence has been mounting to show that gratitude mitigates the negative consequences of traumatic events. Studies have found that soldiers who score higher on dispositional gratitude are less likely to develop post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Similarly, another study found an inverse correlation between gratitude and PTSD symptom levels in college women who experienced trauma.

Of course, the benefits of gratitude extend far beyond serious traumatic events. Simply expressing gratitude has positive effects on our daily lives. In one study, Kent State researchers had students write one letter every two weeks with the simple ground rules that it had to be positively expressive, require some insight and reflection, be nontrivial and contain a high level of appreciation or gratitude. After each letter, students completed a survey to gauge their moods, satisfaction with life and feelings of gratitude and happiness – all of which increased after each letter – the more they wrote, the happier they were.

Similar results have been found in a number of other studies. Middle school students that counted their blessings expressed enhanced self-reported gratitude, optimism, life satisfaction, and decreased negative feelings. In adults, the keeping of gratitude journals led to overall happier thoughts. Not only were the journal keepers in a better mood, they also were more likely to to report having helped someone with a personal problem or offered emotional support to another, suggesting that the positive affects of gratitude expand outward.

Given the benefits of expressing thanks, I decided to do so myself. Yesterday, I sat on my couch with a pad of paper and my favorite purple sharpie pen and wrote out all the little things in my life that I am thankful for. It turned out to be quite a long list – about 8 pages long, actually. So rather than bore you with the whole thing, I’ve included a few of my favorite highlights:

  • I am thankful for all of the people in my life who have made me smile. If you have ever been my friend, then you have surely made me smile a lot, so I am extra grateful for you.
  • I am thankful for my family, who helped me become the woman I am today.
  • I am thankful for Bora, for the term ‘BlogFather’ is more fitting than he knows, and for the rest of my eccentric but lovable blogging family.
  • I am thankful for cheese. Yes, cheese. Cheese, bacon, sushi, curry, pasta and Dippin’ Dots. My six basic food groups.
  • I’m thankful to the natural world for providing beautiful, intricate and complex puzzles that I, as a scientist, am lucky enough to study.
  • I am thankful for my liver, for without its championship team of Alcohol Dehydrogenase and Aldehyde Dehydrogenase, I never could have become the marine scientist I am today. (#drunksci)
  • I am thankful for the people and things that inspire me to do what I love.
  • I am thankful for my wonderful roommate, who always knows whether a situation requires a bottle of wine, a hug, or a patient ear.
  • I am thankful to her cat, Yoshi, for finally forgiving me for making him do the cat dance.
  • I am thankful to the people who remind me that the greatest thing you can do for yourself is to love someone else fully.
  • I am thankful for little surprises.
  • And last but not least, thank you, for it is you, my readers, that make blogging worthwhile.

Enjoy your day of thanks, and don’t forget to express to the people you love just how thankful you are to have them. Happy Thanksgiving!

Image c/o holidays.kaboose.com

Two Words: An Open Letter To Ed Rybicki

Dear Ed,

It seems you are upset at the torrent of outrage your Futures piece has caused. You’re “dumbfounded” that anyone could read so much into your frivolous little tale, and honestly didn’t mean for your short story to harm or offend anyone. After all, it was just supposed to be a joke.

That is totally understandable – I mean, come on, haven’t we all been there? You’re having this fun, friendly conversation with a colleague/friend/family member/whomever and you make some comment or joke. You giggle a little – because hey! It was a funny! – only to see that your companion clearly feels otherwise. You didn’t mean to offend, but by the awkward silence and sudden look of confusion, anger, or even hurt on their face, you realize that you did. It was completely by accident.

Most people’s instantaneous reaction to the above scenario is two simple words. Those words might be followed by an explanation of the joke to see if it changes the response (“See, it’s funny because I said XYZ when, really, we all know ABC…”). Or, even, when that clearly doesn’t improve things, defensive statements like “Wait – that didn’t come off right” or “That’s not what I meant” or even “What I meant to say was…”, but the first thing, the first thing that comes out of their mouth, is this:

“I’m sorry.”

Ed, you say that you totally didn’t mean to offend anyone, and with the benefit of the doubt, I’ll believe you. But you did offend people. A lot of people, especially women in science.

You say that the image painted by others of you isn’t accurate, that Womanspace isn’t a reflection of your views of women and gender, and that it was supposed to come off as a joke that, if anything, says women are superhuman while men are bumbling idiots.

But for what seems to be a large percentage of its readers, it didn’t. And while you seem to be able to go on and on about how really good a person you are, and how you didn’t mean any harm, and it was just a joke, you have to realize by now that to many people, it was offensive and anything but funny.

If Womanspace doesn’t reflect your views of gender and women, it should bother you that so many of your colleagues and other scientists were offended. When someone points out that your story reinforces negative stereotypes and promotes the kind of environment that discourages women from STEM careers, you should feel badly that your joke came off so poorly. That is, like when you accidentally step on someone’s toes, you should feel remorse that you caused harm to another when you really didn’t mean to.

Yes, you’re allowed to defend yourself. It’s understandable that you wanted to make sure that people know you didn’t mean to alienate women, or reinforce the notion that women should cook and clean while men ponder the intricacies of the universe. No one will fault you for quickly saying “Wait! I didn’t mean for it to sound like that!”

There was just one problem: your response lacked the two little words that should have been your knee-jerk reaction to making so many people feel badly. You should have felt compelled to apologize for the unintentional harm you may have caused.

In short, you should have said you’re sorry.

The fact that you didn’t reveals more about you as a person than any terribly-written, stereotypical science fiction story ever could.

The Joke Isn’t Funny – It’s Harmful

I am one of the people who reacted strongly to a science fiction story sexist piece of crap published by Nature in their Futures section titled Womanspace. In it, the Draper-esque protagonist discovers that his wife’s apparently miraculous shopping aptitude is due to her remarkable ability to transit into parallel universes, an extension of her evolutionary success as a ‘gatherer’ as opposed to his innate role as the ‘hunter’.

There was plenty of outrage, but not everyone had the same reaction that I did. Comments supporting (or at least not outright condemning) the author, Ed Rybicki, and the editor who approved the story, Henry Gee, all sound about the same: lighten up, ladies. There’s no call to be angry – it’s just a joke, even if it’s a bad one.

For example, Michele Busby wrote in her defense of Womanspace that we should “cut Ed a break” because, after all, it’s not “worth getting upset about.” A commenter on Janet Stemwedel’s post was more defensive: “Until your response, the sexism was humor. Now, your foolishness makes it an actual issue. Who ACTUALLY harmed interpretation of women?” Meanwhile, though he doesn’t condone the work, Hank Campbell feels that “the “Womanspace” thing was just goofing around, pretty harmless.”

That’s the thing, though. Reinforcing negative gender stereotypes is anything but harmless.

It was Claude Steele and Joshua Aronson who, in 1995, first coined the term stereotype threat. It refers to how the knowledge of a prejudicial stereotype can lead to enough anxiety that a person actually ends up confirming the image. Since that landmark paper, more than 300 studies have found evidence for the pervasive negative effects of societal stereotypes.

When it comes to women, studies have shown that stereotype threat is very real. Women are stereotyped to be worse at math than men due to lower test scores. But it turns out that women only score lower when they are reminded of their gender or take the test in the presence of men. In fact, the greater the number of men in the room with a female test taker, the worse she will do. The gender profile of the environment has no effect, however, on women’s verbal test scores, where no such inferiority stereotype exists.

While Nature was happy to report that “overt sexism is no longer the norm” in STEM careers, they failed to recognize that women don’t have to be blatantly discriminated against for the gender gap to persist. There are long-term career consequences to gender stereotypes. Female undergraduates in male dominated fields report higher levels of sex discrimination, and are more likely to report thoughts of changing majors compared to those in fields that aren’t dominated by men. Furthermore, when women’s sense of belonging in STEM fields is reduced by perceptions of a stereotypical environment, they earn lower course grades and are less likely to express interest in pursuing careers in those subjects.

The worst part, though, is that these negative effects start at a very young age. Simply reminding girls that they are girls is enough to drive down their math test scores. Even at the age of five, girls will score 15% lower on a math skills test when they perform a gender-reinforcing activity first.

So, yes, I was outraged to see something which comes off as overtly sexist and reinforces gender stereotypes published under Nature‘s name, whether it was intended to be humorous or not. The result of Womanspace is that women in science feel alienated. It is exactly the kind of environment that contributes to the STEM gender gap. Just listen to how women reacted:

Kate Clancy: “I felt completely alienated and abandoned by a journal that is supposed to publish science”.

Anne Jefferson: “it seems in every way designed to make me feel othered and excluded from the scientific academy”

Ali Kerwein: “I am so disappointed. I admired this publication so much, and now I feel completely disgusted.”

Ed may not have meant to demoralize women scientists when he wrote Womanspace, but by reinforcing the stereotype of the domesticated woman as opposed to the scientific man, he did just that. But even worse, as Anne Jefferson said, by approving of such a piece, Nature has given this kind of sexist attitude their highly-valued stamp of approval.

Shame on you, Nature, for contributing to the kind of environment which leads to stereotype threat – the kind of environment that tells girls they shouldn’t bother becoming a scientist. Because while I can shrug off some bigoted humor, they can’t. They’re the ones harmed by such careless support of antiquated gender roles. I am mad at you for them. You have done wrong by little nerdy girls everywhere, Nature, and you need to acknowledge it. Anything less says that you simply don’t care.

The Charismatic Misogynist

If you skim the twitter hashtag #mencallmethings, it’s clear that there are plenty of blatant misogynists to go around. As a woman, it’s impossible to ignore this kind of clear and dangerous language. But, in my experience, these comments aren’t the norm. Only a small, vocal and problematic group of men belittle women so coarsely. Many more do so unintentionally, even charismatically, with a smile.

In a couple months, my network coblogger Janet and I are going to be moderating a session at Science Online about women in science blogging. I’ve been thinking a lot about what I want to say. I attended the session on this topic last year, which I posted about afterwards (I’ve included that post at the bottom of this post, as extra food for thought).

It seems like fate that now, while I’m tossing these issues around in my brain, Ed Rybicki‘s Womanspace is brought to my attention. As a blogger for Scientific American, I work for Nature Publishing. I am deeply disappointed that an article like this has been published by a company I am associated with in any way.

Rybicki doesn’t threaten rape or malign the general intelligence of women. But make no mistake – this article is misogynistic. As Pieter van Dokkum expressed in the comments section: “What this story highlights is the issue of unintentional, subconscious bias, which is something that our community has to come to grips with… the story places women and men in fundamentally different categories: women are well-organized and domestically-oriented whereas men are useless in everyday life but come up with theories about the universe.”

Emily, from The Biology Files, said it perfectly:

“After reducing women to a stereotyped shopping monolith, cheekily analogizing women’s behaviors as a parallel universe (can someone finally kill the astronomic analogies for men vs women, please? This book is almost 20 years old), and expressing fear over the empowerment of women, he now marginalizes women into superficiality, hazarding that given our newfound knowledge, we will exercise it to get rid of ugly men and select “better-looking” versions.”

I get what Ed was trying to do – he was trying to be funny. I might even be able to turn off my internal angry feminist for a moment and say that he didn’t mean to reinforce gender stereotypes, and instead was trying to tell a cute story about his wife. He wasn’t trying to be a complete jerk.

The thing is, a guy doesn’t have to be a complete jerk to be sexist. There are plenty of charismatic misogynists out there – guys who don’t notice how they say things that demean women, especially when they’re trying to be complimentary. They don’t even realize how their frivolous and yes, sometimes even funny, comments contribute to the derision of women in society and in STEM fields in particular.

A commenter here, for example, began a supportive comment on a post of mine with: “I think Christie is correct, and I’m not just saying that because according to her profile picture, she’s absolutely beautiful. [emphasis mine]”. I get it. He was trying to be flattering – but instead, he implied that my looks are the most important factor in whether or not something I write is correct. It’s hardly the first comment I’ve received like that.

I want to know is why on Earth a piece like Womanspace is being published by Nature in the first place. Therese is right: this article lacks any kind of scientific merit, and instead flippantly tosses around gender stereotypes in a poor attempt at humor. I stand beside Ylaine Gerardin and Tami Lieberman in saying it is disturbing that “the world’s leading scientific journal would choose to publish a piece – even a ‘tongue-in-cheek’ science fiction story – that promulgates such nonsensical Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus ideas” and that “Nature should be setting an example by not literally alienating women, but instead encouraging the dissolution of the last bastions of ‘manspace'”. It just adds insult to injury that this is published in a section called “Futures” – I sincerely hope this isn’t Nature‘s idea of looking ahead at the scientific community of the future.

On a side note, I encourage those of you going to Science Online 2012 to join Janet and I for our session. Clearly, there is still a lot to discuss.
 
 
 
Update: Nature has closed commenting reopened! on the article itself. But, you can tell Ed Rybicki or Henry Gee (the editor in charge of Futures) how you feel on twitter. Or, post on Futures’ wall on Facebook and share your opinions.

Some other responses to Womanspace (or just go see Jacquelyn’s awesome list here):

 
 
 
 

 
 
 
 

____________________________________________________________________________________________
posted 1/25/2011

Observations | I’ve never been very good at hiding.

“I am not a pretty girl – that is not what I do.”

Ani DiFranco

A few weeks ago, I received a facebook message. It was from a male admirer of my blog (and his fiancée, coincidentally). In it, he said “You are GORGEOUS, and your tits look absolutely incredible.” I froze. I know it was meant as a compliment, but it made me really uncomfortable. It was a sentiment that was much more muted in other comments I’d gotten. You know, ones like “wow, you’re an amazing writer AND you’re hot?” or “who would have thought a pretty girl could be so good at science?”

Of course, if you point out to any of these people that their comments are sexist, they instantly defend themselves and say that’s not what they meant. They weren’t trying to imply women should be less good at science or writing, they just wanted to say that it’s cool that I’m pretty and nerdy. They think women in science are great.

shirtless blogger.jpg
Is this Brian Switek without the plaid?

But what they fail to realize is the fact that my looks are important enough to comment on is what makes their comments sexist.Sure, maybe male bloggers get the occasional “you’re hot”. But can Ed Yong or Carl Zimmer say they’ve gotten comments about their packages? Has any fan approached them and heralded their tight abs or buttocks? I’m guessing the answer is no*. No one is amazed that a guy like Eric Johnson is good looking and a good writer, because no one thinks it strange that a good looking guy has other talents, too. Men can look however and do whatever – their intellectual pursuits and their physical appearance aren’t intrinsically linked. But for a woman, everything is linked to how she looks. Everything.

Sexism is a hard thing for me to talk about. My generation likes to think we’re past it. Our great-grandmothers and grandmothers fought to secure women equal pay and the right to vote, and our mothers continued to fight through the feminist movement in the 70s and 80s to ensure that we don’t feel as excluded or put down as they did. That was their fight, their struggle, their blood, sweat and tears. They suffered so I don’t have to.

Growing up I was a tomboy. I went to liberal private schools and was allowed to be as strong minded and bodied as I desired. In college, I had powerful female professors (with kids!) that served as my mentors and role models, and I never once felt like being a woman in science was frowned upon.

So why did I go the the session on women in science blogging? I wasn’t set on attending beforehand. But I was one of the many women who talked to Kate Clancy, and in my conversation with her and Anne and the rest of the women at that table, I realized that, more than ever, I needed to be in that room. I needed to hear the struggles of my fellow female bloggers, even if I haven’t experienced them, and I need to be a part of the conversation. Because even if I haven’t been attacked for my gender on my blog yet, I could, and probably will, be. The battle against inequality was not just my mother and my grandmother’s war; it’s my fight, too.

After all, if you look around at the current science blogosphere, you can’t help but think there’s something wrong. Despite the fact that over half of the attendees at Science Online were women, female bloggers make up a small portion of the high-profile blogging networks. As Jennifer Rohn noted last year, no major blogging network even comes close to a 50/50 male/female ratio. Perhaps it is in part the fault of female bloggers for being too meek, mannered and mild and not shamelessly self-promoting in every way they can – but I doubt it.

Why isn’t there a girl version of Ed Yong or Carl Zimmer? Why is there no woman in the elite list of the most well known science bloggers? The excuse that there aren’t enough high-quality female science writers just doesn’t cut it anymore. They’re out there, and they have been for years. Incredible women like Sheril Kirshenbaum have been standing up and taking the full brunt of the internet’s misogyny with the utmost grace. We have to be honest with ourselves as a community. The problem isn’t that the women aren’t there. It’s that they aren’t being taken as seriously.

Most women I know hate the idea that their gender is a factor in their professional life. A friend of mine and fellow graduate student, for example, recounts angrily how she found out she was referred to by one of the male professors her first year as “the pretty one.” She intentionally wears t-shirts, jeans, and little make up at work to downplay her femininity and be seen as just another graduate student. One of my blogging friends, similarly, has told me she blogs under a pseudonym simply because she wants to take her looks out of the equation.

I’m not so complacent. I shouldn’t have to hide the fact that I am a woman just to be seen as a brilliant scientist or a great writer. And I am young and bull-headed and perhaps just naive enough not to hide. You might notice my looks first, but I’ll be damned if you don’t hear my words, too.

I don’t have the same risk-aversion that other female scientists or science writers might because I haven’t been beaten down or held back. Nor am I timid. Trust me, no one has ever accused me of being too quiet. Call me ambitious, driven, or even a bitch – those words are all compliments in my book – but be certain that I will not allow my gender to prevent me from achieving success.

Clearly, we need to make a change in the science blogging community. I won’t stand up and say I have all the answers. I don’t know how to better encourage other female science bloggers other than to say I’ve got your back. I can’t assuage the fears of those who think if they put their name and face on a blog, they’ll lose credibility or get attacked, other than to lead by example. But maybe I don’t have to do more than that. Perhaps all it will take to tip the scales is a woman who is willing to say “bring it” and is still standing a year later.

Well, then. Bring it.

*I’d comment on whether or not the packages, abs or buttocks of the male bloggers are up to par, but I think I’ll let their wives be the judges instead.

UPDATE: Here is the video of the session:

Perils of Blogging as a Woman under a Real Name from Smartley-Dunn on Vimeo.

Science Bloggers Compete for $10,000

Last year, I entered this $10,000 blogging scholarship on a whim. After all, why not? $10,000 is a lot of money, money that as a poor grad student, I could definitely use. I remember I was so excited when I saw that I’d made it into the list of finalists – the only science blogger in the running. I was even more excited, and a little amazed, when I won, thanks to the incredible support of the science blogging community.

This year, I’m thrilled to see that there are a whopping total of six science bloggers in the race. I’m glad I won last year, because I’d hate to have to compete with the talent in the running now! I encourage you to visit each and every one of the six blogs I’m about to link to, as well as the other finalists. These students need votes to win the scholarship, which means they need your help. All you have to do is follow this link and vote for the one you think deserves to win the most. I also want to encourage you to pass this along and get your friends, family and social networks to do the same.

So, without further ado, here are the science finalists:

Biology Blogs

Yes, I’m listing the bio blogs first. I’m biased. Given my career field of choice, it’s no wonder that these blogs have a special place in my heart. Bio blogs are a whopping 15% of the entries this year – way to go, biology lovers! Here are the three bio-themed blogs, in order of appearance in the overall list:

David Shiffman: Southern Fried Science

Ahoy, matey! If you’ve never sailed over to Southern Fried Science before, you don’t know what you’re missing. This marine-themed blog is the perfect blend of science and saltiness. David’s coblogger, Andrew, just posted a nice list of some of David’s best posts, which I highly recommend reading.

Heather Cohen: Escaping Anergy

It’s not easy to make immunology engaging and interesting, but Heather does a fantastic job of it. She clearly has a passion for what she does, and loves to share it with others. She hopes that her blog will help connect the general public to a field that is often overhyped and misinterpreted – and I’d say she’s off to a damn good start.

Jacquelyn Gill: Contemplative Mammoth

I grew up reading prehistorical fiction like The Clan of the Cave Bear. As a child, I wished more than anything I could travel back and time and walk among mammoths. Well, Jacquelyn does, every day. Her job as a paleoecologist is to use clues in the fossil record and from the world around us to recreate and study the past. Her blog brings readers back with her, exploring the science which lets us learn about the world as it once was as well as what it’s like to be a graduate student now, studing animals long since extinct.

Physics & Astronomy

I saw this great cartoon the other day, which definitely applies here. I guess if you can’t study the life on this planet, studying the rest of the universe is not a bad compromise. Two finalists manage to make the non-life sciences fun to read:

Philip Tanedo: Quantum Diaries

A little confession: I almost became a physicist. At least, I listed myself as a physics major when I started undergrad. In the end, I couldn’t hack it as a theoretical physicist, so I have a lot of respect for anyone who can make the Higgs boson into something I actually care about. Philip (or Flip) has a knack for turning some of the most complex topics out there into fun, entertaining reads.

Ray Sanders: Dear Astronomer.com

Ray wants to be sure that no astronomy question goes unanswered. If you have a question about our universe, he’ll try to answer it. He started his blog with the express purpose of acting as resource, complete with a good helping of “cheeky shenanigans to help make Astronomy fun and entertaining.”

Data Analysis

What is science without good data analysis? Sure, the last blog on my list isn’t *exactly* a science blog, but he sneaks in here because anyone who finds talking about data to be a fun hobby is a scientist at heart.

Kevin Flora: EdMatics

Kevin is a perfect example of why this contest is so great. I’d never heard of EdMantics before this, but when I checked out his blog, I was stunned. Who thought data could be so interesting? Kevin writes about presenting and analyzing data as if it is an art form – which, frankly, it is. He gets major kudos from me for turning most scientists’ least favorite part of the job into something beautiful.