Posted 31 Oct 2012 / 0
Slate “The Russian Anarchist Prince Who Challenged Evolution” I really appreciate the fact that Dugatkin uses Kropotkin to bring to light that Darwinian evolution has been — even in the time and work of Darwin — a process that was imagined to involve both competition and cooperation. Only in recent times has evolution become synonymous Read More
A Minor Post, Altruism, Articles, Behavior, Biography, Coevolution, Competition, Cooperation, Cultural Evolution, Ethics, Evolution, Mutualism, Political Science, Predation, Religion, Taiga (Boreal Forest), Tundra, Web
Posted 31 Oct 2012 / 0
Toronto Public Library/University of Toronto Exploring Evolution series “The Evolution of Cooperation: Ant-Plant Associations in Peru” We need more scientists out there explaining the wonders of evolutionary biology!
A Minor Post, Adaptation, Behavior, Coevolution, Competition, Cooperation, Evolution, Interactions, Keystone Species, Mutualism, Parasitism, Predation, Public Outreach, Social Networks, Tropical Forest
Posted 19 Sep 2012 / 0
Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment “Native invaders – challenges for science, management, policy, and society” This article makes an important point: the “alien” criteria for invasives is a bit arbitrary when the problem with invasives is their ability to explode in population and inordinately impact other populations. Perhaps we need to re-think the way Read More
A Minor Post, Anthropogenic Change, Articles, Biodiversity Loss, Coevolution, Competition, Ecology, Habitat Destruction, Invasive Species, Pollution, Predation
Posted 10 Sep 2012 / 0
MITnews “Weapon-wielding marine microbes may protect populations from foes“
A Minor Post, Adaptation, Altruism, Competition, Cooperation, Evolution, Microbial Ecology, Mutualism, Superorganisms, Web
Posted 25 Jun 2012 / 0
A fascinating new paper published this week in the journal PLoS One demonstrates how selection acting at least three different levels produces distinct selective pressures that shape the song behavior of male Dupont’s lark (Chersophilus duponti) in the Ebro Valley of northwestern Spain. Authored by Paola Laiolo and José Ramón Obeso and entitled “Multilevel Selection Read More
A Major Post, Articles, Behavior, Competition, Group Selection, Multilevel Selection, Population Growth
Posted 21 Jun 2012 / 0
Interface “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
Posted 19 Jun 2012 / 0
Today I had the pleasure of accompanying my daughter’s fourth grade class to the “Creatures of Light: Nature’s Bioluminescence” exhibit at the American Museum of Natural History. Beyond making sure that all students returned home safely, I was also interested in how this exhibit explained bioluminescence as an evolved adaptation. When I teach Evolution, one Read More
A Major Post, Adaptation, Behavior, Coevolution, Competition, Convergence, Cooperation, Evolution, Interactions, Marine Ecosystems, Museum design, Museums & Zoos, Mutualism, Phylogenetics, Predation, Sex and Reproduction, Terrestrial
Posted 09 Sep 2011 / 0
Mussel beds off of Polzeath, United Kingdom (photo by Andy F) Natural selection is often oversimplified as the effect of the outside environment on the survival and reproduction probability of individual organisms. In the end this perspective has some value: individual organisms either survive and reproduce or they do not. But along the way, an Read More
Behavioral Ecology, Competition, Cooperation, Emergence, Individual-based Models, Intertidal Zones, Population Growth, Spatially Explicit Modeling
Posted 05 Aug 2009 / 0
I spent Tuesday morning in a really well-organized symposium entitled “Mutualistic Networks”. Headed up by Jordi Bascompte, the collected talks focused on the network architecture of mutualistic interactions, mostly among plants and their various insect pollinators. I came in with only a very basic understanding of matrix-based interaction networks, but Bascompte’s introduction to the session Read More
A Major Post, Competition, Conferences, Ecological Society of America, Interactions, Mutualism, Mutualistic Networks, Parasitism, Pollination, Predation, System Stability, Talks & Seminars
