Attending to the Finer Points Beware of the man who won't be bothered with details. I t is not the devil who is in the details. Far from it. The devil would have you ignore them, for it is from the details that truth emerges. That can certainly be said about the work of the California Academy of Sciences, one of the world s leading science institutions, devoted to unraveling the texture of the natural world.
Species evolve in subtle ways.
As climates alter or predators become more effective, incremental changes, minor successful mutations, enable a new species to emerge. Better adapted to its environment, the new creation will survive. For example, a fish population pressured by quicker predators may evolve to become faster with more streamlined bodies. In the process these fish may grow a few horizontal scales and eventually become a different species. As size variation within a species makes the length itself an inexact criterion, those extra scales are critical to defining the new species.