Tuesday, May 6, 2014

My Year of Darwin 5/6/2014: This kinda of Petrel...ish bird

 Charles Darwin

" the Pelacanoides Berardi, which offers an example of those extraordinary cases, of a bird evidently belonging to one well-marked family, yet both in its habits and structure allied to a very distinct tribe."  Charles Darwin,Voyage of the Beagle

The bird is now known as the Common Diving-Petrel (Pelecanoides urinatrix). You know you're dealing with an interesting group when you see "oid" in the name, which indicates that it is similar to something. In this case the genus indicates that this group is like the Pelecan-group, the tube-nosed birds. Darwin would have loved the tools available today to resolve phylogenetic relationships: the computational tools to resolve data and the availability of molecular data. 


____________________________________________________________

Going in for a tooth extraction today.  I'm a bit nervous about being put under. 

No comments:

Post a Comment