Dec 2013: Steve Jones, slime mold, and spiders that mimic ants

This month, we leave backbones behind, for an invertebrate and protist special. I speak to Chris Reid from the the New Jersey Institute of Technology in Newark, USA, about an ancient single cell animal that looks like a glob of luminous yellow gunge, that doesn't have a brain but may be smarter than human beings. I find out about a double deception in the animal kingdom: how an ant-mimicking spider sends misleading visual and chemical cues to different predators. And, in the scientific spark I ask Steve Jones, Emeritus Professor of genetics at University College London what made him want to be a scientist, and how he came to be one of the world’s experts on snail genetics Download the MP3


An ant-mimicking spider Peckhamia image courtesy of Continis

Quicklinks:
Chris Reid's webpage
Divya Uma's paper on ant-mimicry
Steve Jones' column in the Telegraph