I’d like to thank Paul (PZ) Myers for giving Free Association a plug. For those of you who may not be regular readers of science blogs, PZ’s Pharyngula is one of the most frequently read blogs in the life sciences. When he’s not battling creationists and generally defending the values of the Enlightenment on his blog, he’s an associate professor in the Department of Biology at the University of Minnesota Morris. His research interests are in the developmental biology of zebrafish and, for my money, he writes some of the best explanations of the evo-devo literature to be found anywhere on the web. As an example, there’s his summary of a recent paper by Albertson et al. published in PNAS, entitled “Integration and evolution of the cichlid mandible: The molecular basis of alternate feeding strategies”. What makes the paper so appealing is its integration of genetics (QTL mapping), biomechanics, developmental biology, gene expression, and morphometry—all in the service of new insights into the evolution of the opening and closing mechanisms of the cichlid jaw, which relate to different modes of feeding. PZ’s tour through the paper is well worth reading.

As for his plug of Free Association, he titles his post “But don’t they have anything better to do with their time?”

The answer, of course, is yes. But if a full-time, no doubt overcommitted academic can start a blog, why can’t we?