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Magazine
The Malaysian spider named after
David Bowie (Heteropoda davidbowie)
is the starting point for a discussion
of species named after various
celebrities (mainly musicians, from
Beyoncé to Frank Zappa) and how
the media pick up on such stories (for
example, after David Bowie’s death).
One Rolling Stone article used the
golden-reared fly Scaptia beyonceae
as a hook to introduce its readers
to a range of other musically linked
species, including Jerry Garcia’s
roach (appropriate given his drug
consumption), Roy Orbison’s beetle
and Freddie Mercury’s isopod.
Trilobites seem to be a particular
focus of interest for musically minded
taxonomists: there are Arcticalymene
species named after all five members
of the Sex Pistols (so Sid Vicious and
Glenn Matlock, as well as Rotten,
Cook and Jones), while on a milder
note other trilobite genera include
species named after Simon, Garfunkel
and all four of The Beatles. One punk
species not included in Heard’s list
is the spiky-shelled, deep-sea snail
Alviconcha strummeri, named after Joe
Strummer of The Clash.
Heard accepts that some crustier
members of the community of
biologists will not be best pleased by
such apparent trivialisation of species
naming, but he makes a good case
that, by engaging the public with
science and offering opportunities for
showing how normal scientists are, this
practice is overwhelmingly positive.
There is a thread running through
the book that could usefully have been
further developed that relates to the
source of the morality of taxonomic
naming, and how it is transmitted
down the scientific generations.
Although there are some clear rules,
including the fact that names are
not supposed to be offensive, Heard
highlights at a number of points that
some kinds of names are not used
simply because it is not the done thing.
For example, there is no rule against
naming a species after yourself, but it
is virtually never done and certainly not
in the last century. Even the number
of those apparently insulting species
names turns out to be vanishingly
small. And the cases of species names
being sold, often at auction, are always
linked to fund raising for conservation
or scientific work.
For example, a consortium of German
institutions runs BIOPAT, which since
1999 has auctioned off the names
of over 160 species, raising nearly
†600,000 for conservation research and
activity. This is a lot of money in a field
that is generally in cruel need of funds; it
is hard to criticise this process. Strikingly,
Heard cannot find a single example of
a scientist who sold a species name for
personal profit.
Frustratingly, Heard doesn’t explore
where all this nomenclatural ‘morality’
comes from nor how it is transmitted.
What happens in those situations
when — as in the case of Elsa Warburg
and Orvar Isberg, the duelling Swedish
palaeontologists — the rules are broken?
How are such transgressions seen at the
time and subsequently? Is this now a
cautionary tale for young taxonomists or
one that is told with wry expressions of
jealousy?
By exploring the sociology of science
a bit more deeply and thinking about
why we follow the unspoken rules that
govern all aspects of our subject, Heard
could have given the book a bit more
heft and enriched his descriptions of a
discipline that he obviously loves and
cares about greatly. But that could
always be the subject of another,
different book.
In the end, the examples that struck
me the most were the ones I had never
thought about and that have passed
from Latin into common names or
have taken their Latin name from the
common term. I had no idea that the
gorgeous magnolia tree at the end of
our road that has just finished flowering
can trace its origins to plants found in
Martinique and that were named after
a seventeenth-century French botanist
called Magnol. As Heard explains in
one of his biographical asides, for three
decades Magnol was denied a post
because he was a Protestant in an
overwhelmingly Catholic country; a lack
of diversity was a problem back then too.
Even more simply, Heard’s book showed
me that the iris flowers that my father
loved so much take their name from the
Greek goddess of the rainbow. That such
simple delights can be found rubbing
shoulders with punk band trilobites is a
measure of how enchanting this book is.
School of Biological Sciences, University of
Manchester, Manchester M13 9PT, UK.
E-mail: cobb@manchester.ac.uk
Current Biology 30, R617–R634, June 8, 2020
Q&A
Jianzhi Zhang
Jianzhi Zhang grew up in Hangzhou,
China, a scenic city about 200 km
south of Shanghai. He obtained a
bachelor’s degree in Genetics from
Fudan University in 1992 and a
PhD in Genetics from Pennsylvania
State University in 1998. He was
a Fogarty Postdoctoral Fellow
at the US National Institutes of
Health from 1999 to 2001 before he
joined the University of Michigan,
where he is now the Marshall W.
Nirenberg Collegiate Professor of
Ecology and Evolutionary Biology.
Early in his career, he studied the
genetic basis of primate evolution
and human origins. Later, a student
introduced him to the budding yeast
Saccharomyces cerevisiae, a powerful
model organism that he now uses
as the primary experimental system
for understanding evolution. He
has studied a number of topics in
evolutionary genetics and genomics,
such as gene duplication, protein
evolution, and molecular adaptation,
and he is most interested in the
relative roles of chance and necessity
in evolution.
What turned you on to biology in
the first place? When in high school,
I was interested in physics because
it is logical, quantitative, and has
general laws. By contrast, my high
school biology was full of disjointed
facts that required memorization,
which I hated. The only part of
biology that I liked at the time was
Mendelian genetics because it is
logical, quantitative, and has laws.
I won several physics competitions,
which earned me admission to Fudan
University without having to take the
college entrance exam. Even though
I very much wanted to study physics,
my parents disapproved because
they felt that not much was left to be
done in physics. It happened that my
father had a geneticist friend, who
believed that genetics was the science
of the 21st century and advised me to
study it. I was reluctant but agreed to
try given my high school experience
with genetics. My freshman year in
college was miserable because the
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required zoology and botany courses
as well as the associated labs were
boring, tedious, and needed so much
memorization. I was aimless and lost
until one day in our library when I
serendipitously opened a translated
population genetics textbook written
by Shigeru Oba. I was immediately
attracted to it, finding all the
captivating features of physics now
in a biological science! After finishing
this book, I read all the books on
population and evolutionary genetics
that I could find in our library, totaling
no more than 15. One of these books
was an edited volume containing a
chapter titled ‘Human evolution at the
molecular level’, by Masatoshi Nei. I
was so impressed and interested that
I read other papers and books by this
author and wished to study with him.
Did you manage to study with Nei?
After graduation from Fudan, I applied
to graduate schools in the US. I was
initially rejected by Nei because his
lab was full. Luckily, a couple of
months later, Nei’s student Tatsuya
Ota graduated, fortuitously opening
a position in the Nei lab and a career
in evolutionary genetics for me. I
am forever grateful for Ota’s timely
graduation.
What did you learn from Nei?
In terms of evolutionary genetic
concepts, methods, and analyses,
I learned mostly from lab mates.
However, it was Nei who taught me
the two most important things: critical
thinking and clear writing. Additionally,
R626 Current Biology 30, R617–R634, June 8, 2020
Nei trained many leaders in our field,
and I learned that one’s legacy can
be extended through students and
postdocs.
What is the trick to clear writing?
Think clearly and assume that your
readers have no knowledge of the
subject.
Do you have a scientific ‘hero’?
Three in my field. Gregor Mendel,
Charles Darwin, and Motoo Kimura, in
that order.
What advice do you give to
graduate students? There are three
requirements for success in academia:
ambition, intelligence, and diligence.
Students can teach advisors too. Over
the years, I have been influenced by
and have learned a great deal from my
trainees. Without them, I know that I
would be far behind.
Do you have a favorite science
book? The Neutral Theory of
Molecular Evolution by Motoo Kimura.
This is Kimura’s one long argument
that most interspecific genetic
differences and intraspecific genetic
polymorphisms are not explained by
Darwinian selection but by random
mutation and genetic drift. It is
fundamental, transformational, and
lucid.
What is your opinion of big science
in biology? I generally disfavor big
science. There is ample evidence
that the most creative science is
accomplished by small teams of
one or two people. Big science does
have a role in biology but should be
limited to constructing a fundamental
knowledge base or infrastructure
that cannot be built by individual
investigators, such as sequencing the
human genome and establishing the
UK Biobank. Some have argued that
big science generates large datasets
that can be analyzed by many small
teams. While this is sometimes true,
it is often not the case because of
the different requirements of data
type, sample size, controls, and so
on needed for answering different
questions. I am not convinced that
the same amount of money will not
generate more useful data by small
teams who test specific hypotheses.
Magazine
What are the big questions to be
answered next in your field? With
abundant genome sequences and
genetic tools, we can in principle
identify the genetic basis of any
heritable phenotypic variation, as
long as this variation occurs among
individuals that can be interbred. But
how do we find the genetic basis of
macroevolutionary changes, such
as the origins of multicellularity,
vertebra, and bird wings? We cannot
interbreed an invertebrate with a
vertebrate to map the genes for the
backbone, so genetics is powerless
here. Evolutionary developmental
biology is supposed to tackle such
issues. While comparative analysis
of gene expression has had some
successes, we still lack a method to
systematically uncover the genetic
basis of macroevolutionary phenotypic
variations. It is interesting to note
that multicellular yeasts (clusters of
yeast cells stuck together) have been
created from the unicellular budding
yeast via experimental evolution,
but it remains to be seen whether
such laboratory evolution informs the
process of macroevolution.
What is your biggest research
ambition? My wish is for biology
to be as logical, quantitative, and
predictive as physics. Some might
say that biology would then be less
fun. Probably true. But for me the
fun part of science is to identify the
few general principles that explain
all observations and to generate
predictions. Evolution is without doubt
idiosyncratic, but there can be rules
about the idiosyncrasy. While we
cannot predict the specific organisms
that we would see if the tape of
evolution were replayed, I hope that
we could make statistical statements
about the features of the organisms
that we would encounter. Related to
this goal, I hope to find general rules
on the relative contributions of genetic
drift and natural selection to genotypic
and phenotypic evolution.
What do you think of the post-
publication peer review of papers?
A healthy field should encourage post-
publication peer review in the form of
published critiques and responses.
Evolutionists are used to debates,
so my field is relatively tolerant of

Magazine
critiques compared with some other
fields where you hear from colleagues
about which papers or authors are not
trustworthy but cannot find published
critiques. Post-publication peer review
in the form of social media posts
is useful if the identified issues are
relatively simple and obvious. Because
blog and Twitter posts tend to be brief
and informal, they can be imprecise,
unbalanced, and even confusing. Peer
review of critiques (typically handled
by the journal that published the paper
being critiqued) can help to ensure
that they are written clearly, fairly,
and in a measured tone, which helps
readers to understand the issue. I am
disappointed, however, that many
journals in biology do not welcome
critiques of their papers.
Do you support open-access
publication? Definitely as a reader
but not as an author. For a non-open-
access publication, the page and color
charge that I pay is probably around
1,000 USD. The open-access fee
is several times higher and in some
cases exceeds 5,000 USD per paper.
Unfortunately, grants have not kept
pace, so open-access publication
decreases research dollars.
What do you think is the biggest
current challenge facing the
scientific community? The biggest
challenge is always the ability to attract
and retain talent. With the deterioration
of funding and the scientific ignorance
of some of our elected leaders, both
issues of which reflect the public
opinion about science to some degree,
the outlook is not bright. In the long
run, however, science must attract
talent by its own merit.
If you had not made it as a scientist,
what would you have become? As
a teenager, I liked writing and wrote a
lot. I have not written anything serious
in Chinese for over 25 years but
still read a great amount of Chinese
history, politics, and literature. I believe
that I could be an essayist if not a
scientist.
Department of Ecology and Evolutionary
Biology, University of Michigan, 4018
Biological Sciences Building, 1105 North
University Avenue, Ann Arbor, MI 48109-
1085, USA.
E-mail: jianzhi@umich.edu
Quick guide
Meiotic drive
Ananya Nidamangala Srinivasa1,2
and Sarah E. Zanders1,2,*
What is meiotic drive? Diploid
organisms, like you, have two copies
of each autosomal chromosome,
one from each parent. Sometimes
organisms are heterozygous at a
given region, meaning they carry
different copies (or alleles) of the DNA
sequence on the two homologous
chromosomes. Generally, the
alternative alleles at a given site have
an equal chance of being transmitted
into the next generation by way of
gametes (like sperm or eggs). A
man with XY sex chromosomes,
for example, will generate an equal
number of X-bearing and Y-bearing
sperm. This will lead him to father
male and female offspring with equal
probability. This Mendelian allele
transmission constitutes one of the
foundational laws of genetics. Meiotic
drivers are alleles that break this law
and force their transmission into more
than half or sometimes even all of the
progeny.
How can alleles that break the
(genetic) law exist? Evolution is
sometimes mistakenly thought to be a
process that only makes things better:
good alleles are maintained, while bad
ones are discarded on a never-ending
march towards perfection. From this
standpoint, it is difficult to understand
how ‘selfish’ alleles like meiotic
drivers can exist. A gene-centric
view, however, can help illuminate
how cheaters like meiotic drivers are
allowed to prosper. The ‘goal’ of each
gene is to be passed on to the next
generation. From this perspective, the
alternative alleles at a given region
are in a no holds barred competition
for maintenance or spread in a
population.
Mendelian allele transmission
promotes fairness in this competition:
each allele has an equal opportunity to
demonstrate its worth. In a fair fight,
the alleles that are better at promoting
the fitness of the organism can win
and spread in a population. Meiotic
drivers, however, can cheat to deprive
Current Biology 30, R617–R634, June 8, 2020 © 2020 Elsevier Inc. R627
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competing alleles of their fair chance
to demonstrate their worth. Due to this
cheat to win strategy, meiotic drivers
do not need to promote the fitness
of the organism in order to spread in
a population. They can even spread
over time to replace better adapted
alleles in a population.
How do meiotic drivers affect
organisms that carry them? Meiotic
drive could theoretically occur with
no fitness cost to the organism. In
such a case, a driver could spread
and be found in every member of
a population with no effect on the
fitness of the population. Alternatively,
drivers could impose fitness costs
on their hosts. These costs could
be either a direct outcome of the
drive mechanism (see below) or
the costs could arise indirectly
due to drive. For example, a driver
linked to the X chromosome (XD) in
Drosophila recens has facilitated the
evolution of inversions that link the
chromosome into a single haplotype.
In other words, the XD chromosome
can no longer recombine with
regular X chromosomes. This lack
of recombination has led to the
accumulation of deleterious mutations
on XD, including a recessive mutation
that causes female sterility. These
linked costs of drive are frequently
observed. Many known meiotic
drivers are linked to one or more
deleterious alleles, or in some cases,
recessive lethal mutations.
How do meiotic drivers cheat during
meiosis? Meiotic drivers get their
name from the ability of some drivers
to gain a transmission advantage
by exploiting the process of meiosis
itself. Perhaps the most ubiquitous
form of meiotic drive results from
meiotic recombination. Specifically,
alleles known as hotspots, where
the DNA is often cut to initiate
recombination, are at a disadvantage.
Cut sequences are more likely to be
altered through the repair process
and are often converted into the
competing cold alleles, which are
less likely to be cut. By being altered
by gene conversion at a lower rate,
the cold alleles gain a transmission
advantage. The drive of cold alleles
is a subtle yet powerful force over
evolutionary timescales.