Nature News “Lizard’s future hinges on voluntary measures” What is so annoying about this policy is that it ignores the fact that landowners could have been “volunteering” to not destroy habitat well before this species became endangered. Allowing “voluntary measures” to trump the mandates of the Endangered Species Act takes the teeth out of the Read More
A Minor Post, Conservation Biology, Law, Public Policy, WebScience “Endophytic Insect-Parasitic Fungi Translocate Nitrogen Directly from Insects to Plants” What I find fascinating about this story is how a fungus that parasitizes one species can use that ability to form a mutualism with a plant host. I wonder whether there is a value-added feature of this parasitism: are the parasitized insects potential parasites Read More
A Minor Post, Articles, Coevolution, Host-Pathogen Evolution, Mutualism, ParasitismScience “Legislating Sea Level Rise” Well, I guess if North Carolina says that nature only changes in a linear manner, it must be true! Thank goodness for brave legislators who are not going to let nature get non-linear on us! We evolutionary biologists have seen this play out before, but this must come as a Read More
A Minor Post, Articles, Climate Change, Political Science, Public Policy, SustainabilityAlso check out Gerry’s PetriDish site seeking funding for his project.
A Minor Post, Altruism, Cooperation, Film, Television, & Video, Public OutreachBiology Letters “Long-term familiarity promotes joining in neighbour nest defence“
A Minor Post, Articles, Birds, Cooperation, Reciprocity, Social NetworksEvolving Economics “Group selection and the social sciences” Rationally Speaking “Report from the Consilience conference, part I“, “Report from the Consilience conference, part II“, and “Report from the Consilience conference, part III“
A Minor Post, Conferences, Group Selection, WebEvolving Economics “Gandolfi, Gandolfi and Barash’s Economics as an Evolutionary Science” Great commentary on the fitness-maximizing behavior (or lack thereof) by the ultra-rich. Clearly humans are maximizing something other than their genetic fitness when they seek utility.
A Minor Post, Cultural Evolution, Economics, Memetic FitnessInterface “A model balancing cooperation and competition can explain our right-handed world and the dominance of left-handed athletes“
A Minor Post, Competition, Cooperation, Evolutionary Modeling, Web…you know that it has gotten into the mind of the public. University of Oxford course “Evolution of Cooperation and Cheating: From Microbes to Humans“
A Minor Post, Cooperation, Evolution Education