1. “Evolutionary speculation constitutes a kind of metascience, which has the same intellectual fascination for some biologists that metaphysical speculation possessed for some mediaeval scholastics. It can be considered a relatively harmless habit, like eating peanuts, unless it assumes the form of an obsession; then it becomes a vice” (Stanier, 1970) BIOS E-127 – 11.09.07

2. Points re: “Spandrels” Spandrels (p.581) Dr. Pangloss (p.583) First target? (p.583) Natural selection can’t drive extinction (p.584) Only brake upon perfection? (p.585) Tyrannosaurus? (p.587) Bluebirds? (p.588) G&L other possibilities? (p.590) “Baupläne”? (p.593) In ecology too…

3. What is adaptation? Noun vs. verb (vs. acclimation) Noun: “…[A] feature is an adaptation for some function if it has become prevalent or is maintained in a population… because of natural selection for that function” (Futuyma, p.355) “… the good fit of organisms to their environment” (Gould & Lewontin, 1979)

4. How study adaptations? A. B. vs.

5. How study adaptations?

6. Tree of Life: primary divisions

7. Tree of Life: three “domains” Based on 16S rRNA (Woese, 1987):

8. Tree of Life: three “domains” Based on 16S rRNA (Pace, 1997):

9. Bacteria & Archaeal: all genomes as of 12 Feb., 2010 (Lee, Robinson & Marx, in prep)

10. Tree basics: meaning

11. Tree basics: rotation

12. Tree basics: shape

13. Microbial systematics Formerly Pseudomonas (partial list): Ralstonia, Burkholderia, Hydrogenophaga, Sphingomonas, Methylobacterium, Cellvibrio, Xanthomonas, Acidovorax, Hydrogenophillus, Brevundimonas, Pandoraea

14. 16S rRNA as phylogenetic marker Why a good molecule? 70S 30S 50S

15. Wednesday (9/14): Phylogeny & horizontal gene transfer & comment…