The time-lapse videos Josh Borin recorded, which show growth of unicellular and multicellular isolates described in the new Scientific Reports paper, are now available on YouTube. Although the videos for this open access paper are available for download from the publisher, several commenters have complained that they are not viewable on all platforms. Hopefully they are now viewable by everyone.

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I have set this page up to link to science-related content from my personal blog, Fierce Roller. My reason for doing this is to make it easier to follow my science writing for people who are not interested in, for example, my disputes with creationists, skepticism about Cuban sound guns, and occasional political content.

The lead author of the recent Evolution paper has posted a commentary on kudos that includes some ideas not included in the paper:

The life cycle and ecology of volvocine algae may be key to understanding the long-term persistence of self-fertilization. First, selfing in homothallic volvocine algae is facultative; in a genetically diverse population, most matings will be between genetically distinct strains. Second, volvocine algae have a haploid-dominant life cycle with a metabolically active, multicellular haploid stage and a dormant, unicellular diploid stage. Inbreeding depression may thus be less important than in species with diploid-dominant life cycles. Finally, the dormant diploid stage allows volvocine algae to overwinter, meaning that the ability to self-fertilize is crucial for the survival of colonists to new ponds. Thus facultative selfing might provide volvocine algae with the benefits of outcrossing (when other genotypes are around) without the cost of potentially being unable to find a mate.

Hanschen ER, Herron MD, Wiens JJ, Nozaki H, Michod RE. 2017. Repeated evolution and reversibility of self-fertilization in the volvocine green algae. Evolution (pdf)

Ratcliff WC, Herron MD, Libby E, Conlin PL. 2017. Nascent life cycles and the emergence of higher-level individuality. Philos. Trans. R. Soc. B Biol. Sci. 372, 20160420. (doi:10.1098/rstb.2016.0420)

Graduate student Jacob Boswell got the word yesterday that his Society of Systematic Biologists Graduate Student Research Award will be funded. The award will support his sequencing of cDNA from various volvocine species for multi-gene phylogenetic reconstructions.

Georgia Tech undergraduate Averie Lico has recently joined Team Chlamy. For now, Averie is learning the ropes, mostly methods for maintaining and transferring algal cultures.

My symposium paper from the 2014 Philosophy of Science Association meeting is out in Philosophy of Science (Herron, M. D. 2016. Fitness and individuality in complex life cycles. Philos. Sci. 83:828–834). The symposium, “Complex Life Cycles, Reproduction and Evolution,” also includes papers by James Griesemer, Peter Godfrey-Smith, and Maureen O’Malley.