[O]f all the organs than an animal is provided with, the greatest differences between species are not in their brains or beaks, or in their kidneys or guts, but in their genitals. This applies to cave beetles, bumblebees, and elephant shrews, as well as to velvet worms, land slugs, water and rove beetles, small ermine moths, daddy longlegs spiders, banana and hover flies, egg parasitoid wasps, aquatic annelid worms, hoofed mammals, sharks and rays, primates, guppy fish, damselflies, land planarians, nematode worms, trombidiform mites, and harvestmen. To name but a few.Menno Schilthuizen, Nature's Nether Regions: What the Sex Lives of Bugs, Birds, and Beasts Tell Us Abut Evolution, Biodiversity, and Ourselves (New York: Penguin Books, 2015), p. 34
commonplace book. n. Formerly Book of common places (see commonplace n. 3). orig. A book in which ‘commonplaces’ or passages important for reference were collected, usually under general heads; hence, a book in which one records passages or matters to be especially remembered or referred to, with or without arrangement.
OED Online. Oxford University Press, March 2015. Web. 5 April 2015.
commonplace blog. n A commonplace book in a blog.
Friday, July 31, 2015
Biological diversity? Look to the genitals
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