Posted 05 Nov 2015 / 5
Just about a year ago, I got an unusual email. It was from William Ball Provine, a well-known historian of science most famous for his work on the modern evolutionary synthesis. Provine was especially well-known to me as the Ph.D. advisor to Greg Graffin of the punk band Bad Religion; although this is a story Read More
A Major Post, Books, Evolution, Fluidity of Knowledge, Genetic Drift, Genetics, Obituary, Population Genetics
Posted 05 Nov 2015 / 0
Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons The Los Angeles Times “China drops its ‘one-child’ policy, now let’s ban the ‘population bomb’” Great op-ed that makes it really clear that impact is a function of not just the number of people on the earth but also the resources those people consume (affluence) and technologies used to produce Read More
A Minor Post, Activism, Belief, Breeders, Propagators, & Creators, Carrying Capacity, Cultural Evolution, Memetic Fitness, MSCI-271, Ecology for Architects, Population Growth, Population Pressure, Prediction, Public Policy, Web
Posted 02 Nov 2015 / 0
There’s a new paper out in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences by David W. Lawson and colleagues that looks at whether the cultural practice of polygyny is disadvantageous. It’s a question that should be fascinating to anyone who is interested in sexual conflict or cultural evolution. At first glance, polygyny appears to be Read More
A Major Post, Breeders, Propagators, & Creators, Cultural Evolution, Mating systems, Memetic Fitness, Reproductive Fitness, Sex and Reproduction, Sexual Conflict
Posted 29 Oct 2015 / 1
The New York Times “China to End One-Child Policy, Allowing Families Two Children” This was a long time coming (see Mara’s Hvistendahl‘s great 2010 piece in Science Magazine for perspective), but the Chinese Communist Party has finally decided to replace its “one child policy” with a “two child policy”. From an evolutionary perspective, there is Read More
A Minor Post, Articles, Breeders, Propagators, & Creators, Carrying Capacity, Cultural Evolution, Economic sustainability, Economics, Ethics, Law, Population Growth, Population Pressure, Public Policy, Social Norms
Posted 22 Oct 2015 / 0
Ecology Letters “Extended flowering intervals of bamboos evolved by discrete multiplication” This is a great example of how theory can be used to explain patterns in nature by matching patterns in nature. Masting is a group-level evolved phenomenon: producing seeds in abundance during a single year where every other plant of your species is doing Read More
A Minor Post, Adaptation, Articles, Cooperation, Evolutionary Modeling, Multilevel Selection, Predation
Posted 22 Oct 2015 / 0
Trends in Ecology & Evolution “From Individuals to Groups and Back: The Evolutionary Implications of Group Phenotypic Composition” Man, I wish that this article was written in a more accessible manner, because what it presents is important. There is a critical feedback between how the composition of groups affects individuals and how individuals affect the Read More
A Minor Post, Articles, Evolutionary Modeling, Group Selection, Multilevel Selection, Natural Selection, Phenotypic Plasticity, Population Genetics, Social Diversity
Posted 20 Oct 2015 / 0
Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment “Contagious exploitation of marine resources” This seems like a really great case study for cultural evolution: the authors describe the spread of sea cucumber fishing as an “epidemic”, but what they really mean is that the idea of economically exploiting this marine food source spread rapidly and in a Read More
A Minor Post, Articles, Biodiversity Loss, Cultural Evolution, Resource Consumption
Posted 20 Oct 2015 / 0
Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment “A world without parasites: exploring the hidden ecology of infections” I was really excited to read this article because this is an issue that I have thought a fair bit about. As you will know if you have read my posts before, I am not the biggest fan of Read More
A Minor Post, Articles, Behavioral Ecology, Coevolution, Community Ecology, Ecosystem Ecology, Parasitism, Predation
Posted 16 Oct 2015 / 0
BBC Earth “Why some male bats have spines on their penises” In my Evolution of Sex class we talk a lot about sperm competition, so spiky penises are nothing new to me. But I was not aware that bats had spined penises of such diversity. And I find it really interesting that because bat behavior Read More
A Minor Post, Behavior, Sex and Reproduction, Sperm Competition
Posted 16 Oct 2015 / 1
Evonomics “Jeff Bezos got Darwinism all Wrong!” This is an interesting analysis of the Bezos way of doing business, which represents an oft-lauded bastardization of Darwinian theory. What I like about Wilson’s brief analysis is that he focuses back on the unit of selection that matters for a business: the corporation. Unless you naively believe Read More
A Minor Post, Behavior, Cultural Evolution, Group Selection, Human Nature, Social Diversity, System Stability, Web
