3 Quarks Daily science blogging award

The three winners of 2010 3 Quarks Daily Prize in Science, judged by Richard Dawkins, have been announced. The winning posts:

1. "Gut bacteria in Japanese people borrowed digesting genes from ocean bacteria" by Ed Yong of Not Exactly Rocket Science.
2. "Skullcaps and Genomes" by Carl Zimmer of The Loom.
3. "The Evolution of Chloroplasts" by Margaret Morgan of My Growing Passion.

All three articles are most certainly worth a read, so do check them out.

A slight criticism... As I pointed out in the comments at 3 Quarks Daily, the winning entries this year are rather similar - too similar. Not only are all three on biology, all three two concern horizontal gene transfer. The chances that the 'real' best three science blog posts of the year just happened to be on a single two closely related topics is infinitesimal. Both Dawkins, and the editors who whittled down the entries to the nine semifinalists, frankly, ought to have been more ecumenical. I thought "MSL: Mars Action Hero" deserved to be in the top three...