This week we have an episode on a topic recommended by a friend of the show! We begin with a story about a cute little goat born in the late 1930s in the Netherlands, and spiral into a wide ranging discussion about evolution, natural selection, phenotypic plasticity, and nature vs nurture! Tune in!

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Nathan had a magical experience recently in a mangrove forest and because Sean is a good older brother, Petri Dish is covering the ins and outs about this ecosystem! Learn about the cool adaptations that allow these plants to survive in salty waters, including being able to secrete salt crystals out of their leaves!

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Hi everyone and welcome to our second and final episode on penises! Why are bird penises so strange? Why does the spiny anteater have a four-headed penis? Why don't humans have a penis bone? All great questions that at least at mildly addressed in this episode of Petri Dish!

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Hi Everyone! Happy Presidents' Day! In honor of presidents past, we have decided to do an episode on a topic Nathan has been requesting for a while -- dicks!

Yes, somehow we have gotten around to doing an episode on penises. But as this topic was researched, we found to our surprise that penises are actually kind of interesting! So here, on PART ONE of a two part series on penises, we present to you an evolutionary history of penis!

References:

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0960982214003145

https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2018/04/males-penises-ostracods-extinction-sexual-selection/557756/

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC27698/

https://www.nature.com/articles/nature.2013.12421

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/09/130903102101.htm

https://myriapodology.org/polydesmida/gonopods.html

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/11771475/

https://www.pnas.org/content/114/12/E2375.full

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0960982215014189

https://www.nature.com/articles/nature13819

Hi Everyone!

Hope you're having an excellent Valentine's Day! In honor of all the romance out there, we're releasing an episode about chlamydia, one of the most successful bacterial sexually transmitted diseases in the world! The bacteria involved is a pretty funky one and is responsible for a few different diseases, so strap in and learn some new information about this old friend of humanity's.

References:

https://www.cdc.gov/std/chlamydia/stats.htm

https://www.cdc.gov/std/chlamydia/stdfact-chlamydia-detailed.htm

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK8091/

https://www.nature.com/articles/ncomms10688

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4518511/

https://www.jstor.org/stable/44965962

https://nyaspubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1749-6632.2011.06194.x

https://genome.cshlp.org/content/27/7/1220.full

Hey! We're back from our 2 week hiatus with an episode on Omicron! At this point, the omicron wave seems to be largely done in the US (in terms of new cases, people are still dying though so please be careful!)

Science doesn't happen right away though, so there is still a lot we're learning about omicron and future potential variants!

References:

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-022-04462-1

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-022-04479-6

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2021/us/covid-cases.html

https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-022-00079-6

https://health.ucdavis.edu/coronavirus/covid-19-information/omicron-variant

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/01/30/health/stealth-omicron-variant.html

https://www.washingtonpost.com/wellness/2022/01/20/what-does-endemic-mean/

https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-022-00155-x

https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-03619-8

https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-022-00210-7

Hey everyone! Hope you're all staying safe and healthy! We here at Petri Dish are taking a 2 week hiatus, but we'll be back with more science soon!

Hi everyone! In part 1 of crustaceans we laid down a lot of groundwork on what crustaceans even *are*. But here in part 2 we wanted to spend some time talking about a hot topic in crustacean-world: "carcinization" aka "stuff keeps evolving into crabs"! But not *all* crustaceans are yearning for crabdom -- there is a specific group called anomurans that really dig that crab vibe. Learn about them and what it takes to be a crab on this episode of Petri Dish!

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Hey everyone! On this episode of Petri Dish we ask the question everyone has been asking since time immemorial -- what the fuck is a shrimp? Like seriously, what is that shit? No, I mean, I ask because there are so many things called shrimp -- fairy shrimp, mantis shrimp, seed shrimp, and so on... And while they look kind of similar to one another, they really aren't all that related, separated by hundreds of millions of years of evolution.

But they all belong in the big group of animals called 'Crustaceans', along with crabs and lobsters! And insects. Wait, what? Yeah, this group of animals is a total mess, so let's talk about it!

References:

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0960982219304865

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6501934/

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/bies.202100020

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1467803920301146

Our final episode on kelp! We've spent the last two episodes discussing natural kelp forests and some of the fun things we can use kelp to do like bioremediation. This episode, we talk about the nutritional value of kelp and some food uses, including in food for cows!

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