The opening session talked less of goslings and rooks than of an animal that was one of Tinbergen's favourite toys the three-spined stickleback.

ECONOMIST: Birds do it, bees do it | The

Working with the geneticists' favourite animal, the fruit fly Drosophila, Dr Gibson has pinpointed a series of so-called cryptic variations that have no effect on a protein's structure, but can nevertheless, if the circumstances are right, have a significant effect on the individual they belong to.

ECONOMIST: Genetics gets more complicated