Posted 14 Aug 2017 / 0
This year around, I put most of my impression of the Ecological Society of America annual meeting into a single summary post [link pending]. But one element of the meeting was so valuable that I wanted to highlight it in a separate post. A field trip led by Charlie Nilon and co-facilitated by Paige Warren, Myla Aronson, Read More
A Major Post, Anthropogenic Change, Cultural Anthropology, Ecological Society of America, Ecology, Economic sustainability, Economics, Ecosystem Services, Environmental Justice, Population Pressure, Public Policy, Sustainability, Sustainable Urban Design, Urban Planning
Posted 07 Aug 2017 / 0
Mount Hood on the descent into Portland, Oregon Ah, what a privilege it is to get to go to academic conferences! A whole week during which I get to re-connect with old academic friends, make new connections, and do the backstroke in science. And it does not hurt a bit when the conference is in Read More
A Major Post, Conferences, Conservation Biology, Ecological Society of America, Ecology, Ecology Education, Ecosystem Services, Higher Education, Sustainability, Uncategorized
Posted 25 May 2017 / 0
Alison Dell’s Moral Sense III cover art subjected a Richard Alexander figure to paper chromatography Next week, a variety of natural and social scientists will converge on Saint Francis for Moral Sense III, a one day colloquium exploring the human “moral sense”. In part inspired by the work of Richard Alexander, the colloquium marks the Read More
A Major Post, Conferences, Ethics, Evolutionary Psychology, Gene-Culture Coevolution, Human Evolution, Human Nature, Human Uniqueness, Population Pressure, Reproductive Fitness, Sex and Reproduction, Sustainability, Uncategorized
Posted 24 May 2017 / 0
Book reviews are certainly not the most important or monumental works that I might hope to publish, but I still think that they are valuable. I am excited that my most recent book review has been published in the Quarterly Review of Biology. I reviewed an edited volume out on Cambridge University Press entitled Trophic Read More
A Major Post, Books, Community Ecology, Ecology, My publications
Posted 08 May 2017 / 2
One of the activities that I regularly have my students complete in my Evolution course is called “Future Evolution“. The activity sends students on what most evolutionary biologists consider a fool’s errand: to try to predict the future evolution of some particular trait in some particular species. Making such predictions is really difficult for these basic reasons: Read More
A Major Post, Adaptation, Animal Domestication, Anthropogenic Change, Coevolution, Cultural Evolution, Evolution, Evolution Education, Human Evolution, Lesson Ideas, MSCI-260, Evolution, Prediction, Uncategorized
Posted 12 Apr 2017 / 0
Why do people make art? Given that human art-making emerged tens of thousands of years ago and is such an integral part of most human societies, why we make art is an important question. Philosophers have been trying to answer this question for a long time. More recently, scientists have begun to explore explanations for human Read More
A Major Post, Adaptation, Archaeology, Art & Design, Communication, Cultural Anthropology, Cultural Evolution, Department of Mathematics & Science, Emotion, Empathy, Evolutionary Psychology, Gene-Culture Coevolution, Group Selection, Human Evolution, Human Nature, Human Uniqueness, Memetic Fitness, Multilevel Selection, Play, Pratt Institute, Psychological Adaptation, Social Networks
Posted 01 Apr 2017 / 0
Like a lot of important policy these days, it all started with an early morning tweet from President Donald Trump: What did the tweet mean? Could it be possible that the Trump administration had a plan to deal with climate change? And what does climate change have to do with microbes and antibiotics? Environmentalists, political Read More
A Major Post, Anthropogenic Change, Climate Change, Decomposition, Ecology, Ethics, Public Policy, Sustainability, System Stability
Posted 15 Mar 2017 / 0
I am proud to be collaborating with Photography Labs Manager and Assistant Professor Andy Todd to bring Dr. Roland Kays of North Carolina State University to Pratt Institute. Dr. Kays will make two appearances on the Brooklyn campus during the annual Green Week celebration: On Thursday, March 30th at 6 pm in ARC E-2, Dr. Kays will Read More
A Major Post, Behavior, Behavioral Ecology, Biodiversity Loss, Birds, Canids, Citizen Science, Community Ecology, Conservation Biology, Department of Mathematics & Science, Experiments (General), Felids, Hypothesis Testing, Photography, Population Pressure, Primates, Public Outreach, Sustainability
Posted 27 Jan 2017 / 0
Different rates of positive and negative growth create different population trajectories over time In biology, a population is a group of organisms that belong to the same species and occupy a defined land area (or volume of air or water). These populations have the tendency to grow and shrink over time. This is because the rate at which members of Read More
A Major Post, Eco 101, Ecology, Intrinsic Growth Rate, Population Growth
Posted 13 Jan 2017 / 0
I am not afraid to play around when it comes to my teaching. I have been teaching for what seems to me a long time — eight years as a middle school teacher, several instructor gigs in graduate school, and now nearly ten years as a professor at Pratt — and I never feel as Read More
A Major Post, Course Evaluations, Higher Education, MSCI-260, Evolution, MSCI-270, Ecology, MSCI-271, Ecology for Architects, Teaching
