Posted 10 Jan 2011 / 0
I just finished reading Robert Axelrod’s seminal book entitled The Evolution of Cooperation. Although I had read a lot about Axelrod’s work and am quite familiar with the body of literature that it inspired, I had never actually read his book cover to cover. Going in, my expectation was of finding a rather primitive treatment Read More
Altruism, Behavioral Ecology, Books, Coevolution, Cooperation, Cultural Evolution, Evolution, Evolutionary Modeling, Game Theory, Human Evolution, Individual-based Models, Interdisciplinarity, Multilevel Selection, Mutualism, Political Science, Public Policy, Reciprocity, Sociology, Spatially Explicit Modeling
Posted 07 Jan 2011 / 0
John C. Avise [1, 2] started off the colloquium by giving a very brief introduction to the In the Light of Evolution series, highlighting much of the history I discussed in my preview. Peter Nonacs “Insect Societies: Pinnacles of Cooperation” Nonacs began his talk by giving it an additional subtitle: “peaks of runaway niceness”. His Read More
Conferences, Cooperation, Evolution, Talks & Seminars
Posted 04 Jan 2011 / 0
In a couple of days I will be attending the In the Light of Evolution V: Cooperation colloquium, and in preparation I have been reviewing the work of the featured speakers. Tomorrow, I will be posting a preview of the meeting. The meeting promises to be broad and interdisciplinary. It also features a very elite Read More
Conferences, Cooperation, Social Network Analysis
Posted 02 Jan 2011 / 0
In preparation for my attendance at the In the Light of Evolution V: Cooperation conference, I have been checking out past National Academy of Sciences colloquia in this series. In 2009, there was an In the Light of Evolution of III: Two Centuries of Darwin conference. There are podcast MP4’s for each of the talks Read More
Conferences, Evolution, History, Homo species, Human Evolution, Phylogenetics
Posted 19 Dec 2010 / 0
Conventional wisdom has always been that fossils are impressionistic: although they can tell us a lot about the morphology of a great variety of organic structures, it has been assumed that all but the most recent of fossil remains contain none of the original material that made up the fossilized organism. A recent article in Read More
Paleonotology, Taphonomic Processes
Posted 15 Dec 2010 / 0
There’s an interesting article in a recent issue of the Chronicle of Higher Education entitled “A Path for Puffins“. The article discusses the campaign to help eradicate an invasive plant species from a somewhat-remote Scottish Island that is home to thousands of puffins. The puffin population was showing steady decline on the island, and an Read More
Articles, Biodiversity Loss, Climate Change, Conservation Biology, Invasive Species, Marine Ecosystems
Posted 12 Dec 2010 / 0
This month’s Scientific American had two interesting news stories concerning our scientific obsession with space. The first article, entitled “Defying Politics”, discussed the schizophrenic and wavering manner in which the last two presidential administrations have worked to forge our future explorations of space by reforming NASA. Increasingly, it is clear that our manned space program Read More
Astrobiology, Space Travel
Posted 03 Dec 2010 / 0
The Chronicle of Higher Education featured a provocative article entitled “True Sustainability Means Going Beyond Campus Boundaries” in last week’s issue. Author James Proctor argues that campus sustainability has focused too much on the “act locally” principle, leading to sustainable islands of collegiate privilege that do not do much to change the larger global forces Read More
Sustainability
Posted 29 Nov 2010 / 0
As an ecologist one of my biggest pet peeves is the way that manned space travel is treated in the mainstream media, both fictional and non-fictional. Without going deeply into the details, suffice it to say that our dependence on ecosystem services makes manned space travel of any appreciable duration or distance completely unrealistic. Of Read More
Articles, Astronomy, Ecosystem Services, Space Travel
Posted 27 Nov 2010 / 1
Technically- and traditionally-speaking, an ecology course should not really deal too much with policy. A strict definition of ecology should limit the topic to the study of the interaction between organisms and their environment, and for decades now that has meant looking at how non-human animals and other organisms constitute ecosystems. Discussions of policy, economics, Read More
Anthropogenic Change, Biodiversity Loss, Climate Change, Ecological Footprinting, Ecology Education, Ecosystem Services, Environmental Justice, Ethics, MSCI-270, Ecology, Pollution, Public Policy, Quantitative Analysis, Sustainability, Teaching Tools, Web
