Mokele

It's a higher number because it's a measure of how diverse the system is - systems where one species massively predominates get low numbers, systems with a more even distribution get higher numbers. The reason the groups with fewer trees got higher numbers is because the index doesn't take into account total population, only relative proportion of species. Thus, two populations of the same size and same number of species can have different results if one has almost complete dominance by a single species, while the other has equal numbers of each. Similarly, a smaller population can have a higher number if the numbers of each species are more similar to each other.

No, please, go ahead and start one.

Yes.

I've actually had excellent success just using regular coil fluorescent bulbs for indoor plants - they're always worked as well or better than the high-priced "plant bulbs"

My MS thesis was only about 75 pages or so, but that school had the policy that you could substitute published papers for chapters, and since papers in my field tend to be fairly succinct, it wasn't too long. Most of the page length was due to it being double-spaced and with a separate sections for figures and tables (one per page). If you stapled together the two actual articles in their published forms, it'd be ~20 pages.

Honestly, it would be pretty standard, given the irresponsibility and outright stupidity of pretty much all of the characters. The 12th spoken line is "I wonder what this button does?" and it gets worse from there.

It's an excellent book, and she's a very good writer, much better than most scientists.

Cite a source for that, please. I've cited mine, and she's the world's leading expert on the subject. My point is that you cannot look at impermeable-skinned animals with amniotic eggs for clues about animals which had more-permeable skins and anamniote eggs. Because it shows that there wasn't some major barrier for sarcopterygians becoming marine. And since tetrapods are just derived sarcopterygians (and, at the time we're talking about, only minimally derived), there's no reason to presume they weren't just as adaptable as their fishy cousins.

Archegosaurus Dinosaurs weren't tied to water for reproduction, though. Given that there is copious evidence of marine sacropterygians, I see no reason to assume, a priori, that a very closely related group was restricted to fresh water.

Theoretically, it's possible, but there's no reason to assume permeable skins evolved until modern amphibians (which arose in the Triassic), especially given the marine tetrapod species I listed above, and that even freshwater poses osmotic challenges (just in the opposite direction).

Thanks, very helpful! Now, time to write some death, destruction, and the horrendously inappropriate suggestion of stashing a mini-black-hole under the sink so nobody has to take the garbage out anymore.

What you're missing is that, in many cases, the mutation will be 'hidden' due to a recessive gene. It's like albinos - an organism that looks normal may have one copy of the albino gene, but if it breeds with another like itself (with a hidden copy), a fraction (25%) of the offspring will be albino. If the albino breeds with another animal with one hidden albino gene, 50% of the offspring are albino. The key is that there is a large amount of standing variation in any population, mostly 'hidden' in this manner. Occaisionally, the mutations get expressed, and the offspring is selected for or against, but in the absence of strong selection in either direction, there will be quite a lot of variation just laying in wait for selection. Another important key is that either-or traits are quite rare in nature. You're more likely to see traits vary continuously (such as variation in body size, or literal shades of grey in coat color), with selection favoring one extreme or possibly the middle. In these situations, where there's no binary expression, its a lot easier to see how speciation could happen. Consider variation in neck length, with selection for long necks leading to giraffes.

Clack's book is the source. I doubt land migration would be possible - most early tetrapods weren't good enough walkers for long-distance migration, especially over the inner desert of Pangaea.

Archegosaurus apparently did, but it's the exception. Not entirely, early tetrapod fossils are found on what would have been opposite sides of Pangaea. True, but if you'll read back, the highly permeable skins of modern amphibians are not the primitive state - early tetrapods likely had much less permeable skin, and in some cases, we know they had scales or armor.

If origin determined the entire future of the lineage, why are there marine organisms of all other tetrapod lineages? That a lineage originated in a given environment does not constrain it forever to that environment. See Whales. I suggest Clack's book, which has a good discussion on this. She specifically points out that the global distribution of tetrapod fossils means they must have been able move through marine environments (as the alternative, numerous independent origins, is even less likely).

iNow, don't drag old disputes into new pages. If you want references, just ask. SkepticLance, if someone asks, you should be ready to provide references, whether or not they ask in what you consider a polite way.

How it affects a movement depends on the movement itself. A gymnast can tuck their limbs in to increase the speed of a rotation, or extend them to reduce speed.

Basically, because it's a complex, interlinked system, and screwing with anything big is likely to be quite, quite bad. Imagine a car, and you modify one random part in a random way. If it's the color or the hubcaps or even the shape of the exterior, it will affect the car, but in a simple way (more drag, less drag, gets hotter on warm days, etc.) But if you randomly modify bits of the engine, it could be disastrous. Developmental genes, which control thinks like limb number, are a lot like that - complex, interacting systems which tend to break down in horrible ways if something goes wrong, often leading to death in the early embryo stage. This doesn't mean that there can't be changes, just that the odds of a mutation being good are pretty low. This is borne out by evolutionary history, where you see a lot of little changes all the time, but it's only rarely that you see major changes in body form.

We have lots - the average human have 10 mutations new to them which affect final protein coding, and countless more that don't. Thing is, most of these mutations either have little effect or are recessive, so are invisible unless you breed with someone with the same mutation. And yes, mutations continue throughout life. If these mutations damage important machinery that regulates cell division and DNA repair, the result can be cancer.

Depends on the sort of cells. You can see skeletal muscle cells under a 40x dissecting scope, or sometimes even with the naked eye.

Basically, they're just copying errors. No cellular machinery is perfect, and as a result, errors happen. There's also environmental damage, since DNA isn't a terribly stable molecule.

True, but the cells in question were only temporarily in space, and thus simply were able to 'hold their breath' and 'go hungry' until returned to Earth. Indefinite survival is a whole different matter.

Possibly, but that would require altering everything about them down to the molecular level, altering pretty much every metabolic process they have. The two main drawbacks are length and speed. A muscle can only contract through about ~30% of its length, and outside of a range of ~7%, the force drops, sometimes dramatically. Also, muscle's force output declines exponentially as contraction velocity increases. Motors don't have these limits, or at least not nearly as severely as muscle. The last is most important, since flight requires rapid delivery of high amounts of energy, and this restricts maximal power of muscle to a relative narrow range of ~30% of maximal contraction velocity, with steep penalties for deviations much beyond this.

Dead, due to lack of food.

Not as far as I know, but then it's not really my field