Christopher X J. Jensen
Professor, Pratt Institute

Support the mighty Bombardier Beetle’s quest to have its genome sequenced!

Posted 20 Mar 2017 / 0
bombardier firing hashtag

A good friend and former colleague of mine, Aman Gill, now works on Bombardier Beetles. And the Bombardier Beetle is in the running for a unique award: having its genome sequenced. How will the Bombardier Beetle win this award? Well, folks, we are pretty well into the new millenium by now, so you probably have guessed it: the Bombardier Beetle needs to win an online popularity contest. That’s the way we want to make all our important scientific decisions, right?

Here’s Aman’s pitch for why you should VOTE BOMBARDIER:

Bombardiers are in fact pretty cool. They repel predators with rapid-fire, precisely-aimed explosive discharges of a toxic chemical mix at over 100°C, without hurting themselves. Dozens of species are considered bombardiers, some of which are very distantly related…meaning bombardierdom has probably somehow evolved multiple times. They represent an unexplored branch in the tree of life that includes over 40,000 species for which not a single genome has been sequenced. Out of their charisma and the scientific uncertainty surrounding it, bombardiers have even become a creationist cause. A bombardier genome will help address all of this.

If you want to throw the weight of each of your too many email addresses behind the mighty Bombardier Beetle, you can do so here.

NOTE: I know that April 1st is quickly approaching, but please note that this is not an April Fool’s post. Please consider voting BOMBARDIER.

A Minor Post, Adaptation, Behavior, Convergence, Evolution, Experiments (General), Genetics, Natural Selection, Public Outreach, Science (General), Uncategorized

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