The Atavism

Sunday Spinelessness – A Clearwing moth

David Winter • Dec 09, 2012

• lepidoptera,
• moths,
• photo,
• sci-blogs,
• sesiidae,
• sunday spinelessness,
• Synanthedon tipuliformis

At last, Dunedin has managed to arrange a proper summer day for a weekend. The extra heat and sun saw plenty of bugs out and about, and I spotted plenty of familiar critters (native bees,  cicadas, drone flies and magpie moths) for this fir... Read More

Sunday Spinelessness – Bark Lice

David Winter • Dec 02, 2012

• bark lice,
• psocoptera,
• sci-blogs,
• sunday spinelessness

I should have known that the little challenge I put up last week wouldn't so much as wrinkle the brow of the bug-blogo-sphere's best. The Atavism's two homes means there were two winners. Ted MacRae of Beetles in the Bush chimed in at he blog... Read More

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Sunday Spinelessness – An ID challenge

David Winter • Nov 25, 2012

• mystery,
• photos,
• sci-blogs,
• sunday spinelessness

OK, here's a chance for the bug nerds to show off. A photo of a strange-looking beast I recently ran into:   The challenge to readers is to answer the two questions that went through my head when I first uncovered the creature (1) What... Read More

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Sunday Spinelessness – Shocked from sloth by a beautiful spider

David Winter • Nov 18, 2012

• photos,
• sci-blogs,
• sunday spinelessness

Regular readers will know that I've been pretty slack in posting here in recent weeks. Just the same old boring reason - lots of "real" work to get done and, as much as I enjoy it, blogging necessarily floats to the bottom of TODO lists. But I was sho... Read More

All the media!

David Winter • Sep 25, 2012

• blog blogging,
• sci-blogs

Oh, hi there. Yeah, it's been a while h'uh? Just been crazy busy lately you know - one thing after another with manuscripts and datasets to analyse, then I got a whole bunch of lab reports to mark. We should totally like, get back to writing/reading ab... Read More

Graduation, nerd blogging and a talk

David Winter • Aug 28, 2012

• blog blogging,
• sci-blogs

The most dedicated readers of The Atavism may have noticed a few Sundays have passed without celebration of a spineless creature. Well, you know how blogging is sometimes. A few of the things that have kept me from blogging might be of intere... Read More

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Measuring population differentiation in R

David Winter • Aug 09, 2012

• my research,
• population genetics,
• sci-blogs

This is a little bit different than most posts here. I have a paper out today in Molecular Ecology Resources:  "mmod: an R library for the calculation of population differentiation statistics" (doi: 10.1111/j.1755-0998.2012.03174.x). Looking around the web, there aren't many simple expositions of just what a "differentiation statistic" might be, and why the "modern measures of … Read More

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Sunday Spinelessness – How snails conquered the land (again and again)

David Winter • Aug 05, 2012

• molluscs,
• native snails,
• photos,
• sci-blogs,
• sunday spinelessness

Christie Willcox wrote a nice article this week on how one small group of organisms called "vertebrates" first evolved to live on land. Since you are a vertebrate who lives on land, you should probably go and read Christie's piece. I wouldn't want you, however, to go around thinking those first fish to leave the ocean behind were pioneers … Read More

Sunday Spinelessness – Hairy snails

David Winter • Jul 29, 2012

• molluscs,
• native snails,
• New Zealand,
• sci-blogs,
• sunday spinelessness

Here's another of these tiny native snails I talked about last week. Aeschrodomus stipulatus:   Not the best photo I'll admit, but it records enough detail to see the two things that set Aeschrodomus apart from most of its relati... Read More

Sunday Spinelessness – New Zealand microsnails

David Winter • Jul 22, 2012

• molluscs,
• native snails,
• photos,
• sci-blogs,
• snails,
• sunday spinelessness

When I tell people I study snails for a living I get one of two replies. There's either some version of the "joke" that goes "that must be slow-going" or "sounds action packed", or there's "oh, you mean those giant killer ones we saw when we went tramp... Read More

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