Notes from the Real Thing

I love the New York Times‘ Scientist at Work blog, which hosts reports from scientists in far flung parts of the world. Chris Filardi of the American Museum of Natural History just wrapped up a series of posts about evolution on the Solomon Islands, and there’s a slide show from the trip up on the site now.

This is from the introduction to the slide show.

For biologists, islands have always been illuminating places. In part, this reflects both the relative simplicity of island ecosystems and also the richly unique, and sometimes bizarre, turns that life takes on islands – think parrots behaving like big rodents, massive dragonlike lizards and miniature hippos, giant flightless dodo birds and tiny ground-foraging bats.

It’s so cool to read about work like this as it’s happening, on the ground. The scientific adventure is definitely my favorite genre.