In reading an interesting article in the New York Times (in part because it quotes my colleague Andrew MacDougall), I came upon this statement that caused a bit of a cough.

At The Panda's Thumb, Nick Matzke has a post about abiogenesis (the origin of life from non-life) and evolution. He, PZ, and others argue that abiogenesis is part of evolutionary biology and that it is a cop-out to deflect challenges about it from anti-evolutionists. Allow me a brief summary of my interpretation.

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Question: Do we need evolutionary biology to understand the origin of life?

Sometimes, when I think a little extra motivation is required, I (jokingly) threaten my students that I may switch to working on leeches. I explain to them that the way my colleague Mark Siddall and his lab at the AMNH collect leeches is to roll up their pant legs and walk into the water.

I met Mark when I was a postdoc at the museum, and he and I have worked together on a few leech genome sizes (though not enough yet -- I still want to tackle this group), and now I am very pleased to note (via The Loom) that Mark has launched a leech blog.

So go and check out BdellaNea and see why leeches are great.

Depending on the animals in question, the amount of DNA per cell may be associated with body size, metabolic rate, developmental rate, or other traits. With an old fashioned cytogenetic staining method (the Feulgen reaction) and a new image analysis densitometry setup, we can estimate genome size for vertebrate species quite readily with only an air-dried sample of blood cells on a microscope slide. Getting the blood is the limiting step in many instances -- in particular from cool and recently discovered critters like these that are now officially on my blood smear wish list.

So, over at Rationally Speaking, Massimo Pigliucci asks "Is there fundamental scientific disagreement about evolutionary theory?".  This is a reply to creationists who are making a big deal of the upcoming get-together of 16 theorists at the Konrad Lorenz Institute in Altenberg -- referred to in the media as the "Altenberg 16" (you see, because that's where it is and how many will be in attendance).

 Is this a secret meeting about the dire condition of evolutionary science?  Is it an overthrow of Darwinian natural selection as a mechanism of evolution? Is it about sharing doubts that evolution occurred on earth?