Would online data repositories solve the problem of scientific fraud?
Posted 23 Aug 2012 / 0The Chronicle of Higher Education “Despite Occasional Scandals, Science Can Police Itself“
A Minor Post, Articles, Periodicals, Scientific FraudMy review of “How Species Interact” published in Ecological Modelling
Posted 18 Aug 2012 / 1My review of How Species Interact: Altering the Standard View of Trophic Ecology by Roger Arditi and Lev R. Ginzburg was just published in Ecological Modelling. You can also read the review here. Lev Ginzburg was my dissertation advisor, so clearly this review has to be seen as subjective; however, if you look at how strong Read More
A Major Post, Books, Ecological Modeling, Ecology, My publications, PredationESA 2012 Overall Impressions
Posted 12 Aug 2012 / 0What was the ‘big news’ at this year’s Ecological Society of America meeting? Given that this meeting is composed of so many different meetings running concurrently, this just might be an impossible question to answer fairly. But for me, this year’s meeting could be summarized as the ‘year of computational ecology’. At a great variety Read More
A Major Post, Altruism, Biodiversity Loss, Conservation Biology, Cooperation, Ecological Modeling, Ecological Society of America, Ecology Education, Ecosystem Services, Environmental Justice, Group Selection, Marine Ecosystems, Multilevel Selection, Public Policy, Punishment, Resource Consumption, Social Capital, Sustainability, System Stability, Talks & Seminars, Teaching, Teaching Tools, The Sustainable Use of FisheriesESA 2012 Symposium #23, Commodifying Nature: The Scientific Basis for Ecosystem Service Valuation in Environmental Decision Making
Posted 10 Aug 2012 / 0Friday morning is a tough spot at an ESA meeting. It is the last day of a six-day conference, and there are only morning events, so many people evacuate before this final session. And for those who do drag themselves out of bed for sessions beginning at 8 am (perhaps, like me, for the sixth Read More
A Major Post, Anthropogenic Change, Biodiversity Loss, Biomes, Climate Change, Conferences, Conservation Biology, Ecological Society of America, Ecology, Ecosystem Services, Environmental Justice, Ethics, Freshwater Ecosystems, Habitat Destruction, Interdisciplinarity, Invasive Species, Pollution, Talks & Seminars, Temperate Rainforest, Traditional Ecological KnowledgeESA 2012 Thursday afternoon talks
Posted 10 Aug 2012 / 0I spent Thursday afternoon once again hustling from one talk to another, with Organized Oral Session #47 (Universal Senescence? New Theories and Experimental Approaches Across the Tree of Life) being my primary focus. The writings of George C. Williams and his ingenious antagonistic pleiotropy hypothesis explaining aging have always fascinated me. Like a lot of Read More
A Major Post, Behavior, Conferences, Ecological Modeling, Ecological Society of America, Ecosystem Services, Freshwater Ecosystems, Individual-based Models, Parasitism, Phenotypic Plasticity, Ponds & Lakes, Predation, Senescence, Spatially Explicit Modeling, Sustainable Agriculture, Talks & Seminars, Tropical ForestESA 2012 Workshop #8, Getting off the Ground with Individual-Based Modeling: A Primer for Instructors and Researchers
Posted 05 Aug 2012 / 0I got off to a running start at this year’s Ecological Society of America (ESA) annual meeting with a workshop orchestrated by Steven Railsback and Volker Grimm. Entitled “Getting off the Ground with Individual-Based Modeling: A Primer for Instructors and Researchers“, the workshop was a practical introduction to the material provided in their new textbook Agent-Based Read More
A Major Post, Conferences, Ecological Modeling, Ecological Society of America, Individual-based Models, Spatially Explicit Modeling, Talks & SeminarsPreview of the 2012 Ecological Society of America annual meeting in Portland, Oregon
Posted 02 Aug 2012 / 0I am off to another Ecological Society of America (ESA) meeting, my sixth and the society’s ninety-seventh. As I already covered in a previous post, I will be presenting a poster entitled “The Evolution of Sustainable Use, a flash-based classroom tool for teaching population biology and sustainable resource management” during the Tuesday afternoon poster session. Read More
A Major Post, Anthropogenic Change, Behavior, Conferences, Cooperation, Ecological Modeling, Ecological Society of America, Ecology, Ecosystem Services, Interactions, Sustainability, Talks & Seminars, TeachingIf your loners are truly loners they won’t punish, and cooperation thrives even in the presence of antisocial punishment
Posted 28 Jun 2012 / 1Last summer I discussed a paper by Rand and Nowak that explored the dynamics of antisocial punishment in groups composed of cooperators, defectors, and loners playing a public goods game. In a conventional public goods game, at least some players must make a contribution in order to reap group reward. Cooperators make that contribution and Read More
A Major Post, Altruism, Articles, Cooperation, Evolutionary Modeling, Game Theory, PunishmentPerhaps nestedness is just an artifact of ecological opportunity (and not stability)
Posted 27 Jun 2012 / 0One of my chief interests is stability: I am curious about what allows for the persistence of genes, individuals, groups, species, and communities. This is a broad question and it may not have single, simple answer, but it is exciting to think that there may be ‘rules of stability’ in nature that might help us Read More
A Major Post, Articles, Coevolution, Ecological Modeling, Interactions, Mutualism, Mutualistic Networks, Pollination, System StabilityCall it “ethnocentrism” or the “green beard effect”, “tags” assist cooperation
Posted 27 Jun 2012 / 0Theory, Evolution, and Games Group “Evolution of ethnocentrism in the Hammond and Axelrod model“
A Minor Post, Cooperation, Evolutionary Modeling, Game Theory, Social Networks, Web