A cleric, a wizard, and a paladin prepare for a trip through a dangerous wood. What could go wrong?

"The Builder", “Constancy Part Three” by Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

The gang discusses two papers about taphonomy and its influence on our understanding of the fossil record. The first paper looks at how taphonomic processes can blur our understanding of cause and effect, while the second paper looks at the impacts of collector and size biases on our understanding of the ecology of an ancient plant. Meanwhile, James deals with spirits, Curt gets philosophical, and Amanda smartly ignores things.

Up-Goer Five (Curt):

The friends talk about two papers that look at the ways in which the things we know can be changed because of other problems that we do not always know are there to make things look like one thing but actually be another thing. The first paper looks at how not getting things to be saved over time could mean that you might not see the reason something happens until it looks like it is after that thing has happened. The paper uses a time in the past when it got very cold and looks at what could have made this happen. There are lots of talk about the growing of big things that make their own food from the sun on land, but this paper shows that what we can see might not be the real time when big things started really doing well. While it sounds strange, it might be best to look at something that we see in the rocks after the time that it gets cold, since the thing that changed probably changed before we can see it in the rocks.

The second paper looks at another thing that makes its own food from the sun. This old thing could have lived in a lot of different ways and there are lots of people who think one way or another. Some think these things need to burn as part of their life, and some people think that these things would live near water and might get burned only sometimes. The people who wrote this paper looked at how people found these things, if they picked up ones that were big or small, and also went out to find more of these things. What they find is that some of the reasons people have not known how these things lived is because we grab big parts to save but most of the things are found as small parts that have burned. This means that it seems that burning was an important part of the lives of these things.

References:

Blanco‐Moreno, Candela, Hugo  Martín‐Abad, and Ángela D. Buscalioni. "Quantitative plant taphonomy:  the cosmopolitan Mesozoic fern Weichselia reticulata as a case study." Palaeontology 65.6 (2022): e12627.

D'Antonio, Michael P., Daniel E. Ibarra, and C. Kevin Boyce. "The preservation of cause and effect in the rock record." Paleobiology 49.2 (2023): 204-214.

The gang discusses two papers that look at plankton through time. The first paper looks at some Cambrian acritarch fossils and shows that they are likely colonial algae, and the second paper looks at how shifting temperature affected plankton distribution across the Cenozoic. Meanwhile, everyone stays completely on task with the stated goals of this podcast: a detailed (and wrong) discussion on the events of the movie “The Hunt for Red October”. Yes, it is going to be “one of those” podcasts.

Up-Goer Five (Curt Edition):

The friends talk about two papers that look at things that live in the water without having to move parts to stay in the water and maybe they are single cells and maybe they are groups of cells. The first paper looks very very old things that live in the water. These old things are so old and hard to figure out that people are not always sure what they are. These things are often thought to be all single cells. This paper shows that some of these things that are very old might be groups of cells that are living together. The way that these cells group together does look like some things that live in the water today that make food from the sun. This paper shows that this type of cell or something like it might have been around a very very long time ago.

The second paper looks at how where things living in the water but not moving and maybe they are single cells and maybe they are groups of cells, could have lived when things got cold in the past. They see that there are changes in the types of these things over time and where the live. They show that the way things are today is because it was getting colder. It also shows that, when things warm up, we might see some big changes in where these things are.

References:

Woodhouse, Adam, et al. "Late Cenozoic cooling restructured global marine plankton communities." Nature 614.7949 (2023): 713-718.

Harvey, Thomas HP. "Colonial green algae in the Cambrian plankton." Proceedings of the Royal Society B 290.2009 (2023): 20231882.

The gang discusses two papers that deal with the evolution of tardigrades. The first paper looks at some fossil tardigrades in amber, and the second paper looks to the Cambrian to determine the ancestors of modern tardigrades. Meanwhile, Amanda confuses some details about medication, James has some money making crab solutions, and Curt is somehow the one person trying to keep people on track.

Up-Goer Five (Curt Edition):

The friends look at two papers that look at a group of animals that are very very very small and have been seen as cute by a lot of people even though you can not really see them without help. The first paper finds some of these very very small animals in bits that come out of things that grow big and make their own food. These bits get hard when they get covered in ground over a long time and things that get stuck in the stuff can be there. This paper looks at these old very very small animals and tries to see what they could be like. It also talks about how we might not have as good an idea of these animals because they are so small and we do not always look for small things in these kinds of places.

The second paper looks at the older things that might be great great great great mom and dad to the tiny animals today. These animals are much bigger and much much older. This paper shows that lots of things we see in these tiny animals today may have been parts that we see in these older animals. But also, that in order to get so very very very small, these animals may have lost some parts so that they could get that small.

References:

Kihm, Ji-Hoon, et al. "Cambrian lobopodians shed light on the origin of the tardigrade body plan." Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 120.28 (2023): e2211251120.

Mapalo, Marc A., et al. "A tardigrade in Dominican amber." Proceedings of the Royal Society B 288.1960 (2021): 20211760.

The gang discusses two papers that look at the gut contents and traces of ancient animals. The first paper reconstructs gut traces (or lack thereof) for Ediacarans and then the second paper looks at the detailed gut contents and 3d track of a lichid trilobite. Meanwhile, Amanda’s cat is changing careers, James is feeling “motivated”, and Curt has some house improvement recommendations.

Up-Goer Five (Curt Edition):

The friends talk about the insides of different animals from a long long time ago. The first paper looks at animals from a long long time ago that do not look much like things we see today. There is a lot of talk about how these animal would eat and where the food would go when they did eat. This paper looks at the parts that remain and looks over the things that are left behind to see if they can find out what the insides of these things were like. What they find is that the things we think are more like things we see today all have insides where the food goes. The one really strange thing does not and could have had food move into it along its outside.

The second paper looks at a small animal with many parts that makes a hard home. This paper finds the food that it ate in its insides and can use it to see what the insides look like. This is a great way for us to see the insides where the food goes in a group that is not around anymore. Also, the food in the insides lets us know how this animal ate things and the way it ate is strange when we look at things today. This thing ate hard things but it did it in a way that is not like what we see today. Also, this animal may have been getting ready to grow but did not make it.

References:

Kraft, Petr, et al. "Uniquely preserved gut contents illuminate trilobite palaeophysiology." Nature (2023): 1-7.

Bobrovskiy, Ilya, et al. "Guts, gut contents, and feeding strategies of Ediacaran animals." Current Biology 32.24 (2022): 5382-5389.

The gang discusses two papers that look at the provide clues to the modern biogeographic distribution of species, specifically bees and new world monkeys. Meanwhile, Amanda shares something, James finds out about where’s the beef in more ways than one, and Curt invents a band.

Up-Goer Five (Curt Edition):

The friends talk about two papers that look at where animals live and how those animals got to those places. The first paper looks at group of small animals that fly and go to things that grow their own food and picks up parts of them when looking for food that helps these things that grow their own food make more of themselves. A long time ago, people had an idea that all of these small animals that fly came from one place and them moved to other places. No one had done a big paper using computers to see if this was true. This paper uses computers and finds that it does seem to be true.

The second paper looks at small animals that move in trees and can not fly but are closer to people than lots of other animals. This group came from across a big blue wet thing. However, lots of people wonder how they got across the big blue wet thing. This paper looks at new parts of these animals and sees that maybe these animals got across the big blue wet thing a lot of times. This might mean that at some times in the past it was easier for some of these small animals to make it across that big blue wet thing.

References:

Almeida, Eduardo AB, et al. "The evolutionary history of bees in time and space." Current biology 33.16 (2023): 3409-3422.

Marivaux, Laurent, et al. "An eosimiid  primate of South Asian affinities in the Paleogene of Western Amazonia  and the origin of New World monkeys." Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 120.28 (2023): e2301338120.

The gang discusses two papers that look at fossils of the early whale group Basilosauridae. Specially, these papers describe the largest whale recovered from this group, as well as the smallest whale from the group. Meanwhile, Amanda has a lovely home, James has some whale facts, and Curt has some art critiques.

Up-Goer Five (Curt Edition):

The friends talk about two papers that look at one group of big animals that breathe air but move in the water that are no longer around today. These papers are looking at different animals within the same group. The cool thing about both of these papers is that they talk about the same thing, but from different ways of looking at it. This is because one of these papers is about the biggest animal that people have found in this group and the other paper is about the smallest animal found in this group. This is a big thing because this is a group that today has gotten really big and the reasons why these groups get big has been something people are really interested in. These papers show that these animals were getting both big and small very early on in the group.

References:

Bianucci, Giovanni, et al. "A heavyweight early whale pushes the boundaries of vertebrate morphology." Nature (2023): 1-6.

Antar, Mohammed S., et al. "A  diminutive new basilosaurid whale reveals the trajectory of the cetacean  life histories during the Eocene." Communications Biology 6.1 (2023): 707.

The gang discusses two papers that look at examples of unusually large animals in the fossil record; one large lacewing larvae and one very large skink. Meanwhile, James is having a great day, Amanda starts a chant, and Curt learns the true meaning of “cool fossil bro”.

Up-Goer Five (Curt Edition):

The friends look at two papers about things that are big for what they are. The first paper is a type of kid of an animal that is small thing that flies when it is grown but does not fly when it is a kid. These animals have a neck when they are kids which some of these animals do not have. This animal has a really long body and a really long neck. They found it in water, so they think this animal would have been a big thing living in the water and eating things that it caught with its long neck.

The second paper looks at another group of animals with cold blood and hard bits on its skin that runs around on four legs. This animal is really big for its group. Parts of this animal were found before, but they were smaller and so they were thought to be something else. This paper finds new parts that show those are parts are from this bigger thing when it was a kid. This big animal is close to another animal that is around today. When this bigger animal died, the smaller animal it is close to came into the same places and seems to have taken its place.

References:

Du, Xuheng, Kecheng Niu, and Tong Bao.  "Giant Jurassic dragon lacewing larvae with lacustrine palaeoecology  represent the oldest fossil record of larval neuropterans." Proceedings of the Royal Society B 290.1993 (2023): 20222500.

Thorn, Kailah M., et al. "A giant  armoured skink from Australia expands lizard morphospace and the scope  of the Pleistocene extinctions." Proceedings of the Royal Society B 290.2000 (2023): 20230704.

The gang discusses two papers that look at the ecomorphology of Mesozoic swimming reptiles. The first paper investigates swimming strategies in various marine swimming reptile groups, and the second paper looks at changes in the skull of mosasaurs compared to stem whales. Meanwhile, James has a meal, Amanda “makes” animals, and Curt needs more insight.

Up-Goer Five (Curt Edition):

The friends look at two papers that look at how big angry animals that move through the water lived a long time ago. The first paper looks at how these big animals moved through the water, because there are many ways that an animal can move through water. They use numbers to look at how these animals look, and they also use some animals from today that move through water to see if the way they look is like the ones from the past. They find that there are some ways that animals look with their bodies that change how they move through the water. This shows a lot of cool things. Some groups start moving through water in one way and over time move to a different way. This shows that there was a lot of different ways these groups of big angry animals were able to move through the water.

The second paper looks at the heads of one group of big angry animals from the past that move through water and also an old group of big animals with hair that move through water that are still around today. The paper wants to see if both of these groups do the same things with their heads since they are both moving into moving through water. They find that a few of the heads kind of look like each other between these two groups, which could be that they were trying to eat the same things. However, most of the time these two groups are not looking the same in the head. This is because these two groups come from different things and so they are not able to change their head in the same way.

References:

Gutarra, Susana, et al. "The locomotor ecomorphology of Mesozoic marine reptiles." Palaeontology 66.2 (2023): e12645.

Bennion, Rebecca F., et al. "Convergence and constraint in the cranial evolution of mosasaurid reptiles and early cetaceans." Paleobiology 49.2 (2023): 215-231.

The gang discusses two papers that study the paleoecology of the Ediacaran fauna. The first paper looks at environmental information that can be gleaned from the microbial mats these organisms lived on, and the second paper studies how different Ediacaran fossils are distributed on this microbial mat. Meanwhile, James is having a week, Curt is unsure about chips, and Amanda is comfortable being very on brand.

Up-Goer Five (Curt Edition):

The friends look at two papers that study some very old animals that lived a long long time ago and lived on these beds of tiny tiny tiny animals and not animals. In fact, these two papers are also interested in the beds these things lived on and how they lived on the bed. The first paper looks at these parts of the beds and how you can find them in different beds made of tiny tiny tiny animals and not animals. There are these lines in the beds that are found in some beds but not all of the beds. They think that the way water moves over the beds may cause these lines to form. The other cool thing they find is that the animals are found when there are these lines, and are not found when there are not these lines. This means that the way the water moves might be important for these animals to live.

The second paper looks at how these animals lived in space with each other. Did they want to live close to each other or did they want to be far from each other, or do they not really care? Some earlier papers had said they wanted to be far from each other, which is weird when we look at animals in the big blue wet thing today which want to stay close to each other. So they run a lot of studies on three different animals that can show if they are close to each other because they all need the same thing (and that thing is in small parts around the ground) or if they seem to want to be very close to each other because they either use each other or they can not move far from each other. They show that these animals all show that they are close to each other, but two of the animals are close because they all want something that is in just a few places. One animal shows a really strong need to be close, which could mean that this is something about the animal that makes new babies be closer to the father/mother. This shows we can learn things about how these animals lived and why they lived where they did, even for things that are very very very old.

References:

Boan, Phillip C., et al. "Spatial  distributions of Tribrachidium, Rugoconites, and Obamus from the  Ediacara Member (Rawnsley Quartzite), South Australia." Paleobiology (2023): 1-20.

Tarhan, Lidya G., Mary L. Droser, and  James G. Gehling. "Picking out the warp and weft of the Ediacaran  seafloor: Paleoenvironment and paleoecology of an Ediacara textured  organic surface." Precambrian Research 369 (2022): 106539.

The gang discusses two papers about inferring life habit and ecology from extinct animals. The first paper summarizes the data for ichthyosaur birth to see if they really do preferentially come out tail first, and the second paper investigates a fossil that could complicate the narrative for the origins of a European sabretooth cat group. Meanwhile, James has opinions about browsers, Amanda is camouflaged, Curt needs a drink, and everyone is surprised by a paper for the first time in a long time.

Up-Goer Five (Curt Edition):

The friends talk about two papers that looks at how animals did things and where they lived in the past. The first paper looks at a group of animals that lived in the water and had their kids inside them. This group used to be on land before they went into the water for all time. Lots of people say that when a group of animals goes from being on land to being on water, they need to change the way the babies come out of them, with the head coming out last so that they do not breathe in water. This paper looks into this to see if this is true. It turns out that lots of things today that used to be on land but are now in the water and have kids inside them usually have the kids come out with the head last. However, this is not always what happens. And, when the kids come out head first it is fine and they do not die and the mom also does not die. When we look at the parts of the dead animals from a long time ago that live in the water, we also see that, even in the groups that everyone says they go out head second, there are some that show they come out head first. It seems like, instead of being a change that is always true, these animals went from being most of the time head first, to being half and half head first, to being most of the time head second but sometimes head first.

The second paper looks at a group of angry animals with hair and long teeth. This group is found all over the world in the past and this paper is looking at one group that is most of the time found in one place but may have also had some groups close to it from other places. This paper names a new type of these animals and says that it is the first of this group, but also the study they do says that it isn't so that is weird. They also do another study to show that this group went through most of its big changes in this new place, but the study they do also seems to say that it is a third different place where a lot of important things happen but they do not talk about it. This paper is weird.

References:

Jiangzuo, Qigao, et al. "Origin of  adaptations to open environments and social behaviour in sabretoothed  cats from the northeastern border of the Tibetan Plateau." Proceedings of the Royal Society B 290.1997 (2023): 20230019.

Miedema, Feiko, et al. "Heads or tails  first? Evolution of fetal orientation in ichthyosaurs, with a scrutiny  of the prevailing hypothesis." BMC Ecology and Evolution 23.1 (2023): 1-13.

The gang discusses two papers that look at patterns of niche conservatism or niche evolution in the fossil record. The first paper looks at the pollen records of trees in Portugal to test if changing climate can explain modern tree distributions, and the second paper looks at the impact of Late Devonian extinction pulses/invasions on brachiopod communities. Meanwhile, Curt summarizes the podcast, James has brachiopod facts, and Amanda cannot control her cats.

Up-Goer Five (Curt Edition):

Our friends talk about two papers that look at where animals live and what they do in the world, and also if that stays the same or changes over time. The first paper looks at tall living things that make their own food and lose a part of themselves every fall. This looks at one place that has just a few of these types of living things but in the past there were different types there. Also, back then it was not as warm and the rain was different. This paper wants to see why the tall living things we have in this part of the world are where they are right now. What they saw was that, some of the changes in the tall things seem to be tall things following where they want to live; when things get warmer or colder they move to follow the change. But some things seem to be moving into places that are very different from where they started, so they are changing what types of places they like to live in.

The second paper looks at animals that live on the bottom of the big blue wet thing and take food out of the water and were found all over the world a long time ago. It looks at a time when a big change killed a lot of living things. This paper looks at how this changed the types of these animals over time. What they find is that, a lot of the animals that die because of the change have another animal from somewhere else doing the same thing move in and take that animal's place. The things that do not die just keep on doing their own thing. It does not look like there is much change in what the animals are doing either from the big change that happened, or from the new animals moving in.

References:

Vieira, Manuel, et al. "Niche  evolution versus niche conservatism and habitat loss determine  persistence and extirpation in late Neogene European Fagaceae." Quaternary Science Reviews 300 (2023): 107896.

Brisson, Sarah K., et al. "Niche conservatism and ecological change during the Late Devonian mass extinction." Proceedings of the Royal Society B 290.1996 (2023): 20222524.

The gang discusses two papers that look at some Cambrian problematic fossils and find new clues that allow us to determine what groups they might belong to. One paper finds new evidence that some of these tube fossils in the Cambrian may be cnidarians and the other paper identifies potential gastropod radula in Cambrian rocks with adaptations for grazing. Meanwhile, James is not at all tired, Amanda will totally clean out her garage, and Curt is in the loop about what is going on.

Up-Goer Five (Curt Edition):

The friends talk about two papers that look at some things from a long time ago that are very hard to see what is going on with them but these new finds give us a better idea of what they might be. The first paper looks at these long and soft things. We used to think they were long and soft things that live in the ground today. However, this paper finds that there are little arms on one side and that they have these parts that we see in a very different group of animals that instead has one way in that it uses to eat and shit and has lots of these small arms. They show this for one of these types of animals but it could be that a lot of the long soft animals we find that we are not sure about could all be parts of this group.

The second paper looks at these small bits that people find when they take rocks and break them down into bits. These small things look like the mouth parts of animals that are soft and some of them carry their home with them. Not just mouth parts, but mouth parts that can eat green things that make their own food. This could be the first time we see animals that just eat these kinds of green things in the past.

References:

Zhang, Guangxu, et al. "Exceptional  soft tissue preservation reveals a cnidarian affinity for a Cambrian  phosphatic tubicolous enigma." Proceedings of the Royal Society B 289.1986 (2022): 20221623.

Slater, Ben J. "Cambrian ‘sap-sucking’molluscan radulae among small carbonaceous fossils (SCFs)." Proceedings of the Royal Society B 290.1995 (2023): 20230257.

The gang discusses two papers that use morphometric studies to investigate patterns of ecomorphy in the fossil record. Specifically, they look at two papers that investigate how morphology in sloths and pterosaurs changes over time, and how well these changes map onto changes in body size and ecological shifts. Meanwhile, Amanda could be dean, Curt has opinions on figures, and James provides butchery advice.

Up-Goer Five (Curt Edition):

The friends talk about two papers that look at how things look and how that changes over time, and looks to see if these things are changing because of what they do. The first paper looks at animals with hair and long arms that move very slow. There are not a lot of these animals today, but in the past there was a lot of these animals and they did a lot of other things that we do not see them do today. These animals were also looking different as well. But it seems that the things that look different are closer to each other by being close sisters to each other. They also do find that these animals are also doing different things when they look different.

The second paper looks at angry animals who can fly but are not the animals that can fly today. These animals start small and get big over time. They actually get big a few times. This paper looks at the parts of these animals and shows the many different ways that parts can change to make these animals big or small. It also shows that, when these things get really big is when the group seems to be doing really bad.

References:

Yu, Yilun, Chi Zhang, and Xing Xu. "Complex macroevolution of pterosaurs." Current Biology 33.4 (2023): 770-779.

Casali, Daniel M., et al.  "Morphological disparity and evolutionary rates of cranial and  postcranial characters in sloths (Mammalia, Pilosa, Folivora)." Palaeontology 66.1 (2023): e12639.

The gang discusses two papers that look at the body size of ancient animals. The first paper uses new metrics to estimate the size of the ancient fish Dunkleosteus, and the second paper looks at the various ways that theropod dinosaurs can get big or small. Meanwhile, Amanda is 10 minutes away from being taken to Oz, Curt invents a new adaptation, James figures out perpetual energy, and everyone is forced to record over a conference call.

Up-Goer Five (Amanda Edition):

Today our friends talk about a large animal that lives in water with no legs but a big mouth and moving mouth pieces and a hard outer cover. This big animal was one with a hard part in its back that ate lots of things very early before many other things with hard parts in its back were around that ate other things. People used to think that it got very very very big but this study uses numbers to show that it was actually not as big as people used to think. The numbers are very good and are probably going to be very good for lots of animals that live in water with no legs.

The second paper looks at large angry animals with no hair and big teeth that lived a long time ago, but not as long ago as the large animal that lives in water with no legs and a big mouth and moving mouth pieces. It looks at how the hard pieces of these large angry animals with no hair and big teeth grew to see how they got big or small, because some got very big and some got very small. It turns out that the ones that got big did it in some different ways, and the ones that got small did it in some different ways, which is very cool.

References:

Engelman, Russell K. "A Devonian Fish  Tale: A New Method of Body Length Estimation Suggests Much Smaller Sizes  for Dunkleosteus terrelli (Placodermi: Arthrodira)." Diversity 15.3 (2023): 318.

D'Emic, Michael D., et al.  "Developmental strategies underlying gigantism and miniaturization in  non-avialan theropod dinosaurs." Science 379.6634 (2023): 811-814.

The gang celebrates their 10 year anniversary by talking about two papers on the same topic that are 10 years apart. Both papers take a critical look at how we define the “big five” mass extinctions and what this term means. Meanwhile, everyone waxes philosophical for the last 20 minutes, discussing how things have changed in our lives since we started this weird show. Thanks for listening!

Up-Goer Five (Curt Edition):

Our friends talk about two papers that were written ten years from each other. Both papers look at times when a lot of animals died. The first paper is looking at how these times changed the types of animals that were around after the big dying, and it finds that some times that didn't kill as many animals had much bigger changes in the types of animals around than times when a lot more animals died. The second paper continues this idea to ask, why do we look at the big times that we do and is there anything about these times that make the all the same. What do these times mean?

References:

Marshall, Charles R. "Forty years later: The status of the “Big Five” mass extinctions." Cambridge Prisms: Extinction 1 (2023): e5.

McGhee Jr, George R., et al. "A new ecological-severity ranking of major Phanerozoic biodiversity crises." Palaeogeography, Palaeoclimatology, Palaeoecology 370 (2013): 260-270.

The gang discusses two papers about trilobite evolution and morphology. The first paper looks at disparity and taxonomic trends of trilobites across the Devonian, and the second paper looks at the unique tridents of Walliserops. Meanwhile, Amanda makes a choice, James does some unique functional morphology, and Curt critiques tilapia.

Up-Goer Five (Curt Edition):

The friends talk about two papers that look at small hard animals that live in the water and some of them can roll into a ball. The first paper looks at how these animals looked over time. They look at whether or not these animals looked more different when there were more different types of these animals around. This is not usually the case, for lot of animals how different the animals in the group look to each other is not just because to there being more types of animals. For this group that some can roll into a ball, it seems like they look a lot more different when there are also a lot of different types of them. So when something kills a lot of them, they also lose what makes them different. After a really bad time for these animals, only one group was left and we saw that they kind of looked the same for a long time until they all died.

The second paper looks at one of these types of animals that had a weird thing on its nose. They try and find out what it could have used this weird thing for because it is very big and it does not move on its own so it probably would not be good for a lot of things. They look at some other animals that have things on their nose they use to fight each other for space and girls. While these animals are very different, they show some ways that this thing on the nose look like these other animals. So maybe they used this thing on their nose to fight each other.

References:

Gishlick, Alan D., and Richard A. Fortey. "Trilobite tridents demonstrate sexual combat at 400 Mya." Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 120.4 (2023): e2119970120.

Bault, Valentin, Catherine Crônier,  and Claude Monnet. "Coupling of taxonomic diversity and morphological  disparity in Devonian trilobites?." Historical Biology (2023): 1-12.

The gang discusses two papers that look at how species respond to climate change. The first paper uses models to study how bird migration patterns may have changed over the last 800,000 years, and the second paper looks at how blooming times for plants in the UK have changed over the last 300 years. Meanwhile, James and Amanda prepare for a trip (2 months ago), and Curt is left a little confused.

Up-Goer Five (Curt Edition):

Our friends talk about two papers that look at how living things can change when it gets hotter or colder across the world. The first paper looks at animals that can fly and some of them move around when it gets hot or cold during a year. This paper uses computers to look at how these animals may have changed how they move around during times that were colder and warmer than today. This is part of a bigger story where some people think that these animals moving around during the year is something that might be pretty new, since the last time we warmed up. The computers say that these types of animals were probably still moving around during these colder times, and that there are some cool things about how where theses animals are might have changed how they moved over time, since some places got colder than others.

The second paper looks at green things that make their own food. These green things start to grow and make the things they need to make babies during the warm parts of the year. Some of them use light, but a lot of them use how warm it is to know if it is time to start growing again. For this one part of the world, they have been looking at these green things for almost 300 years. When we look at when these green things start growing, we are seeing them start growing earlier in the year than they did in the past. This is not happening every place in the same way and not to every type of green thing. But all of these changes all show the same idea; that the world is getting warmer and these green things are starting to grow earlier in the year because of it, and places that are getting warmer faster and seeing those green things grow even earlier.

References:

Büntgen, Ulf, et al. "Plants in the UK flower a month earlier under recent warming." Proceedings of the Royal Society B 289.1968 (2022): 20212456.

Somveille, Marius, et al. "Simulation-based reconstruction of global bird migration over the past 50,000 years." Nature communications 11.1 (2020): 801.

The gang discusses two papers that look at live birth in squamates. The first paper is fossil evidence of live birth in an ancient snake species, and the second paper looks at the evolutionary pressures that might drive some lizards towards live birth. Meanwhile, James has advice for reptiles, Curt celebrates a belated “spooky season”, Amanda continues to have extreme face blindness, and we are all haunted by a corrupted PDF.

Up-Goer Five (Curt Edition):

Our friends talk about animals that have cold blood but also have babies inside of them. The first paper looks at some old animals that have cold blood and no legs that have babies inside of them. These parts of the old animal with babies inside of them might be one of the first times that this has been seen for this group at this time. It raises some interesting questions about how and why these animals that most do not have babies inside of them might change to having babies inside of them. One thought was that maybe this happens when these animals with cold blood have to live in cold places, but this paper is not able to say if that is the case.

The next paper looks at a different group of cold blooded animals that is close to the other one but has legs. In this group, there are some animals that have babies inside and some that do not. The people who worked on the paper looked at all of the things about these animals, from how cold they liked it, how warm they liked it, where they are found, how many babies they had and how big they got, and other things to try and see if having babies inside is something that happens when these animals move into cold. What they found was very cool. Animals with babies inside did like it colder than animals without babies inside. But they found that having babies inside did not match with where these animals lived, and that animals with babies inside could be in warm places, and animals without babies inside could be in colder places. It might make it easier to be in colder places, but it did not look like it was because they were in colder places. This means that having babies inside is part of a bigger thing, like do you want to live fast or do you want to live slow; because animals with babies inside would have less babies than animals without babies inside.

References:

Chuliver, Mariana, Agustín Scanferla, and Krister T. Smith. "Live birth in a 47-million-year-old snake." The Science of Nature 109.6 (2022): 1-5.

Domínguez-Guerrero, Saúl F., et al.  "Exceptional parallelisms characterize the evolutionary transition to  live birth in phrynosomatid lizards." Nature communications 13.1 (2022): 1-12.

After managing a precarious ascent up a magical clockwork limb we rejoin our heroes Bepo the Bard (James), Bix the Druid (Aly), Gregg the Ranger (Curtis) and Kinross the Wizard (Amanda) in the next stage of their journey to bring the roaming fortress to a halt.

"Skye Cuillin", “Mystic Force”, “Malicious”, “Scheming Weasel slower”, “Holiday Weasel”, “Krampus Workshop”, “Sneaky Snitch”, “Magic Escape Room”, “Volatile Reaction”, “Darkling” by Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/