Greetings--
A great week for gene flow...
Over the past few years, I've written several pieces for The New York Times about how our ancestors interbred with Neanderthals and other extinct human populations (in 2010, 2013, 2015, and again in 2015). Now comes a cool study that appears to uncover even more gene flow--not going from extinct humans into our own gene pool, but in the other direction. I don't know how many more of these big insights we will get in years to come. But it's clear that our understanding about human evolution is becoming profoundly different from what you would have read in the textbooks twenty years ago.
If you need a broader review of what we understand about human evolution--not just interbreeding in the past 100,000 years, but the past few million years of evolutionary change--the American Journal of Physical Anthropology just published a nice piece that's freely accessible. Here's a chart from the reviewing showing almost all the known variety of human relatives.
As I mentioned last week, I wrote a column about a study suggesting that a parasite can make chimpanzees lose their fear of leopards. On Tuesday, my Phenomena colleague Ed Yong offered his own take. Like some of the scientists I talked to, he's skeptical. Ed mentioned my column, saying that "parasite whisperer Carl Zimmer was the first to write about the study." A member of Twitter nation wondered if that description of me was meant as an insult, and Ed explained that it wasn't. But it is true that others have had similar suspicions such as in this interview I had with Ira Glass on This American Life. "Mr. Zimmer, whose side are you on?"
The second edition of my book A Planet of Viruses has come out in a French translation. Here's the lovely cover. I'll be talking about the book on Podcastscience, a French podcast, on March 1. You can listen live. (My French is so primitif that I'll stick to English and let others translate.)
You can order the French translation here. (English version here.)
It's remarkable that email newsletters--based on one the oldest forms of online communication out there--are the new hot thing. Be that as it may, they're very much a part of my own reading day, as they presumably are of yours. If you are looking for other science-related ones to subscribe to, here are a few of my favorites: Rose Eveleth, Alexis Madrigal, Ed Yong, and (coming soon) the Science Times section of the New York Times.
June 23-25: International Society for Evolution, Medicine, and Public Health, Plenary Lecture. Durham North Carolina. Here's the meeting site.
July 31: Keynote lecture at the annual meeting of the Botanical Society of America in Savannah
January 28-29, 2017 Rancho Mirage Writers Festival
You can also follow me on Twitter, Facebook , LinkedIn, and Google+. And there's always carlzimmer.com.
Best wishes, Carl
If you'd like to learn more about my books, you can visit my web site
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