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 19 Jun 2012 / 0
Science “Fear of Predation Slows Plant-Litter Decomposition” Nature News “Stressed grasshoppers slow plant decay” More interesting community-level feedback between predators and their prey!
A Minor Post, Decomposition, Phenotypic Plasticity, Predation
Posted 19 Jun 2012 / 0
PLos One “Shorter Food Chain Length in Ancient Lakes: Evidence from a Global Synthesis” What I wonder is: what is the mechanism by which these communities evolve away from their initial “short-and-wide” configuration?
A Minor Post, Articles, Community Ecology, Predation
Posted 19 Jun 2012 / 0
Science Now “Pumas Leave Table Scraps” This is an interesting story because it suggests that Pumas maintain strong ecological interaction strengths with not just their prey but also all these commensal species. This finding makes it a lot harder to discount top predators as simply consumers whose only role is in depleting prey populations: for Read More
A Minor Post, Commensalism, Community Ecology, Predation, Web
Posted 06 Jun 2012 / 0
I am proud to announce the recent publication of a new paper in the Chinese Science Bulletin with collaborators from Yunnan University and the Kunming Institute of Zoology in Kunming, China. Our paper, entitled “Cooperation in an asymmetric volunteer’s dilemma game with relatedness“, uses a game-theoretic analysis of a new variant to the volunteer’s dilemma to Read More
Evolutionary Modeling, Game Theory, Kin Selection, Modeling (General), Mutualism, My publications
Posted 27 May 2012 / 0
Today’s New York Times Business section features an interesting article on the recent JPMorgan multi-billion loss. Entitled “The Hunch, the Pounce and the Kill: How Boaz Weinstein and Hedge Funds Outsmarted JPMorgan“, the article explains how a risk-prone hedge fund manager named Boaz Weinstein was able to exploit errors by JPMorgan and end up on Read More
Articles, Economic sustainability, Economics, Ethics, Parasitism, Public Policy, Social Capital, System Stability
Posted 21 May 2012 / 0
Marketplace “High-frequency trading: Bad for markets… and the soul?“
A Minor Post, Economic sustainability, Economics, Parasitism, Radio & Podcasts
Posted 15 May 2012 / 0
BMC Biology “Evolving a photosynthetic organelle” What I find fascinating about this particular protist is that it suggests that the endosymbiotic acquisition of chloroplasts may not have been a singular event, and protists may continue to incorporate new bacteria, creating potential for novel evolutionary change.
A Minor Post, Articles, Mutualism
Posted 08 May 2012 / 0
Ashland Daily Tidings “Paintings merge art and science“
A Minor Post, Mutualism, Science in Art & Design
Posted 03 Nov 2011 / 0
Martin Nowak has accomplished a lot for a mid-career scientist. His theoretical work exploring how cooperation evolves has illuminated the importance of a great number of evolutionary mechanisms. He has also been unafraid to tackle real-life problems of cooperation, including questions like “why do we get cancer?” and “how did language evolve?”. Nowak likes to Read More
Altruism, Books, Cooperation, Cultural Evolution, Ethics, Evolutionary Modeling, Game Theory, Group Selection, History, Human Evolution, Human Nature, Kin Selection, Language Evolution, Multilevel Selection, Mutualism, Punishment, Reciprocity, Religion, Superorganisms, Sustainability
