Word: larval
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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According to a report in Nature, Arizona tiger salamanders have evolved a very different strategy for doing pretty much the same thing: they turn into cannibals. In their larval stage, these amphibians usually find something besides salamanders to feed on. But when raised in mixed broods, a few larvae will assume a larger, more fearsome shape. These "cannibal morphs" seem to exist for one purpose only: to consume cousins (and nonrelatives) and thus make it easier for their brothers and sisters to thrive and multiply. The study does not explain how the cannibals distinguish kin from...
...meticulous scholarship by Elizabeth Broun at the Brooklyn Museum (through Jan. 8), is to become sharply aware of the limits of the Ryder myth. He is like Poe -- so overwrought, yet so influential. One sees, not for the first or only time, the paradox of American art in its larval days: how its course could be deeply affected, and the enthusiasm of its artists unstintingly engaged, by works whose actual aesthetic merits often seem slight...