Biological Thinking Research Articles

Lineage Thinking in Evolutionary Biology: How to Improve the Teaching of Tree Thinking

AbstractIn 1988, Robert O’Hara coined the now ubiquitous phrase “tree thinking” to highlight the importance of cladistics for proper evolutionary reasoning. This accessible phrase has been taken up widely in the professional, popular, and educational literatures, and it has played an important role in helping spread phylogenetic thinking far beyond the disciplinary borders of systematics. However, the undeniable benefits of the spread of tree thinking have become marred by being widely linked to several misconceptions that were present in O’Hara’s original writings. O’Hara incorrectly considered clades to be the central subjects of evolutionary narratives. By failing to appreciate that clades contain independently evolving lineages, O’Hara has promoted the misleading view that evolution is irreducibly branched. In this paper, I show how an exclusive focus on the branching realm of taxa has created a cladistic blindfold that has caused a form of lineage blindness that has spread widely through the literature dedicated to the teaching of tree thinking. Its symptoms include the rejection of phenomena and concepts that are fundamental to the realm of evolving lineages, including linear evolutionary imagery and narratives, the concepts of anagenetic evolution and missing links, our evolutionary descent from monkeys and apes, and the promotion of the nonsensical concept of collateral ancestors. To avoid simplistic tree thinking, it is crucial to recognize that the realms of taxa and lineages have distinctive features that require different kinds of thinking. I close by suggesting that teaching can be improved by linking tree thinking explicitly to lineage thinking.

Development of Digital Literacy-Based Project Based Learning Assessment Models to Improve High School Students' Creative Thinking Abilities

The use of technology and interactive media in learning is crucial for developing essential information technology and media skills in today's digital era, fostering digital literacy – the ability to understand, use, analyze, evaluate, and participate in the digital world effectively and responsibly. The purposes of this research are to validating a digital literacy-based project-based learning model assessment and enhancing students' digital literacy and creative thinking in high school biology. Using a development research approach and the ADDIE model (Analysis, Design, Development, Implementation, and Evaluation), 137 high school students in Poso Regency were sampled. The assessment tools, including observation sheets and rubrics, along with creative thinking tests, demonstrated validity (sig value < 0.05) and reliability (R > 0.60). Implementation revealed excellent digital literacy (86%), good creative thinking (75%), and a moderate improvement (N-gain = 0.68). The assessment's validity and reliability, confirmed through expert and field trials, support its applicability in high school biology learning.

How discovery learning effect student’s critical thinking in biology based local potential?

This study aims to determine how the effect application of discovery learning on students' critical thinking and how the influence of discovery learning on each indicator of critical thinking. This research is quasi-experiment with pretest-posttest control group design. This research was conducted at 3 SMA Pacitan District, there are SMANA Punung, SMAN B Pacitan, and SMAN C Ngadirojo. The population used in this study were all students of class X Science in 3 schools as research object. Data collection techniques in this study were carried out using test techniques. Data analysis technique in this study was carried out through Wilcoxon test while to find out how much students' critical thinking skills increased, N-gain calculations were carried out. The results showed that there were significant differences in influence of local potential-based discovery learning models on critical thinking aspects of interpretation indicators, analyzing and concluding students with Asymp scores. Sig. (2-tailed) < α value (0.000 < 0.05).ABSTRAK: Penelitian ini bertujuan untuk mengetahui bagaimana pengaruh penerapan discovery learning terhadap bepikir kritis siswa serta bagaimana pengaruh discovery learning pada tiap indikator berpikir kritis. Penelitin ini merupakan quasi-experimen dengan desain penelitian pretest-posttest control group design. Penelitian ini dilaksanakan di 3 SMAN Kabupaten Pacitan yaitu SMAN A Punung, SMAN B Pacitan, dan SMAN C Ngadirojo. Populasi yang digunakan dalam penelitian ini yaitu seluruh peserta didik kelas X IPA di 3 sekolah yang menjadi objek penelitian. Teknik pengumpulan data dalam penelitian ini yaitu dilakukan menggunakan teknik tes. Teknik analisis data dalam penelitian ini dilakukan melalui uji Wilcoxon sedangkan untuk mengetahui seberapa besar peningkatan keterampilan berpikir kritis peserta didik dilakukan perhitungan N-gain. Hasil penelitian menunjukkan bahwa terdapat perbedaan pengaruh yang signifikan antara model discovery learning berbasis potensi lokal terhadap aspek critical thinking pada indikator interpretasi, menganalisis dan menyimpulkan peserta didik dengan perolehan nilai Asymp. Sig. (2-tailed) < nilai α (0,000 < 0,05).

The Contribution of Communication and Digital Literacy Skills to Critical Thinking

The contribution of communication and digital literacy skills to critical thinking in biology are rarely explored. The present study employed a correlational research design to determine how communication and digital literacy skills contributed to students’ critical thinking. In this study, communication and digital literacy skills served as the predictor variables, whereas critical thinking served as the criterion variable. Fourth semester students from Tadris Biology department at IAIN Ternate in North Maluku made up the research sample. Essay questions, questionnaires, and observation sheets were used to collect data. Research results show that communication skills and digital literacy simultaneously and significantly affect critical thinking skills. The study’s findings proved that communication skills and digital literacy contribute to critical thinking skills as much as 34.93% and 29.67%, respectively. These findings indicate that educators need to incorporate components of communication skills and digital literacy into their instruction in order to enhance students’ critical thinking skills.

Relationship between Critical Thinking and Learning Outcomes in Science and Mathematics Subjects Reviewed from Meta Analysis

Critical thinking is an important element in understanding a subject of Physics, Chemistry, Biology, and Mathematics. Learning outcomes are closely related to critical thinking skills. This study used the meta-analysis method assisted by the JASP program with the aim of determining the relationship between critical thinking and learning outcomes in Physics, Chemistry, Biology, and Mathematics. Meta-analysis is used by reviewing research articles published in journals in the range of publication years starting from 2018 to 2023 which are obtained purposively so that there are 20 articles. The results of this meta-analysis show that the relationship between critical thinking and learning outcomes of Physics, Chemistry, Biology, and Mathematics subjects is included in the high category indicated by a correlation effect size (rE) value of 0.891 with a p-value of less than 0.01 at a 95% confidence level

The multi-omic landscape of sex chromosome abnormalities: current status and future directions.

Sex chromosome abnormalities (SCAs) are chromosomal disorders with either a complete or partial loss or gain of sex chromosomes. The most frequent SCAs include Turner syndrome (45,X), Klinefelter syndrome (47,XXY), Trisomy X syndrome (47,XXX), and Double Y syndrome (47,XYY). The phenotype seen in SCAs is highly variable and may not merely be due to the direct genomic imbalance from altered sex chromosome gene dosage but also due to additive alterations in gene networks and regulatory pathways across the genome as well as individual genetic modifiers. This review summarizes the current insight into the genomics of SCAs. In addition, future directions of research that can contribute to decipher the genomics of SCA are discussed such as single-cell omics, spatial transcriptomics, system biology thinking, human-induced pluripotent stem cells, and animal models, and how these data may be combined to bridge the gap between genomics and the clinical phenotype.

The Biological Production of Spacetime: A Sketch of the E-series Universe

Space and time, which should properly be taken conjointly, are both communicatively produced and created with certain contextual perspectives—they are not independent physical entities. The standpoint of production makes the relationship between space and time comprehensible. They can either be mental-subjective, physical-objective, or social-intersubjective. Social and intersubjective (or E-series) spacetime might shed new light on biological thinking. For general readers, this paper provides a clue regarding an alternative conceptualization of spacetime based on biology.

Project-based learning using a laboratory approach on learning outcomes and critical thinking in marine biology

The learning process must actively involve students and provide opportunities for them to study and prove the theories they learn. This study determined the influence of the application of Project-Besad Learning (PjBL) using a laboratory approach on learning outcomes and critical thinking in marine biology. This study used a descriptive quantitative method, with the independent variable being the implementation of PjBL with a laboratory approach and involved 32 students in the sixth semester of Biology Education at Pattimura University Indonesia enrolled in marine biology courses. The dependent variables were students' learning outcomes and critical thinking, and the data were collected by tests (knowledge and critical thinking) and observations (attitude and skill). The analysis revealed that the integration of the PjBL with a laboratory approach had a weak effect on knowledge (0.003 <p 0.005), a moderate effect on attitude and skill (0.000 <p 0.005), and a strong effect on critical thinking. The regression analysis showed that there was a correlation between the independent variable and student knowledge (R2 = 0.257 or 25%), attitude (R2 = 0.471 or 47.1%), psychomotor/skill (R2 = 0.470 or 47%), and critical thinking (R2 = 0.934 or 93.4%). In conclusion, the implementation of PjBL using a laboratory approach can improve student learning outcomes and critical thinking in marine biology.

Experimental approaches to study evolutionary cell biology using yeasts.

The past century has witnessed tremendous advances in understanding how cells function. Nevertheless, how cellular processes have evolved is still poorly understood. Many studies have highlighted surprising molecular diversity in how cells from diverse species execute the same processes, and advances in comparative genomics are likely to reveal much more molecular diversity than was believed possible until recently. Extant cells remain therefore the product of an evolutionary history that we vastly ignore. Evolutionary cell biology has emerged as a discipline aiming to address this knowledge gap by combining evolutionary, molecular, and cellular biology thinking. Recent studies have shown how even essential molecular processes, such as DNA replication, can undergo fast adaptive evolution under certain laboratory conditions. These developments open new lines of research where the evolution of cellular processes can be investigated experimentally. Yeasts naturally find themselves at the forefront of this research line. Not only do they allow the observation of fast evolutionary adaptation, but they also provide numerous genomic, synthetic, and cellular biology tools already developed by a large community. Here we propose that yeasts can serve as an "evolutionary cell lab" to test hypotheses, principles, and ideas in evolutionary cell biology. We discuss various experimental approaches available for this purpose, and how biology at large can benefit from them.

THE KYIV SCHOOL OF COMPARATIVE MORPHOLOGISTS

The article presents information about the scientific activities of individual representatives of Kyiv School of Comparative Morphology of Ukraine founded in 1924. The school was founded by B. O. Dombrovsky, whose ideas live on in the walls of the Department of Anatomy, Histology and Pathomorphology of Animals named after V. G. Kasyanenko which is more than 100 years old. He proposed an anatomy course based on cadaveric material (dissection), laid the foundations for an educational museum and comparative anatomical research not only among teachers but also among students. B. O. Dombrowski and his students worked on the construction of integral (holistic) anatomy and made generalizations about the respiratory, reproductive, vascular and nervous systems of vertebrates and invertebrates. The materials were published in five monographs. Particularly, valuable was his generalization of the stages of development of morphological thinking in which he defines five stages of development of biological thinking. In the evolutionary aspect, B. O. Dombrovsky and his students studied the biomorphology of the vertebrate respiratory system, considering it in connection with the conditions of the environment, the nature of locomotion and the way of feeding. This made it possible to trace the development of hypoxic muscles and lungs among vertebrates to reveal the dependence of their structure on the nature of respiratory motility, to determine the types of respiration, to establish the concept of alveolar respiration and to reveal the dependence on the species and constitution of animals. Dombrovsky's successor was V. Kasyanenko who graduated from Kyiv Veterinary and Zootechnical Institute (1926) and worked as a laboratory assistant at the Department of Anatomy. He was enrolled as an assistant at the department headed by B.O. Dombrovsky. Like his teacher, he knew German and published five articles (1927-1929) in the most famous journals of the world. While working at the Institute of Zoology, he formed the Department of Comparative Anatomy (1950) in which he adhered to B. O. Dombrowsky's principles and launched a new scientific field of research - comparative anatomical and functional analysis of the locomotor apparatus. During the period of the Department's work (1963-1980), ten Doctors of Sciences and 18 Candidates of Sciences were trained. Honored Worker of Higher School of the Ukrainian SSR, Doctor of Biological Sciences, Professor G. O. Himmelreich is well known to a wide range of scientists and workers not only in the field of veterinary medicine, humane medicine, biology and zoology of Ukraine but also specialists from Asia, Africa, Latin America, and Europe. As a result of a wide and thorough morpho-functional study of the pharynx, G. O. Himmelreich created a new understanding phylogenetic development of the entire anterior part of the digestive apparatus. Based on his own data, he proposed a different interpretation of the boundaries of the mammalian pharynx, its sections and the structure and function of its muscular apparatus. Studying the hyoid apparatus, Professor Rudyk not only established the peculiarities of the structure of the hyoid apparatus inherent in different species but also found out the history of its development and causation. At the same time, the habitat and lifestyle of the animals were studied. In addition to conventional anatomical methods (dissection, measurements, etc.), he used methods of material resistance: understanding the plane moment in mammalian bones, as well as bending tests.

Perspective: Systems biology beyond biology

The past decades have witnessed an astounding rise of the nascent field of systems biology. By and large unknown or ignored for a long time, the field rapidly moved into the limelight and is now in the process of becoming a widely recognized and respected component of mainstream biology. Of course, much remains to be explored and accomplished in systems biology within its parent domain of biology, but the time seems ripe for expansions beyond this domain. The goal of such an expansion should not be the creation of new strongholds or academic silos outside biology, but the true integration of biological systems thinking into educational programs of other disciplines. The expansion should naturally start with closely related fields like biophysics, biochemistry, bioinformatics, and bioengineering, but should continue further into other areas invested in the study of life, such as medicine, epidemiology, and public health, as well as applied mathematics and computer science. This perspective sketches out how systems biological thinking might enrich the training of a new generation of scientists in different fields of scientific endeavor.

Intuitive biological thinking in Chinese 8th graders

People spontaneously engage in systematic ways of thinking about biology such as human exceptionalism (the tendency of viewing human species as separate from nonhuman species), essentialism (the tendency of assuming category membership as determined by an underlying essence), and teleology (the tendency of seeing purpose as the cause). However, with the majority of past research drawn on Western samples, little is known about whether various types of intuitive biological thinking apply to non-Western contexts. To better understand the nature and cultural prevalence of intuitive biological thinking, we measured essentialist, teleological, and human exceptionalist thinking in a group of Chinese 8th graders. Results demonstrated the presence of all three types of intuitive biological thinking in Chinese middle schoolers, and comparisons with previously published data on U.S. 8th graders showed consistently less human exceptionalism and slightly higher essentialist thinking in China. As such, the current results highlight the prevalence of intuitive biological thinking in an East Asian sample while addressing the potential role of cultural inputs in shaping the way such thinking manifests.

The Development of Comic Book as Marker of Augmented Reality to Raise Students’ Critical Thinking

Critical thinking (CT) in biology is important for future learners. The examination results from previous studies are complemented by the author's initial findings showing that students' CT is not well developed. This research develops comic books as Augmented Reality (AR) markers to raise students' CT. ADDIE model is used in this research. The scaletest was limited to twenty rural high school students. Validation sheets, CT tests, and questionnaires were used to collect data. The research results show that comic books and AR are valid based on expert evaluation. Limited scale trial of moderate improvement in student CT (n-gain = 0.38). 75% of students' CT has developed well at the end of the lesson. There is a significant difference between pre- CT and post-CT (p < 0.05). Students respond excellently to the use of comic books as AR markers in learning. This research concludes that comic books and AR are valid and their use in learning during a pandemic can improve students' CT. Recommendations for future research are trials on a large scale to determine the strong effectiveness of using comic books as AR markers.

How Choreostorming Informs Thinking in Molecular Genetics and Cancer Biology

Abstract The medium of interpretive dance to convey basic science is well regarded but not commonplace for college-level instruction or scientific hypothesis development. The molecular biology of cancer involves multiple polymer languages that coordinate genome information flow from DNA to RNA to proteins. The author’s course (1) uses a nonbinary art-science approach to teach the molecular biology of cancer; (2) communicates cellular processes to cancer patients in order to empower them to understand what they are experiencing; and (3) assists cancer scientists in developing hypotheses through kinesthetic and visual enactment of cellular processes. Nontrained movers and scientific thinkers together participate in choreostorming, a nonbinary process for developing, and extending, thought experiments into the movement laboratory.

Effects of physical impairments on fitness correlates of the white-footed mouse, Peromyscus leucopus.

Physical impairments are widely assumed to reduce the viability of individual animals, but their impacts on individuals within natural populations of vertebrates are rarely quantified. By monitoring wild populations of white-footed mice over 26 years, we assessed whether missing or deformed limbs, tail or eyes influenced the survival, body mass, movement and ectoparasite burden of their bearers. Of the 27 244 individuals monitored, 543 (2%) had visible physical impairments. Persistence times (survival) were similar between mice with and without impairments. Mice with eye and tail impairments had 5% and 6% greater mass, respectively, than unimpaired mice. Mice with tail impairments had larger home ranges than did unimpaired mice. Burdens of black-legged ticks (Ixodes scapularis) were higher among mice with tail and limb impairments while burdens of bot fly larvae (Cuterebra) were higher among mice with cataracts compared to mice without impairments. Our findings do not support the presupposition that physical impairments reduce viability in their bearers and are inconsistent with the devaluation of impaired individuals that pervaded early thinking in evolutionary biology.

Social Darwinism, the British Labour Party, and the First World War

ABSTRACT This article investigates whether the doctrine of social Darwinism had any bearing on the Labour Party’s decision to support Britain’s participation in the First World War. Many socialist intellectuals were wedded to social Darwinist conceptions of the world. The Independent Labour Party (ILP) published a number of tracts on the interrelationship between Darwinism or science and politics. The article looks for evidence of biological thinking in the Labour Party and the ILP prior to the First World War. It finds only small traces, vastly outweighed by environmental remedies to problems that were regarded as biological by social Darwinists. The labour movement also stood for pacifism as a signature policy. Yet when the war erupted, there was a sudden shift among Labour MPs towards supporting belligerent action. Did social Darwinism finally begin affecting them? Since there was only a slight connection between the doctrine and a few MPs, the article concludes that it was hardly an influence. Pragmatic reasons such as rallying to one’s own nation, supporting working-class communities and resisting atrocities predominated. Social Darwinism was in fact more likely to be utilized by neutralists who argued that Germany was more “civilized” than Russia and therefore deserved to win the war.

An Investigation of Rural-Urban Students’ Critical Thinking in Biology Across Gender

This study aimed to investigate the difference in rural-urban students’ critical thinking in biology class across gender. It involved 289 students from public and private senior high schools. Essay tests were administered to measure the students‘ critical thinking skills. The study results showed that female students outperformed male students in critical thinking. Meanwhile, the rural students demonstrated better critical thinking skills than urban students.

Affectivity, Sense, and Affects

This article argues that attempts by philosophy to think emotions as embodied is caught between the necessity of thinking them as a subjective first-person dimension of experience on the one hand and as an objective biological determination on the other. Philosophy has tended to view these two dimensions, qualitative and quantitative, respectively, as either in a parallelism with each other or alternatively has dispensed with either one or the other. This article draws on Georges Canguilhem’s biological thinking of “sense” as a mode of functional relationality that constitutes the being of organisms as such and brings it into a comparative alignment with Jean-Luc Nancy’s thinking of sense and touch. On this basis it argues that emotions are an extension of a more fundamental affectivity proper to biological life in general. This allows for the qualitative dimension of emotions and the objective knowledge of them in biology to be thought in an ontological continuity with each other. It also allows for a renewed thinking of the fundamental continuity of emotional and affective experience in human and non-human animal life.

Will AI create a new form of life? A discussion of issues raised by “Life 3.0: Being Human in the Age of Artificial Intelligence”

In this paper I discuss a number of ideas stimulated by Max Tegmark’s book, Life 3.0 . I hope they 1 illustrate that a discussion between approaches in areas around computer science, AI and physics on the one hand, and biological thinking on the other can be fruitful. Essentially the book is strongest where AI and associated near future use are discussed. It is weakest when it moves into biological areas. But this is not a “keep off our patch” stance, but rather a desire to welcome these ideas from another intellectual approach and welcome the way they are usefully challenging. In his excursions into biology and consciousness and the speculation that AI might well create Life 3.0, Tegmark makes a number of errors. These include: a replicator is not clearly specified, he muddles goal directed behaviour with descriptions by function or consequence / end point, he makes some basic errors of logic including “affirming the consequent” (e.g., “if this is a dog, then it is an animal”, does NOT imply “this is an animal therefore it is a dog”), and failing to see that consciousness is ascribed not described and thereby seeing it as an entity which can be treated in the same way physical, publically observable, phenomena. Finally, he does not address the energy question: even if AI could achieve super intelligence, this silicon based system would likely consume so much energy as to be unsustainable. All this weakens his arguments. This is a pity because the discussion of the challenges for the near future which the development of AI poses, is valuable, interesting and useful and can stand by itself without his forays into Life 3.0.

Teleology and Biology: a defense of teleological thinking in biology

Teleological language refers to a forward-looking discourse, and various biologists are troubled with this issue. In this paper, I will discuss the misunderstandings that both philosophers of science and biologists have made against teleology. Among these misunderstandings, I can mention its relationship to anthropomorphism (i.e., a planning agent external to the world reference) and reference to a force immanent to the organisms (“vitalism”) beyond the reach of empirical investigation. I will argue that they are misconceptions and that teleology has shifted its meaning and focus from its pre-evolutionary form. Now it is in the position that it can be used and maintained without violating the principles of modern science. Using an example of the adaptation and function debate, I will discuss how the teleological language is the best interpretation of these issues.