Title: Governing in the Context of Uncertainty
Author: Jane Calvert
– by Ben Novak The passenger pigeon was once the world’s most plentiful bird. September 1 is the centenary of the bird’s extinction. Martha, the last pigeon of the species, died at the Cincinnati Zoo and now can be viewed at…
By Beth Shapiro, PhD Associate Professor, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology Co-Principal Investigator of the Paleogenomics Lab, University of California Santa Cruz As you may know, a different group (not us — Ouch!) has published a paper in PNAS on June 16 (see abstract…
by Ben Novak Birds are a huge challenge for de-extinction for two big reasons. The first is because less genomic research has been performed on birds than on mammals (but reptiles, amphibians, fish, invertebrates and plants are even less understood). We…
by Ben Novak Current research on microbiomes reveals that an organism’s microbiota are co-evolved with the host species, but not to a point of specificity that is problematic between related organisms (such as one kind of pigeon in relation to…
by Ben Novak On October 8th, 2013, Ryan Phelan, Stewart Brand, and I were graciously allowed to view a historic moment at Genentech Hall of the University of California San Francisco‘s Mission Bay campus. We were in the sequencing facility…
Why Revive Extinct Species? The Case for Reviving Extinct Species by Stewart Brand National Geographic News (Published March 11, 2013) Thanks to new developments in genetic technology, DNA may eventually bring extinct animals back to life. Only species whose DNA is…
by Ben Novak In 1871 along the east shore of the Don River, a Canadian named William S. W. Grainger witnessed a flock of North America’s most common birds: passenger pigeons. As Grainger harvested a decent female pigeon from the flock…
by Ben Novak The extinction of the passenger pigeon has challenged our conceptions of nature for a century. The bird that was “too numerous to go extinct” disappeared in a decade, leaving only skins and mounts in museum collections and…
“My name is Sean and I am a first year biology major with an emphasis in wildlife biology. Ever since I was a kid learning about the reintroduction of wolves as a keystone species I have made it my goal…
