I’ve been at an awesome wedding out of town this weekend, so here is a sweet treat that fits with that theme from the latest in our Pre-Life trailer series.
The Fresh Prince called. He wants his haircut back.
Grebes are interesting taxonomically. Originally, in the old system of classifying life whereby scientists squinted at creatures and lumped them with whoever they seemed to look most similar too (more or less), grebes were classifed with the similarly aquatic and water-dancing (and awesome-voiced) loons. However, there were doubters, including some wild-eyed crazies who, when they took a closer look at the details of grebe anatomy, determined they shared many unique characteristics (scientists would call them synapomorphies, which are the gold standard for modern evolution-based classification) with . . . are you ready for this? . . . flamingoes. Lo and behold, DNA comparisons bear this out. If that wasn’t enough to convince you, it turns out that flamingo lice are actually closely related to grebe lice, seemingly having diverged only when the two lineages of bird split.
So it seems the hypothetical grebe-loon connection was yet another case of convergent evolution, whereby unrelated organisms evolve to look similar when they set up shop in similar environments. This happens all the time and really messed with taxonomists until DNA sequencing came along. Here’s a nice tree to give you a sense of who fits where; click “Podicipediformes” to take a closer look at the grebe family itself.
Life is coming in March, my American friends with cable! Get excited!
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