Early in the morning there were no whole sessions that consistently peaked my interest, so I spent my morning bouncing between a variety of talks. Tomas Brodin gave an interesting talk entitled “Can environmental filtering of animal personalities promote speciation?”. Working with frogs that disperse from the mainland to nearby islands outside Umea, Sweden, Brodin Read More
Conferences, Evolution, Society for the Study of EvolutionI began the second full day of talks at Evolution 2010 presiding over the only education session in the entire meeting, a session which also included my talk for the meeting. It is a bit surprising that our session, which was forced to start at 8 am on a Sunday, was the only one dedicated Read More
A Major Post, Conferences, Evolution, Society for the Study of EvolutionI spent the morning of the first full day of Evolution 2010 in a variety of talks, most of which were themed on sociality. Surprisingly, a great number of these talks tackled the difficult and controversial topic of group selection. I think that it is becoming increasingly clear that it is not as easy to Read More
Conferences, Evolution, Society for the Study of EvolutionSean Carroll got the Evolution 2010 meeting going with the Stephen J. Gould Award lecture on Friday night. His talk was called “Remarkable Creatures: Epic Adventures in the Search for the Origins of Species”, and basically outlined sections of his new book of the same title. A large and enthusiastic crowd was on hand to Read More
Conferences, Evolution, Society for the Study of EvolutionAwhile back I read Richard Dawkins’ The God Delusion and more recently I finished David Sloan Wilson’s Darwin’s Cathedral. Both books provide a view on religion from the perspective of a prominent evolutionary biologist, and the contrast between these views tells us a lot about the culture of evolutionary biology as well as the nature Read More
Evolution, Group Selection, Human Evolution, Multilevel Selection, Religion, ReviewsGene Kritsky is a renowned bee biologist, so when I learned that he had written The Quest for the Perfect Hive: A History of Innovation in Bee Culture, I rushed to get ahold of it. I am very interested in species that form superorganisms (bees, wasps, ants, naked mole-rats, humans), and I have been slowly Read More
Animal Domestication, Books, Coevolution, Cultural Evolution, Reviews, SuperorganismsI just read E.O. Wilson’s Consilience for the first time. Published in 1998, Consilience represents Wilson’s attempt to bridge the gap between the natural and social sciences. Given my interests, it is pretty ridiculous that I had not read this book earlier. Although I do research that sits firmly within the realm of natural science, Read More
A Major Post, Books, Consciousness, Human Evolution, Human Nature, Interdisciplinarity, Reviews, Social ScienceAs a professor charged with teaching science at an institution where there are no science majors, I cannot avoid thinking about how to make material accessible to my students. I don’t think that this is a bad thing. From my experience as a graduate student at a big research university, it seems that most professors Read More
A Major Post, Course Readings, Ecology Education, Learning Management Systems, Lesson Ideas, Teaching, TextbooksThis month’s Scientific American contains a great article (“Arctic Plants Feel the Heat“) on how scientists are documenting climate change in the Arctic. Focusing on the two dominant biomes of this region, the tundra and the taiga, author Matthew Sturm explains how three sources of data are allowing us to see recent changes linked to Read More
A Major Post, Articles, Climate Change, Data Limitation, Long Term Ecological Research, MSCI-270, Ecology, Phenotypic Plasticity, Taiga (Boreal Forest), TundraThis month’s National Geographic features a really beautiful article on carnivorous plants written by Carl Zimmer. The article presents the numerous independently-evolved adaptations possessed by a diversity of plants which live in nitrogen-poor soil. These adaptations are a great example of coarse-scal evolutionary convergence, as a variety of plants have all come up with the Read More
A Minor Post, Adaptation, Articles, Bogs & Wetlands, Convergence, Evolution, MSCI-260, Evolution, Predation
