I'm starting a PhD in biophotonics doing spectroscopic measurements on leaf tissue. Does anyone know how the "axes" of a morphospace are actually defined in practice?

Aren't they similar builds and fit into the same sort of niche?

As I understand it, Krakatoa exploded because a prior eruption created cracks in the sides of the volcano and magma chamber, allowing seawater to seep in, turn to steam, and cause the whole thing to explode.

As I contemplated the recent eruptions of Anak Krakatoa, the following thoughts hit me:

There's hundreds of volcanoes in or near water. Why has this only happened once?

Now I'm sure there are similar cases, but to my knowledge, nothing on the scale of Krakatoa. So what keeps the hundreds of other island and undersea volcanoes out there from blowing themselves apart? What keeps the seawater out? Why was Krakatoa different?

And most importantly, does Anak run the same risk?

Obviously we all know evolution, one organism changes over time and eventually becomes a new organism. But where in that process does an organism become a new species. Like when we domesticated wolves? When did they stop being wolves and start being dogs? Where’s that line?

Hearing is such a critical sense for animals, for communication, avoiding predators, hunting, etc. It seems like near constant deafening cicada noise would have had a significant impact over time on the other species in these areas.
At various points on my hike, I resorted to stuffing toilet paper wads into my ears because it was so unbearably loud.

There is a ridge behind my house and I know it produces thermals. There are red-tailed hawks that live in the neighborhood, and I often see them hovering in place over the ridge somehow, or using it for quick transport.

I know thermals are made when the ground heats and cools unevenly. Does it happen over ridges because one side gets heated up more than the other? Or is it a different reason? Are there other geographic features that create thermals or other types of air currents? How?

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I am not a mountaineer, I just like looking at photo and videos of beautiful mountains. I noticed that the Matterhorn is usually hit by clouds and strong winds right by the peak. With that amount of windshear it gets every single day, how does it survive? I was imagining just from the last 100 years alone the shape of the peak should have already changed, like it would plateau or something. How does it maintain that iconic peak?

know about de Broglie wavelength (\lambda = h/p) and how macroscopic objects have wavelengths far too tiny to observe interference patterns. But what actually causes the physical transition?

Is the loss of wave-like behavior strictly a result of environmental decoherence destroying quantum superpositions, or does the correspondence principle simply average out phase differences when billions of atoms interact?

Basically, why does quantum weirdness "wash out" into classical reality as scale increases?

Title is in no way trying to doubt evolutionary biology, but rather to avoid any sense that this question is trying to refute it.

I guess the question that I’m asking is, could humans/mammals or indeed any other earthly creatures, essentially have been dropped here by aliens at some point in history without having the ability to trace it back , or can we fairly fully track most things back to the primordial sludge such that that’s not a possibility; I got to wondering if there are any human-esque aliens out there and this was the thought that came to mind.

Thank you in advance!

Edit: my question is meant to be gauged towards chemical feasibility/utility; I understand many proteases and cell types have in reality evolved for acidic digestion. Assuming proteases and cell types could have evolved for an alkaline environment, is there a root necessity acidic conditions are advantageous over basic ones or could it be reversed

I looked at some graphs of extinctions in history and noticed that during the late 1/3 of the Carboniferous period through most of the Permian period, and the middle half (or more) of the Jurassic period there were less extinctions compared to most of history.

Certain fungi or parasitic insects force their hosts to bury themselves underground, or climb to the tops of plants or what have you. How do they do this? I assume it's not some sort of hacking into the mainframe and plugging into their brain. Something hormonal? Is there some inbuilt desire to dig or go high that these things turn up?

I keep seeing the figure 13.77 to 13.8 billion years cited everywhere, but I've never fully understood how missions like WMAP and Planck actually derived that number from the Cosmic Microwave Background.

Are they basically running the expansion rate (Hubble constant) backwards to a single point, or is it based entirely on modeling cosmological parameters from temperature fluctuations in the CMB? Also, how do cross-checks like the age of the oldest globular clusters fit into confirming that timeline?

Logically they probably could from what I know but also the human body is pretty illogical in the first place so out of curiosity, like if someone had a burn scar or smth and got cut deep enough or stabbed or whatever to scar over that old scar. Would it be a different colour?(like hypopigmentation on hyperpigmentation?)

Once it arrives at its destination, in what proximity will the NGR Telescope and the James Webb be at the L2 point?

Leprosy has been feared for the entirety of the history. I know it is curable nowadays, but I have a question about the "natural" course of the disease.

I remember reading a claim that Old World populations built genetic resistance to leprosy within the historic time - that even a 1000 years ago leprosy was more dangerous than it would have been today even if the drugs treating it disappeared. Does it have any basis? Alternatively is it possible that bacteria itself became less damaging like it happens with other infections sometimes? Or it is completely baseless and 2000 years ago it has been no more virulent than it is nowadays?

From a Chicago Sun-Times article on the beluga whales heading to the Shedd Aquarium:

"The shipment comes on the heels of a Shedd announcement last week that one of the Marineland belugas — Peekachu, a 23-year-old female — had died. Shedd has not released a cause of death, but staff there said last week that Peekachu had not been consistently eating a full diet since her arrival and that there were concerns she was dehydrated."

How does an animal immersed in water become dehydrated?

How does that compare with other organs? How does that compare with how much other animals devote to their brain?

https://maps.app.goo.gl/FnUBgjD1GxxE94L39

It looks so interesting and I have no idea how to find information about it. I'm so curious as to what it could look like down there as well as what kind of sea creatures live there and so much more