On Being “Evolving a City” Fascinating stuff here about the degree to which evolutionary science serves society. Wilson’s idea of “managing the evolutionary process” is valuable, and needs to be taken up more often.
A Minor Post, Cultural Evolution, Evolution, Gene-Culture Coevolution, Human Evolution, Radio & PodcastsThe Atlantic “‘A Perfect and Beautiful Machine’: What Darwin’s Theory of Evolution Reveals About Artificial Intelligence” I like this idea of “competence without comprehension”. I think that this could apply to a lot of our cultural practices as well as to the brilliance of evolved biological adaptations. I also appreciate the use of the “sorta” Read More
A Minor Post, Adaptation, Articles, Cognitive Ability, Evolution, Natural SelectionPLoS One “Survivability Is More Fundamental Than Evolvability” I want to understand this paper better than I do, but there’s almost no burden of explanation taken on by these authors. I get their main point, but have no clue as to how their model allowed them to arrive at this point. I need to hone Read More
A Minor Post, MacroevolutionDiscover “The Transplanted Forest: A Bold Experiment in Preemptive Climate Adaptation” Given the chances that we will fail to prevent climate change, it seems like the Canadians have the right idea here. Ironic that industries that rely on stable climate are less apt to deny its reality.
A Minor Post, Adaptation, Anthropogenic Change, Articles, Climate Change, Extinction, Habitat Destruction, Public Policy, Resilience, Risk & Uncertainty, Taiga (Boreal Forest), Temperate ForestProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences “Biodiversity impacts ecosystem productivity as much as resources, disturbance, or herbivory“
A Minor Post, Biodiversity Loss, Ecosystem Ecology, Ecosystem Services, Habitat Destructionio9 “How the diving bell spider uses physics to breathe underwater” Discovery News “Diving Bell Spider Uses Bubble Like Gills“
A Minor Post, AdaptationScience “Specialized Face Learning Is Associated with Individual Recognition in Paper Wasps“
A Minor Post, Adaptation, Social NetworksNational Geographic “Life in an Icy Inferno” This is an interesting article from the “great extents to which scientists go to do their work” perspective, but disappointingly it was not all that clear in this article what the purpose of finding thermophilic bacteria in Antarctica might be. I suppose that plenty of NatGeo expeditions can Read More
A Minor Post, Adaptation, Microbial EcologyNational Geographic “If They Could Only Talk” National Geographic Easter Island – Video: Testing a Walking Theory The business about moving the statues is fun to think about, but the more interesting issue discussed here has to do with the rapid decline of the island’s earliest human inhabitants. The article does a good job of Read More
A Minor Post, Articles, Sustainability, System StabilityNational Geographic “Vanishing Languages” I am fascinated and a bit horrified by the process of language extinction described in this article. The parallels with biodiversity loss are obvious and by-and-large appropriate, but I also think that there is something particularly fascinating and tragic about language extinction. It seems as though we are headed towards a Read More
A Minor Post, Cultural Evolution, Memetic Fitness