Really interesting article about a jelly fish that can basically age both normally and in reverse, making it immortal. However, I was more interested in the lessons we can learn from the people doing the research. For instance:

There are, to begin with, very few specialists in the world committed to conducting the necessary experiments. “Finding really good hydroid experts is very difficult,” says James Carlton, a professor of marine sciences at Williams College and the director of the Williams-Mystic Maritime Studies Program. “You’re lucky to have one or two people in a country.” He cited this as an example of a phenomenon he calls the Small’s Rule: small-bodied organisms are poorly studied relative to larger-bodied organisms. There are significantly more crab experts, for instance, than hydroid experts.

However, they go on to say:

He was especially impressed by the phylogenetic tree, the taxonomic diagram that Darwin called the Tree of Life. Darwin included one of the earliest examples of a Tree of Life in “On the Origin of Species” — it is the book’s only illustration. Today the outermost twigs and buds of the Tree of Life are occupied by mammals and birds, while at the base of the trunk lie the most primitive phyla — Porifera (sponges), Platyhelminthes (flatworms), Cnidaria (jellyfish).

“The mystery of life is not concealed in the higher animals,” Kubota told me. “It is concealed in the root. And at the root of the Tree of Life is the jellyfish.”

Often times there is more to be learned in “unsexy” parts of your field than in the areas that get the most attention.