Podcast 70 - Systems Breaking Down; The End of the Ediacaran

The gang discusses two papers that deal with the events that led to the extinction of the early metazoan Ediacaran fauna, as well as the extinction's philosophical ramifications for our understanding of evolution in general. Chaos runs rampant throughout this podcast as our figurative and literal systems break down through time. But somehow, life.... finds a way.... through a 4G network. Meanwhile, Amanda jumps the gun, Curt makes jokes no one can understand, James "wins" again, and everyone slowly succumbs to chaos and madness. If you're just joining us for the first time, I'm so very... very sorry. 

Up goer five simple text summary:

The group looks at why some of the earliest animals died. The first study suggests that these earliest animals died because new animals appeared that were better than them, and that the early animals could not beat them. The second paper look at what was going on when this happened, and whether this time was one of a kind or simply the earliest case of animals becoming normal.

References:

Darroch, Simon AF, et al. "Biotic replacement and mass extinction of the Ediacara biota." Proc. R. Soc. B. Vol. 282. No. 1814. The Royal Society, 2015.

Erwin, Douglas H. "Was the Ediacaran–Cambrian radiation a unique evolutionary event?." Paleobiology 41.01 (2015): 1-15.

Podcast 69 - Tasty Kosher Food

The gang finally just does what comes naturally and discusses two papers about food. Specifically, one paper on why things aren't tasty and another answering the vital question "what foods in the past would be kosher" (the answer might just surprise you). Meanwhile, Amanda finds her spirit animal, James details our terrifying corporate future, and Curt wants to play a game. TRIGGER WARNING: Mild joking reference to sexual-violence and mascots in the first two minutes. TRIGGER WARNING: We talk about eating meat throughout. 

Up-goer five simple-speak text:

The group talks about two papers that look at food and which animals make good food. The first paper looks at the babies of small animals that have pretty things that let them fly. They find out that the babies that ate things with leaves that made bad food also made bad food themselves and would be ignored by other small animals that tried to eat them. The other paper works out whether animals in the past would have been good food for people that have very few things they can eat. The paper uses different ways of telling what things had to show that these people would not be able to eat most things.

References:

Dyer, Lee A. "Tasty generalists and nasty specialists? Antipredator mechanisms in tropical lepidopteran larvae." Ecology (1995): 1483-1496.

Plotnick, Roy E., Jessica M. Theodor, and Thomas R. Holtz Jr. "Jurassic Pork: What Could a Jewish Time Traveler Eat?." Evolution: Education and Outreach8.1 (2015): 1-14.

Podcast 68 - Plonts

The gang discusses two papers about the evolutionary placement of some Cretaceous flowering plants (angiosperms). Meanwhile, Amanda finds her alter ego,  James goes very old school with his jokes, and Curt really doesn't want to talk about the next paper.

Simple text summary

The group talk about two papers about things that need the sun and grow coloured bits to get small animals with six legs to come and drink from them. These are some of the earliest things that need the sun and grow coloured bits to get small animals with six legs to come and drink from them, and they are found under water. The first paper looks at if their thing that needed the sun and grew coloured bits to get small animals with six legs to come and drink from it to see if it was really the first one and what it tells us about how the earliest things that need the sun and grew the coloured things would have lived. The first paper decides that this old thing that needed the sun and grew coloured things was not the first, and that it does not tell us how the earliest ones lived. The second paper forgets that the first paper happened and does the same with with another thing that needs the sun and grows coloured things.

References

Friis, Else Marie, et al. "Archaefructus–angiosperm precursor or specialized early angiosperm?." Trends in plant science 8.8 (2003): 369-373.

Gomez, Bernard, et al. "Montsechia, an ancient aquatic angiosperm."Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 112.35 (2015): 10985-10988.

Podcast 67 - Stratigraphic Bias

The gang discusses two papers that detail how the stratigraphic record affects our understanding of the fossil record.  Meanwhile, Amanda gets very enthusiastic, James burns straw men,  and Curt isn't sorry.

1000 common words summary:

The group look at two papers that study how the rocks can change the number of animals we think died at any time. The first paper looks at whether the way we work out how complete the number of animals we think were is lying, and shows that because we use the book of rocks to work out what animals should have been there, our idea of what animals are there are changed by what type of rocks we find. The second paper takes this further and uses a computer to see what sort of book of animals we should find and how bad times where many animals died are changed by the rocks that are around at that time. They show that these times where many animals died at once are changed by the book of rocks and that we should look at many different places to work out what happened during these very bad times.

References

Benton, Michael J. "Palaeodiversity and formation counts: redundancy or bias?." Palaeontology (2015).

Holland, Steven M., and Mark E. Patzkowsky. "The stratigraphy of mass extinction." Palaeontology (2015).

Podcast 66 - Penguin Death Land

In this episode the gang tries to have a discussion about the fossil preservation of birds. Instead they get completely sidetracked imagining the penguin apocalypse. Meanwhile, Amanda slowly goes crazy, James keeps hearing things, and Curt delights in a mispronunciation.

"Up goer five" text summary

This time the group looks at papers about how animals that have bits that mean they can fly break down when they are dead. The first paper looks at what happens to animals that have bits that mean they can fly when their bodies are left in bad water. These studies are used to see how long animals that could fly were dead before they were covered by stuff in old places where lots of dead things are found in the same place. The study shows that there are fewer types of animals that could fly in these old places where lots of dead things are found in the same place than we would expect. The second paper uses a computer to find out whether we should expect to find all the types of animals that could fly in these old places where lots of dead things are found in the same place. This study shows that we should not expect to find all of the animals that could fly in these old places, but instead that because of the type of old place we should expect to see different types of animals that could fly because of where they lived.

References:

Davis, Paul G., and Derek EG Briggs. "The impact of decay and disarticulation on the preservation of fossil birds." Palaios 13.1 (1998): 3-13.

Mitchell, Jonathan S. "Preservation is predictable: quantifying the effect of taphonomic biases on ecological disparity in birds." Paleobiology 41.02 (2015): 353-367.

Podcast 65 - SEX!

The gang goes broad and tackles two papers that deal with evidence of sex and reproduction in the fossil record. Meanwhile, Amanda goes method, James invents a new scientific term, and Curt is haunted by one terrible joke that will not die.

"Hyperfun" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) 
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/

"Up goer five" text summary

Today the group talks about fucking. Yes, fuck is one of the ten hundred most used words, while better and less bad words for fucking are not. You think what that means about people. Just think about it.

The first paper is looking at the oldest pictures of stuff that comes out of a man after he has had a fuck. This fuck water is from a small animal with no hard parts and so we usually do not know that the animal was there. However, the fuck water is different for different types of small animal, and so we can see what small animals with no hard parts were there without seeing the actual animals. The fuck water has also been ignored for a long time, so we may be able to find more fuck water and find out more about small animals with no hard parts.

The second paper is looking at some of the earliest things that might be animals and their babies. Looking at where the babies are and where the parents are, the paper tries to work out whether these things that might be animals that fucked or whether they just grew babies off of them on sticks. The numbers show that these maybe animals did not fuck, but grew babies on sticks. Other things that might be animals from the same time did fuck, and they are found in many more places. The fact that these maybe animals grew babies on sticks might explain why they are found in only one place while the ones that did fuck are found in lots of places.

References

Bomfleur, Benjamin, et al. "Fossilized spermatozoa preserved in a 50-Myr-old annelid cocoon from Antarctica." Biology letters 11.7 (2015): 20150431.

Mitchell, Emily G., et al. "Reconstructing the reproductive mode of an Ediacaran macro-organism." Nature (2015).

Podcast 64 - Walk Before You Crawl; Convergence in Dinosaur Gait

The gang discusses two papers about the evolution of quadrupedal lifestyle in ornithischian dinosaurs. Also, James discusses the joys of being a squid, Curt details the ideal political tag-team match,  and Amanda dreams of HD belts.

"Up goer five" text summary

The group talks about big angry animals without hair - again. This time they look at two studies that look at how one group of big angry animals with no hair went from walking on two feet to walking on four. Three different bands of friends in the group have gone back to walking on four feet by themselves. The first paper looks at figuring out the soft parts to work out how they walked and finds that each of these three types of big angry animals without hair walk in different ways, even though they all walk on four feet. The second paper looks at why these three types of animal have gone back to walking on four feet by seeing where they got big and whether it would make them fall forwards or back. This was studied by sticking heavy bits of animals with stuff on them onto animals which did not have stuff on them to see whether it made them fall over. The study shows that the different animal groups went onto four feet for different reasons, and this may explain why the different groups walking on four feet walk in different ways.

References

Maidment, Susannah CR, and Paul M. Barrett. "Does morphological convergence imply functional similarity? A test using the evolution of quadrupedalism in ornithischian dinosaurs." Proceedings of the Royal Society of London B: Biological Sciences 279.1743 (2012): 3765-3771.

Maidment, Susannah CR, Donald M. Henderson, and Paul M. Barrett. "What drove reversions to quadrupedality in ornithischian dinosaurs? Testing hypotheses using centre of mass modelling." Naturwissenschaften 101.11 (2014): 989-1001.

Podcast 63 - Meaty; The Evolution of Hypercarnivory

The gang discusses two papers about the evolution (and loss) of hypercarnivory in mammals. Meanwhile, Amanda shares more equine history, Curt does his best to kill a trend, and James goes "nuclear". Please bear with us.... BEAR.

"Batty McFaddin" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) 
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/

"Up goer five" text summary

The group talks about big animals with hair that eat other animals. The first paper looks at different types of things like dogs that have by themselves got big to eat other animals and then died; this has happened three times in the past. The second paper is looking at even bigger animals that live in parks and cold places. It shows that some bad animals became good by eating things that grow in the ground. This change has also happened many times.

References

Van Valkenburgh, Blaire, Xiaoming Wang, and John Damuth. "Cope's rule, hypercarnivory, and extinction in North American canids." Science 306.5693 (2004): 101-104.

Figueirido, B., et al. "Shape at the cross‐roads: homoplasy and history in the evolution of the carnivoran skull towards herbivory." Journal of evolutionary biology 23.12 (2010): 2579-2594.

Podcast 62 - Brachiopods and Bivalves; The Most Interesting and Amazing Lifeforms on the Planet

The gang discusses two papers about the effects of the Permian Mass Extinction on the evolutionary and ecological patterns of brachiopods and bivalves. Also, Amanda finds her true calling, James indiscriminately throws shade, and Curt feels the pain of being the only person to vaguely remember what the papers were about.

'Up goer five' summary:

The group talks about two types of animals with hard parts to hide in, one which is food and one which is not food. It used to be thought that the food animals were better than the not food animals, and that they had beaten them over a long time so that there were more of them today than the not food animal. The first paper shows that this is not true, and that both animals did as well as each other until they both had a very bad day, and that the food animal just got over this very bad day faster. The second paper is making sure that we have not got anything wrong by only looking at one way we can find both the food and not food animals.

References:

Gould, Stephen Jay, and C. Bradford Calloway. "Clams and brachiopods-ships that pass in the night." Paleobiology (1980): 383-396.

Clapham, Matthew E. "Ecological consequences of the Guadalupian extinction and its role in the brachiopod-mollusk transition." Paleobiology 41.02 (2015): 266-279.

Podcast 61 - Frills and Horns; Ceratopsian Convergence

That gang discusses convergent evolution and potential sexual selection in the horns and frills of ceratopsian dinosaurs, which Amanda refers to as the "most American dinosaur". Also, Amanda defends a cause, James practices being a "tiger mom", and Curt drinks for two with disastrous but expected consequences.

Up-Goer Five podcast summary (using only the ten hundred most commonly used English words):

The group talks about big angry animals with no hair that have things coming out of their faces. There are two groups of big angry animals with no hair that have things coming out of their faces, one with tall things coming off of the neck with smaller things coming out of their faces and another with a short thing coming off of the neck and longer things coming out of their faces. Some studies have looked at what all these things on faces and necks are for, and hurt marks on the hard bits of bodies show that the things were used to fight so that a Mr big angry animal with no hair could find a Mrs big angry animal with no hair. A new finding also shows that after the ones with long things on the necks died out, one of the ones with a short thing on its neck began to look like one of the long thing on the neck ones on its own.

"Wallpaper" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) 
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/

References:

Farlow, James O., and Peter Dodson. "The behavioral significance of frill and horn morphology in ceratopsian dinosaurs." Evolution (1975): 353-361.

Farke, Andrew A. "Horn use in Triceratops (Dinosauria: Ceratopsidae): testing behavioral hypotheses using scale models." Palaeontologia Electronica 7.1 (2004): 1-10.

Farke, Andrew A., Ewan DS Wolff, and Darren H. Tanke. "Evidence of combat in Triceratops." (2009): e4252.

Brown, Caleb M., and Donald M. Henderson. "A New Horned Dinosaur Reveals Convergent Evolution in Cranial Ornamentation in Ceratopsidae." Current Biology (2015).

Podcast 60 – Many Memorable Mesozoic Mammals

In this episode, the gang discuss the diverse and ecologically abundant mammals of the Mesozoic. Meanwhile, Amanda gives dedicated fans an exclusive cat report, James learns something, and Curtis does his best Skeletor impression. However, the greatest question goes unanswered: what are Wombles?

Up-Goer Five podcast summary (using only the ten hundred most commonly used English words):
The group talks about two papers that look at warm blooded animals with hair from a very long time ago, during the time of the big angry animals that did not have hair. While it used to be thought that there were not many different kinds of warm blooded animals with hair a very long time ago, new studies show that there were lots of different kinds of warm blooded animals with hair a long time ago and that they did lots of different things even when there were still big angry animals that did not have hair. It is shown that they changed to do these many different things several different times, and that changes to do these different things have happened alone in different groups that are not families with each other.

References: 

Luo, X-Z. 2007. Transformation and diversification in early mammal evolution. Nature 450: 1011–1019.

Chen, M. & Wilson, GP. 2015. A multivariate approach to infer locomotor modes in Mesozoic mammals. Paleobiology 41: 280–312.

Podcast 59 - Dulce et Decorum est Pro Patria Mori

Amanda thinks about a writing style. James takes on a big responsibility. Curt deflects. The nature of change is considered, but the conversation remains locked in stasis.

References

Gould, Steven J.. "Is a New and General Theory of Evolution Emerging?" Paleobiology, 6.1 (1980): 119-130.

Hunt, Gene, Melanie J. Hopkins, and Scott Lidgard. "Simple versus complex models of trait evolution and stasis as a response to environmental change."Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 112.16 (2015): 4885-4890.

Podcast 58 - Hateful Stares; A Discussion on Biomass Trends Through Time

In this episode, the gang discusses changes in biomass through time. They also spend a fair chunk of the podcast passing blame. Meanwhile, James is denied eating a bagel, Curt describes complex biodiversity patterns as “getting swole”, and Amanda apologizes repeatedly. They also try to answer the toughest question of all, would a eurypterid be tasty?

References:

Bambach, Richard K. "Seafood through time: changes in biomass, energetics, and productivity in the marine ecosystem." Paleobiology (1993): 372-397.

Cardinale, Bradley J., et al. "Impacts of plant diversity on biomass production increase through time because of species complementarity." Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 104.46 (2007): 18123-18128.

Podcast 57 - Imperfect Wings, Conifers and Bat Dinos

In this episode, the gang tries desperately to talk about a really interesting plant paper and fails miserably. Meanwhile, James stops caring, Amanda relishes in being right, and Curt really tries to keep this one together (he fails). Also, despite the podcast not being about it at all, James has to talk about the new gliding dinosaur.

References:

Stevenson, Robert A., Dennis Evangelista, and Cindy V. Looy. "When conifers took flight: a biomechanical evaluation of an imperfect evolutionary takeoff."Paleobiology 41.02 (2015): 205-225.

Hughes, Martin, Sylvain Gerber, and Matthew Albion Wills. "Clades reach highest morphological disparity early in their evolution." Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 110.34 (2013): 13875-13879.

Podcast 56 - So the End Triassic Mass Extinction Event

 The gang attempts to discuss the Ringo Starr of mass extinctions, the End Triassic. And much like the actual extinction event, the discussion is long, broad, and not focused on any one thing in particular. Meanwhile, Amanda learns the joys of screen sharing, Curt makes some dubious shopping decisions, and James “wins” (play along at home and count how many times James “wins” the podcast).

References

Benton, Michael J. "More than one event in the late Triassic mass extinction."Nature 321.6073 (1986): 857-861.

Tanner, L. H., S. G. Lucas, and M. G. Chapman. "Assessing the record and causes of Late Triassic extinctions." Earth-Science Reviews 65.1 (2004): 103-139. 

Kasprak, Alex H., et al. "Episodic photic zone euxinia in the northeastern Panthalassic Ocean during the end-Triassic extinction." Geology 43.4 (2015): 307-310.