Posted 20 Jun 2014 / 0
I started off this year’s Evolution meeting early. The conference is — at its core — a four-day affair. But the days leading into the “official” start on Friday evening feature larger workshops aimed at building skills. I chose to attend the Experiencing Evolution workshop. Here’s what this session promised: Evolution is a key biological concept, Read More
A Major Post, Adaptation, Assessment Methods, Behavior, Coevolution, Competition, Conferences, Cooperation, Evolution, Evolution Education, Evolutionary Modeling, Genetics, Grants & Funding, Higher Education, Individual-based Models, Lesson Ideas, Multilevel Selection, Natural Selection, Phylogenetics, Population Genetics, Population Growth, Predation, Reproductive Fitness, Science in Art & Design, Sex and Reproduction, Society for the Study of Evolution, Talks & Seminars, Teaching, Teaching Tools
Posted 20 Jun 2014 / 0
Will Ratcliff presented an absolutely amazing set of laboratories that explore the evolution of multicellularity (http://www.snowflakeyeastlab.com/). They can be done with high school or college students, and allow students to see the benefits of cooperation and the action of multilevel selection in a few weeks’ worth of laboratory work. Really impressive classroom activity design!
A Minor Post, Competition, Conferences, Cooperation, Group Selection, Multilevel Selection, Predation, Society for the Study of Evolution
Posted 20 Jun 2014 / 0
Susan Singer, who is part of the National Science Foundation’s Undergraduate Biology Education division, talked about funding opportunities for faculty who want to create pedagogical materials at small undergraduate institutions. She pointed out that the NSF‘s Research Coordination Networks program funds projects that are sited at multiple institutions, including those in undergraduate biology education (“RCN-UBE“). This kind of Read More
A Minor Post, Conferences, Grants & Funding, Society for the Study of Evolution, Teaching Tools
Posted 20 Jun 2014 / 0
Julie Noor’s classroom activity in Drosophila breeding points out a really great “best practice” for any data collection in undergraduate laboratory exercises: if you ask students to first interpret only the data they collected, then allow them to interpret the aggregated data of the whole class, you can allow them to see the importance of sample size. Read More
A Minor Post, Conferences, Evolution Education, Lesson Ideas, Natural Selection, Population Genetics, Society for the Study of Evolution, Teaching
Posted 20 Jun 2014 / 0
Julie Noor of Duke University shows how a very simple classroom experiment in fly breeding to the F3 generation can force students to answer the following question in the affirmative: “Have you ever seen evolution actually occurring?” It is powerful when students are able to report that they have seen “evolution in action”.
A Minor Post, Conferences, Natural Selection, Population Genetics, Society for the Study of Evolution
Posted 20 Jun 2014 / 0
Jim Costa of the Highlands Biological Station points out that Darwin’s scientific explorations in his own backyard were as profoundly important to his theories as his voyage on the H.M.S. Beagle.
A Minor Post, Conferences, Evolution Education, History, Society for the Study of Evolution
Posted 19 Jun 2014 / 2
After landing at Raleigh-Durham airport today I am ready for Evolution 2014! It has been four years since I last attended the annual meeting that brings together members of the Society for the Study of Evolution (SSE), the Society of Systematic Biologists (SSB), and the American Society of Naturalists (ASN). I do not always get the chance to attend this conference, so Read More
A Major Post, Conferences, Evolution, Society for the Study of Evolution
Posted 18 Jun 2013 / 0
I am slogging away at writing up a long-overdue individual-based modeling project that I presented eons ago at ESA 2009 and ESA 2010, and I am trying my best to present the model in complete form. This project is the result of a lot of work by me and my collaborators Jennifer Verdolin and Dylan Read More
A Minor Post, Computing, Conferences, Ecological Society of America
Posted 10 Aug 2012 / 0
Friday 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 Knowledge
Posted 10 Aug 2012 / 0
I 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 Forest
