Posted 23 Aug 2013 / 0
Mongabay News “The evolution of cooperation: communal nests are best for ruffed lemurs” Behavioral Ecology and Sociobiology “Communal nesting, kinship, and maternal success in a social primate” What I find particularly interesting about these findings is that they appear to show that kinship — if a factor at all — might well be a byproduct Read More
A Minor Post, Articles, Behavioral Ecology, Cooperation, Kin Selection, Mating systems, Mutualism, Reciprocity, Reproductive Fitness, Tropical Forest, Web
Posted 17 Aug 2013 / 0
Times Higher Education “What’s God got to do with evolution?” It is really interesting to see that Coakley, a theologian, is collaborating with Martin Nowak. This is not entirely surprising: after all, the Program for Evolutionary Dynamics that Nowak heads is funded in part by the Templeton Foundation, which likes to support work at the interface of religion Read More
A Minor Post, Ethics, Religion, Web
Posted 13 Aug 2013 / 0
At the 2012 Annual Meeting of the Ecological Society of America, I first learned about a really interesting initiative of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. The project –now dubbed EnviroAtlas — is dedicated to creating a free, interactive online tool for exploring the geography of ecosystem services. I had the opportunity to check out a beta version Read More
A Major Post, Biodiversity Loss, Biomes, Bogs & Wetlands, Climate Change, Computer Science, Conservation Biology, Deserts, Ecology, Ecology Education, Ecosystem Services, Educational Software and Apps, Environmental Justice, Freshwater Ecosystems, Geography, Grasslands, Habitat Destruction, Information Design, Invasive Species, Pollution, Ponds & Lakes, Population Pressure, Public Policy, Resource Consumption, Rivers & Streams, Sociology, Sustainability, Teaching, Teaching Tools, Temperate Forest, Temperate Rainforest, Terrestrial, Tropical Forest, Water Supply, Web
Posted 15 Jul 2013 / 0
Wired “Sperm Trajectories” I like the way that color is used to denote time in these images, and how they show these four different trajectory types in multiple dimensions. Now if we can figure out the evolutionary significance of this diversity, we have a real story.
A Minor Post, Sex and Reproduction, Web
Posted 15 Jul 2013 / 0
Wired “Humanity’s Recent Evolution” Of course increased genetic diversity just makes evolution more possible… but there still still needs to be some viable selective force to do something with all this variation. One could argue that the amount of variation we now see ‘tolerated’ by nature suggests that humans have been released from many selective Read More
A Minor Post, Genetics, Human Evolution, Mismatch theory, Population Genetics, Web
Posted 31 Jan 2013 / 0
Scientific American blogs “Science in Ten-Hundred Words: The “Up-Goer 5″ Challenge” THE UP-GOER FIVE TEXT EDITOR Oh, and by the way the title of this post would not pass the up-goer five test! Thanks to one of my Pratt students, Tony Wylen, for showing me this site.
A Minor Post, Pratt Institute, Public Outreach, Teaching, Web
Posted 26 Jan 2013 / 0
WNYC “NYC’s Top Dogs: Mapping Names & Breeds in the City” WNYC “Dogs of NYC” Data sets like these, even flawed by their incompleteness (only 20% of dogs in New York City are registered) are fascinating. The human relationship with dogs has changed radically as we have urbanized as a species: I would suggest that the dominance Read More
A Minor Post, Canids, Coevolution, Gene-Culture Coevolution, Geography, Human Evolution, Human Uniqueness, Mutualism, Public Policy, Radio & Podcasts, Web
Posted 12 Jan 2013 / 1
I really appreciate the combination of social play and music that went into this very simple but very rich piece of public art.
A Minor Post, Art & Design, Cooperation, Installation Art, Play, Public Art, Web
Posted 01 Nov 2012 / 2
In an election season when global climate change has been a subject that neither Obama nor Romney seem interested in discussing (see reports by The New Yorker and The Huffington Post), along comes Hurricane Sandy. With the arrival of the second “100 year storm event” to hit the State of New York in as many Read More
A Major Post, Anthropogenic Change, Articles, Belief, Climate Change, Cultural Evolution, Economic sustainability, Environmental Justice, Memetic Fitness, Political Science, Resilience, Reviews, Risk & Uncertainty, Sustainability, Sustainable Transportation, Web
Posted 31 Oct 2012 / 0
Slate “Tool use and exploration may be just side effects of social skills” Great examples in this short piece of how scientists quantify the benefits of social connection in terms of survival and reproduction. It will be interesting to see how the “Social Brain Hypothesis” stacks up against the “Cultural Intelligence Hypothesis” in future research, Read More
A Minor Post, Articles, Brain size, Evolution, Human Evolution, Human Uniqueness, Hypothesis Testing, Neuroscience, Quantifying Costs and Benefits, Web
