Posted 30 Oct 2010 / 0
I have a rather ambitious list of courses that I want to offer in the near future. As I have indicated before, one of the liberating features of my job as a professor at Pratt Institute is that pretty much any topic that makes my students more literate in the sciences of ecology and evolution Read More
Animal Domestication, Courses, Cultural Evolution, Ethics, Evolution, Film, Television, & Video, Human Evolution, Mutualism, Reviews, Teaching
Posted 27 Oct 2010 / 0
There was an interesting piece today on Public Radio International‘s The World about the Convention on Biological Diversity (taking place in Japan) called “Environment Biodiversity as natural capital“. Guest Thomas Lovejoy talks about various examples of natural capital, including the oft-cited example of how New York City’s watershed was preserved through a valuation of ecosystem Read More
Anthropogenic Change, Biodiversity Loss, Conservation Biology, Ecology, Ecosystem Services, Environmental Justice, Radio & Podcasts
Posted 13 Oct 2010 / 16
One of the most difficult things about being the only full-time biologist on the Pratt Institute campus is that I do not have the opportunity to discuss serious science in my field with colleagues or guest speakers. To help alleviate this problem, I have my friends who are at serious research institutions on the lookout Read More
Adaptation, Altruism, Articles, Behavioral Ecology, Cooperation, Data Limitation, Evolution, Game Theory, Group Selection, Human Evolution, Multilevel Selection, Sociology, Superorganisms, Talks & Seminars
Posted 09 Oct 2010 / 0
A recent incident in Obion County, Tennessee has gotten national media attention from the likes of MSNBC, NPR, The Huffington Post, and The New York Times. A resident of this rural county called 911 when a fire broke out in his yard, but was told that he would not receive a response from the local Read More
Cooperation, Cultural Evolution, Ethics, Evolutionary Psychology, Film, Television, & Video, MSCI-463, The Evolution of Cooperation, Multilevel Selection, Public Policy, Punishment, Radio & Podcasts, Web
Posted 07 Oct 2010 / 0
Today National Public Radio‘s All Things Considered featured a good piece on the Asian Carp problem entitled “White House ‘Asian Carp Czar’ Outlines His Strategy For Eradicating Species“. The story explains how two human actions — the importation of carp for aquaculture and the reversal of the Chicago River by a massive engineering project — Read More
Coevolution, Freshwater Ecosystems, Invasive Species, Predation, Public Policy, Radio & Podcasts, Urban Ecology
Posted 03 Oct 2010 / 0
I am on the lookout for a new textbook for my non-majors Evolution course, so I was excited to check out Carl Zimmer’s new book “The Tangled Bank: An Introduction to Evolution”, published this year by Roberts and Company. For those of you who are not familiar with Carl Zimmer’s work, he is a prolific Read More
Adaptation, Animal Domestication, Books, Coevolution, DNA Barcoding, Evolution, Evolution Education, Evolutionary Modeling, Evolutionary Psychology, Human Evolution, MSCI-260, Evolution, Multilevel Selection, Phylogenetics
