Posted 06 Oct 2015 / 0
Here’s another fun and informative video from ECOmotion Studios. I thought that it was interesting how this short discussed the connection between decomposers and the eventual supply of oil, although I wonder if many viewers will gain enough information from this short video to fully understand this idea. The basic ideas behind Hairston-Smith-Slobodkin (HSS) are Read More
A Minor Post, Carrying Capacity, Community Ecology, Ecological Society of America, Film & Video, Film, Television, & Video, Predation, Science in Art & Design, Terrestrial
Posted 06 Oct 2015 / 0
Back at the Evolution 2014 meeting I encountered the great “Drift” animated short, which I still use in my evolution course. Well the producers of that short have formed ECOmotion Studios, and they have made a bunch more videos in honor of the Ecological Society of America‘s centennial. This one is a fun “spoken word” jam Read More
A Minor Post, Coevolution, Community Ecology, Competition, Ecological Society of America, Ecology Education, Film & Video, Film, Television, & Video, Intertidal Zones, Keystone Species, Methods, Predation, Science in Art & Design
Posted 06 Oct 2015 / 0
Urban Wildlife Podcast “Episode 3: Timbers on a Boston Island” I love this episode because it captures the two major human impacts of urban ecology: the creation of commensal niches for some species while other species are isolated to islands of small remaining habitat. We learn about a variety of organisms from birds to bugs Read More
A Minor Post, Biodiversity Loss, Birds, Commensalism, Habitat Destruction, Habitat Fragmentation, Mutualism, Parthenogenesis, Radio & Podcasts, Reptiles, Sustainable Urban Design, Urban Ecology
Posted 06 Oct 2015 / 0
arXiv “Assortment and the evolution of cooperation in a Moran process with exponential fitness” I am still struggling to understand when it would be appropriate to assume an exponential (rather than linear) fitness function. It is wonderful that these modelers are mapping out all these different conditions under which cooperation evolves, but how to select Read More
A Minor Post, Articles, Cooperation, Evolutionary Modeling, Game Theory
Posted 06 Oct 2015 / 0
Frontiers in Ecology and Evolution “A deal with Japan on whaling?” Having been a fan of Whale Wars for awhile, and being predisposed to thinking that we ought to protect large, social, cooperative, cognitively-advanced animals, it is a bit hard for me to accept legal whaling of any kind. But as this article points out Read More
A Minor Post, Activism, Articles, Belief, Biodiversity Loss, Conservation Biology, Cooperation, Economics, Ethics, Public Policy, Social Norms, Sustainable Harvesting
Posted 02 Oct 2015 / 0
National Geographic Germination blog “Antibiotic Resistance Getting Worse Globally, But Fixes Could Be Simple” Antibiotic resistance is an interesting problem because it highlights how individual decisions drive international-scale dynamics and then come right back to impact individuals. Unlike other big international tragedies of the commons such as climate change or fisheries collapse, the effects of Read More
A Minor Post, Adaptation, Behavior, Coevolution, Cooperation, Cultural Evolution, Host-Pathogen Evolution, Resistance Evolution in Parasites, Social Norms, Web
Posted 29 Sep 2015 / 0
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences “Synthesis of phylogeny and taxonomy into a comprehensive tree of life” Open Tree of Life tree browser Although I am far from being an expert in or huge enthusiast of taxonomy and phylogeny, this is a project worth exploring. By synthesizing thousands of published phylogenies, this project presents Read More
A Minor Post, Articles, Phylogenetics, Taxonomic Groups, Web
Posted 29 Sep 2015 / 0
Scientific American Beautiful Minds blog “Creative People Are…” This is an interesting little summary for someone like myself who teaches future creative professionals. Anecdotally, the “messy mind” idea makes a lot of sense: my students probably do worst when asked to regurgitate orthodox hierarchies of information. They do far better when asked to make connections Read More
A Minor Post, Art & Design, Intelligences, Neuroscience, Psychological Adaptation, Psychology, Social Diversity, Web
Posted 29 Sep 2015 / 0
PLoS ONE “Future Discounting in Congo Basin Hunter-Gatherers Declines with Socio-Economic Transitions” These findings are really fascinating, because they suggest that some degree of “building towards the future” is inspired by the ability to accumulate wealth. There’s a lot in these findings to explain why small-scale societies stay small and how larger-scale societies evolve from smaller-scale Read More
A Minor Post, Adaptation, Articles, Behavior, Behavioral Ecology, Cultural Anthropology, Cultural Evolution, Economics, Evolutionary Psychology, Human Nature, Memetic Fitness, Phenotypic Plasticity, Psychological Adaptation, Social Norms
Posted 29 Sep 2015 / 0
The Guardian “Activists occupy British Museum over BP sponsorship” I really like that idea expressed by these activists that BP’s sponsorship of big art exhibits is not philanthropy. They are basically paying to mainstream their own presence, to obscure their true identity as a corporation that profits from threatening the future of our species. A Read More
A Minor Post, Activism, Anthropogenic Change, Art & Design, Articles, Biodiversity Loss, Climate Change, Greenwashing, Habitat Destruction, Pollution, Sustainability, Web
