Bridging The Chasm Between African Rockrubbers And Australian Rockhoppers

by Robin and the Honey Badger

Overview

Robin and the Honey Badger's mission is to recharge biology with originality for you, the non-specialist reader. Exploring the Bio-edge is a series of e-essays presenting lateral thoughts in search of ever more interesting stories from biology. In this e-essay: have rock hyraxes been shaped by a capricious Creator, or just recreational killing by baboons? We arrive at this original question by daring to negotiate the phylogenetic gulf between what zoologists have traditionally seen as separate creations: the eutherian mammals of Africa and the metatherian mammals of Australia. Our interpretation helps to make sense of the lack of evolutionary convergence between rock hyraxes and rock-wallabies – a seemingly monolithic anomaly defying the contours of biological cause and effect.

Each morning Robin and the Honey Badger wake up to a world of Nature with new curiosity. Which aspects of the natural world have been underlooked? Which adaptations or non-adaptations of organisms have been downplayed because of some theoretical bias? Which observations have yet to be integrated because of interdisciplinary timidity? How laterally can we think as we cruise the bewildering diversity of life forms on Earth? Join us in our mission of Exploring the Bio-edge in a series of e-essays that fearlessly - but accurately - cover all corners of biology.

Product Details

BN ID:	2940045049528
Publisher:	Robin and the Honey Badger
Publication date:	10/21/2012
Sold by:	Smashwords
Format:	eBook
File size:	576 KB
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

Robin

Far from being a mere featherhead, Robin is a mainstream scientist operating at the centre of current environmental concerns. His work has three main components: primary academic research, environmental consulting, and entrepreneurship. He has authored more than 50 peer-reviewed scientific papers and book chapters in the fields of ecology and soil science. Robin's light and curious mind achieves an avian mobility among the many fields of biological knowledge, making surprising connections and delighting in new perspectives.

The Honey Badger

Restlessly digging beneath the surface, the Honey Badger is in constant search for the honey of a more fulfilling biology that mines the common ground of apparently separate fields of academia. Performing research on several continents and across a broad spectrum of organisms from microbes to megaherbivores, the Honey Badger is the primary author of 35 peer-reviewed scientific papers and book chapters in zoology, botany, biogeography, and nutrition. An ecological theorist whose emphasis is on intercontinental comparison and original synthesis and integration, the Honey Badger has also published semi-popular articles on various biological topics in several wildlife magazines.