Biologist - May 2009

Science policy

Allocating funds for scientific research
Nick Dusic, The Campaign for Science and Engineering

Making our cities sustainable
Ceri Margerison, British Ecological Society

Revising the regulations on animals used in science
Laura Bellingan, Society of Biology

Open access: click here to view these articles.

Features

A conversation well worth remembering
John A Woolven-Allen
To mark the 200th anniversary of Charles Darwin’s birth, a special event was held at Oxford which included a ‘Conversation’ between Richard Dawkins and Bishop Richard Harries.

Open access: click here to view article.

Sponges – an evolutionary success story
Susanne Schmitt and Mike Taylor
Despite their simple morphology, recent genomic studies have revealed a high similarity between the gene repertoires of sponges and higher metazoans, and allowed insights into how animals evolved.
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Following birds along the pathway to invasion
Tim M Blackburn, Julie L Lockwood and Phillip Cassey
This article considers what determines whether or not a species becomes an invader in this way, using bird invasions as a case study.
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A foreigner in France: the Asian hornet
Marie-Pierre Chauzat and Stephen Martin
In 2004 the hornet Vespa velutina L. was accidentally introduced into South West France. As it is a predator of honey bees, its introduction is bad news for beekeepers.
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Beaches – more than just sand and fun
Alan Deidun
Beaches evoke images of laughing frolicking children, of buckets and spades and sandcastles. Yet while beaches are highly valued by society as prime locations for recreation, they also underpin many coastal economies around the world.
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A genomic fungal foray
Andrew M Beacham, John Antoniw and Kim E Hammond-Kosack
Rapid progress in sequencing the entire genomes of fungal plant pathogens is promoting the development of new techniques for investigating these potentially devastating organisms.
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