Welcome all to Tangled Bank #29, and welcome especially to first-time visitors to Organic Matter. For those not familiar with it, the Tangled Bank is a semi-monthly collection of choice blogging about science, biology, medicine, or the natural world in general. Each edition of the Bank is hosted by a different blog, and this week it’s Organic Matter’s turn to take a stab at it. So here it comes! (Due to the truly massive size of this edition of the Tangled Bank – 40 entries!!! – I’ve decided to place the submissions in the extended entry; from the front page just click on “read more” below to see the hulking beast in its humungous glory.)

On the heels of the last edition of the Bank, the pressure was heavy to come up with a hip theme that fit the environmental focus of Organic Matter with the all-around science-y goodness of the Tangled Bank. Unfortunately “hip” is rarely the style of those of us who hold science close to our hearts, so instead I decided to fall back on the geekiest thing I could wrap my head around – a field trip to the natural history museum. This particular tour takes us through each wing of the museum with a temporal emphasis – that is to say that we will start at the very origin of the universe and travel up to the geologically recent evolution of humans on Earth.

The Entrance Hall

Welcome kids, to the Blogosphere Natural History Museum! Just so we know we’re all on the same level, first we need to clear up what is and is not science - Phil at the Bad Astronomy Blog is here to tell us all about scientists and antiscientists.

While not part of the Blogosphere Natural History Museum’s main catalogue, we’ve brought in an exhibit from the Re-Discovery Institute to help illustrate Phil’s point – an attempted revision of the periodic table of the elements.

The Astronomy Wing: Physics, the Universe, and Beyond

Josh Friess provides our first exhibit in this wing of the Museum, which is a crash course in string theory and the testability thereof.

Andrew Jaffe of Leaves on the Line draws on famed physicist Richard Feynman to explain the ascendance (pun intended) of cosmology into the realm of modern physics.

Via B and B, P.M. Bryant talks about the hurdles that are causing trouble for the development of NASA’s proposed James Webb Space Telescope, proposed to study the earliest stars and galaxies that formed after the big bang.

In his Astro, Math, Science, Viz, and Tech Musings, Mark takes us to a workshop about visualizing astrophysical data, and in doing so covers everything from the big bang, galaxy collisions, and black holes. There’s even an interactive galaxy collision model to play with!

Occupying the rarely-tread space between astronomy and evolution we have two exhibits that foreshadow some of what we’ll see later on in the evolution wing. First, Dr. David L. Morgan of It’s Only a Theory draws an analogy between natural selection and solar system formation, praising the combination of genius and imagination necessary to try to solve the apparently unsolvable.

Second, Milligan at EGAD makes a similar comparison, this time between evolutionary processes and telescope design, with a dash of genetic algorithms thrown in for good measure.

The Earth Science Wing: Home Sweet Home

Here on Earth (although viewed from space), Sprol shows us how Patagonian glaciers are retreating in response to Earth’s changing climate.

Stephen Gloor considers one of the causes Earth’s changing climate in his open letter to people who think combating global warming is too hard.

Of course, Kevin at Technogypsy is careful to point out that many more products than just gasoline and energy come from depleting oil stocks.

On the subject of oil, Pat Burns of Nature Noted displays his displeasure at the use of sound wave explosions for oil exploration in the Gulf Islands National Seashore.

In our final Earth Science exhibit, Stephen at Politburo Diktat refutes supposed evidence that the Earth is a mere 6,000 years old.

The Evolution Wing: The Origin of Species

Our evolution wing starts out with some examples of selection at the level of individual organisms, and then moves on to deeper theory. For essential background, Mona Albano directs us to BookCrossing to check out her review of The Beak of the Finch: A Story of Evolution in Our Time.

Christie at Dogged Blog wonders about the selective advantages and disadvantages of tick borne diseases striking healthy versus already diseased pets.

Don at Zap*Germs considers antibiotic-resistant bacteria such as MRSA, and whether the use of antibacterial agents such as triclosan is warranted in household cleaning products.

In a display that is meant only for our 18-and-older patrons, P.Z. Myers of Pharyngula synthesizes the vast literature dealing with the opposing selective pressures on penis size. What can I say – kids come to the museum for the dinosaurs, but the adults come to see the dirty stuff.

Next, we have evolgen’s examination of different algorithms used to reconstruct the evolutionary relationships between species.

The Museum’s coverage of evolutionary theory at the macro level is made up of two displays – the first, by Burt Humburg at The Panda’s Thumb, praises an article by Richard Dawkins that deals with creationist tactics that attempt to cast a shadow of doubt on evolution.

Finally, over at Respectful Insolence, Orac tears up historian William Rubenstein for parroting common but flawed claims about evolution that are most often employed by the [non museum-going] creationist crowd.

The Natural History Wing: The Specimen Galleries

As we enter the natural history wing of the Museum, the first display we see is Daniel Mosquin’s beautiful photo of Kadsura interior, with a caption by Douglas Justice describing its rarity, care of Botany Photo of the Day.

Hungry Hyaena starts us off with a two-part exhibit on a megafauna of somewhat questionable charisma: the spotted hyaena (Crocuta crocuta).

Jim Hu at Blogs for Industry takes it up from there, showing us the feral pig and its affects on the biodiversity of Santa Cruz Island.

Dr. Jennifer Forman at The Invasive Species Weblog is sharing a student written piece by Angela Comparato about the the green iguana (Iguana iguana) problem in Florida, caused primarily by the release of pet iguanas into the wild.

Last but not least in our megafauna collection is Dr. Andy’s profile on the disfiguring, apparently transmissible cancer that is impacting Tasmanian devil populations.

Our collection also includes not one, but two exhibits on those much-ridiculed members of the animal kingdom - gastropods. Slug the first is care of Aydin from Snail’s Tales, a blog devoted utterly to class Gastropoda. Aydin explains the evolutionary benefits that led to the abandonment of shells by some snails and the birth of slugdom.

Slug the second comes from Bootstrap analysis, who looks at the curious reproductive practices of the leopard slug (Limax maximus).

Tony G from milkriverblog displays the results of a survey of bird species wakeup calls during late spring.

And also in our bird room, Mike at 10,000 Birds returns from a month of field study with a full review of his migrating warbler census.

Enough fauna, how about some flora? Tom Kimmerer at Tree Trends has some lovely specimens of big-leaf maple (Acer macrophyllum) to show off, though with such beautiful wood timber rustlers are always a problem.

Trix at A WhipPoorWill considers not just organisms but also place – she offers a description of half a century’s regrowth over an abandoned apple farm.

In an effort to bring this wing of exhibits together, we close with an essay by Jon Christensen from The Uneasy Chair on the history of conservation and conflicts between preserving the past and managing for the future.

The Anthropology Wing: Human Physiology and Culture

In our unabashedly anthrocentric wing, we start with Steve Pavlina’s illuminating exhibit on red-green colorblindness. He even shows our visitors what the world looks like to red-green colorblind individuals.

Alas, a Blog re-examines the concept of what is healthy in taking a close look at our acculturated perception of “fat.” Note: it appears that Alas, a Blog is down as of this posting. Hopefully it will be back up again by the time the morning flood of traffic comes in.

The Madman over at Chronical of a Medical Madhouse takes a look at the influence of monogamous human relationships on the rate of transmission of the common cold.

Unfortunately an essential driver of human population is disease. Trish Wilson tracks the tragic spread of Marburg fever in Angola due to local cultural practices surrounding death.

David Winter at Science and Sensibility offers an exhibit that some of our younger visitors may not be happy to see – evidence of a link between cannabis use by some teenagers and psychotic illness later in life.

At tisiwoota we find a the first half of a yet-to-be-finished two-part series on plants, watches, and how they both relate to the legal construction of intellectual property.

Tom Anderson at This Sphere relies on evidence collected at a beach on Long Island Sound to consider the tragically common human practice of littering.

Finally, our last stop in the Blogosphere Museum of Natural History is this exhibit, which alludes back to the material we covered in the evolution wing (there will be a test on all of this!) Justin from Panexperientialism talks to us about evolutionary psychology – the idea that there is an evolutionary explanation for human behavior.

Thans to all of our patrons, drop by again sometime!

Thanks so much to everyone for coming and reading all the way to the bottom (and presumably for reading all of the articles in between!). To all the exhibits, er, authors, I hope that I’ve represented your work in a way that doesn’t totally offend your scientific sensibilities. Our next field trip – that is to say the next edition of the Bank (the big three-zero!) – will be hosted by Geomblog on Wednesday, June 15^th, so start working on those articles now and send ‘em to suresh, host@tangledbank.net, or pzmyers@pharyngula.org.

Finally, the Tangled Bank is on the lookout for hosts. We’re stocked until mid-August, but if you’d like to host after that fire off an email to pzmyers@pharyngula.org. I promise that hosting is as fulfilling as it is time-consuming (though if you’re a student I can’t recommend in good conscience that you try to tackle it during finals week).