Posted 09 Sep 2015 / 1
Until Darwin “Syllabus: Darwin, Marx, Nietzsche, Freud (Pratt Institute, Fall 2015)” Ric has been teaching this course for years and at some point I need to sit in. It presents a fascinating look at four very important thinkers that greatly influenced the trajectory of the twentieth century. I think that it is particularly interesting to Read More
A Minor Post, Critical and Visual Studies program, Ethics, History, Political Science, Pratt Institute
Posted 08 Sep 2015 / 0
This View of Life “How Fairness Depends On Your Social Status” I found this study — which I am discovering a bit late — to be really interesting in light of a paper I published with co-authors earlier this year. It seems that when interactions are asymmetric, players in a “dominant” position tend to be Read More
A Minor Post, Altruism, Cooperation, Game Theory, Multilevel Selection, Reputation, Social Capital, Social Norms, Web
Posted 08 Sep 2015 / 0
National Geographic News “Sperm Whales’ Language Reveals Hints of Culture” It is interesting how the number of animal species displaying culture keeps getting larger. There’s a lot of evolutionary convergence involved here, as the phylogenetic tree of vertebrates is still only sprinkled with pockets of culture. But those pockets of culture are deep, and therefore Read More
A Minor Post, Breeders, Propagators, & Creators, Cetaceans, Communication, Convergence, Cultural Evolution, Exaptation, Human Uniqueness, Web
Posted 08 Sep 2015 / 0
Scientific American News Feed “California Officials Unveil Plans for Wildlife Bridge over Highway” In my Ecology for Architects class we talk a lot about Mountain Lions and how their habitats are fragmented by highways. Radio collar and mortality data suggests that these urban predators need better corridors across highways. Could this grassy bridge be a Read More
A Minor Post, Conservation Biology, Green Design, Habitat Fragmentation, Urban Ecology, Urban Planning, Web
Posted 08 Sep 2015 / 0
Cliodynamica “From Big Gods to the Big Brother” There are a bunch of really interesting ideas in this post, particularly related to the challenges associated with scaling up cooperation. As Turchin nicely points out, once you get past the tribal scale reputation alone — even fueled by the power of gossip — is not going Read More
A Minor Post, Altruism, Behavior, Belief, Cooperation, Cultural Evolution, Group Selection, History, Human Uniqueness, Multilevel Selection, Punishment, Religion, Reputation, Social Norms, Web
Posted 26 Aug 2015 / 0
National Public Radio “For Prospective Moms, Biology and Culture Clash” Seven years later, I need to check and see how these American demographic trends have developed. Are even more women having babies later in life? Interesting thing here is how big a tension there is between our cultural choices and our biological realities. If fertility peaks Read More
A Minor Post, Breeders, Propagators, & Creators, Cultural Evolution, Gene-Culture Coevolution, Memetic Fitness, Radio & Podcasts, Reproductive Fitness, Senescence, Sex and Reproduction, Social Norms
Posted 26 Aug 2015 / 0
I used to have a Twitter account, but a few years back I decided to get rid of it… or — put more precisely — to neglect it. My reasons for avoiding Twitter and most definitely Facebook are pretty simple: I love the free internet. I hate that the approach of companies like Twitter and Read More
A Major Post, Breeders, Propagators, & Creators, Public Outreach, Publication
Posted 25 Aug 2015 / 0
Current Biology “Positively Frequency-Dependent Interference Competition Maintains Diversity and Pervades a Natural Population of Cooperative Microbes” This is another great example of how theory that does not consider space is a poor representation of nature. Here, the diversity of a soil bacterium (Myxococcus xanthus) is shown to be potentially explained by positive frequency-dependent selection, the Read More
A Minor Post, Articles, Competition, Cooperation, Ecological Modeling, Evolutionary Modeling, Kin Selection, Microbial Ecology, Soil Ecology
Posted 24 Aug 2015 / 0
Today is the first official day of my first-ever sabbatical. Although I have been trying to get some over-the-summer momentum going into this one-semester break from teaching and service duties, now is the time that I really need to get (and stay) focused on my sabbatical project. I want to write a popular science book Read More
A Minor Post, Breeders, Propagators, & Creators, Public Outreach, Publication
Posted 20 Aug 2015 / 0
The WmD Project is picking up steam! This week I have released the third episode of WmD’s video blog: You can see this episode in its ‘native habitat’ here. The first season of WmD is dedicated to the “big questions in ecology and evolution“. This episode, “Difference is as difference does”, is meant to cover these questions: Why do Read More
A Major Post, Adaptation, Behavior, Marine Ecosystems, Niche Partitioning, Temperate Forest, The WmD Project, Urban Ecology
