Posted 03 Aug 2014 / 0
Did you know that Facebook performs scientific research? If I told you that Facebook is constantly analyzing the activity of its users, that would probably not surprise you. But does Facebook go the next step by performing manipulative experiments on its users? A recent publication in the prestigious Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA Read More
A Major Post, Articles, Behavior, Behavioral Ecology, Communication, Consciousness, Emotion, Empathy, Ethics, Experiments (General), Happiness, Law, Methods, Psychological Adaptation, Sociology, Web
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 21 May 2014 / 0
I am proud to announce that a paper on which I am co-author, “A review and synthesis of late Pleistocene extinction modeling: Progress delayed by mismatches between ecological realism, interpretation, and methodological transparency“, has been published in the June 2014 issue of The Quarterly Review of Biology. The paper looks at the history of modeling aimed Read More
A Major Post, Anthropogenic Change, Articles, Biodiversity Loss, Climate Change, Community Ecology, Ecological Modeling, Extinction, Modeling (General), My publications, Predation
Posted 29 Jan 2014 / 0
The information sharing issue is really interesting here: in some sense, the medical field has the most detailed organismal knowledge available for any species, and evolutionary biologists are generally not that aware of the depth of what is known about the functions of the human body. Although I think that evolutionists have a lot to Read More
A Minor Post, Cooperation, Evolutionary Modeling, Health & Medicine, Individual-based Models, Talks & Seminars
Posted 03 Sep 2013 / 0
There has been additional coverage of the paper showing that “zero determinant” strategies in the Prisoner’s Dilemma are not evolutionarily robust: Phys.org “Generosity leads to evolutionary success, biologists show” Popular Science “Evolution Punishes Selfish People, Game Theory Study Says” Here’s the original paper: Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA “From extortion to generosity, evolution Read More
A Minor Post, Articles, Cooperation, Game Theory, Modeling (General), System Stability, Web
Posted 23 Aug 2013 / 2
Journal of Artificial Societies and Social Simulation “The Evolutionary Dominance of Ethnocentric Cooperation” Human beings are not always (or completely) engulfed in a war of tribe against tribe. In other words, we are not strictly “ethnocentric” in our cooperation: we are willing to cooperate with those not directly identified as our “in group”. This modeling Read More
A Minor Post, Cooperation, Individual-based Models, Kin Selection
Posted 21 Aug 2013 / 0
WNYC The Leonard Lopate Show “The Untold Story of the Notorious Milgram Psychology Experiments” This great feature uncovers two major sources of scientific distortion: Milgram himself selectively reported his results in order to tell a more sensational story; and Media depictions, fueled by popular preconceptions, further filtered and distorted the meanings of Milgram’s scientific results. Both Read More
A Minor Post, Altruism, Behavior, Emotion, Empathy, Ethics, Human Nature, Methods, Psychology, Radio & Podcasts, Scientific Fraud, Social Norms
Posted 15 Aug 2013 / 0
The Scientist “A Twist in Evolutionary Game Theory: Biologists demonstrate the instability of employing a selfish strategy in the prisoner’s dilemma game” Nature Communications “Evolutionary instability of zero-determinant strategies demonstrates that winning is not everything” I am so glad to see that someone did the math and simulations to look at the long-term stability of Read More
A Minor Post, Adaptation, Articles, Behavior, Coevolution, Cooperation, Evolutionary Modeling, Game Theory, Individual-based Models, Phenotypic Plasticity, Punishment, Reciprocity, System Stability
Posted 22 Jun 2013 / 0
Jennifer Verdolin, Dylan Moore, and I created the fieldTest simulator several years ago. This individual-based simulation allows virtual animals with the potential to form social groups that defend territories to interact on landscapes containing different patterns and abundances of resources, and is part of my larger research into group territorial behavior. We presented our results at the 2009 Read More
A Major Post, Behavioral Ecology, Competition, Concept Mapping, Department of Mathematics & Science, Ecological Modeling, Group Territorial Behavior, Individual-based Models, Information Design, Spatially Explicit Modeling
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
