Posted 03 Oct 2010 / 0
I am on the lookout for a new textbook for my non-majors Evolution course, so I was excited to check out Carl Zimmer’s new book “The Tangled Bank: An Introduction to Evolution”, published this year by Roberts and Company. For those of you who are not familiar with Carl Zimmer’s work, he is a prolific Read More
Adaptation, Animal Domestication, Books, Coevolution, DNA Barcoding, Evolution, Evolution Education, Evolutionary Modeling, Evolutionary Psychology, Human Evolution, MSCI-260, Evolution, Multilevel Selection, Phylogenetics
Posted 28 Sep 2010 / 0
In the March 2010 issue of National Geographic there’s an excellent article on the reintroduction of wolves to Yellowstone National Park entitled “Wolf Wars”. I was excited to discover it because I use the example of how wolves were brought back to Yellowstone as a way of discussing various issues in population and community ecology Read More
Anthropogenic Change, Articles, Biodiversity Loss, Conservation Biology, Ecology Education, Grasslands, MSCI-270, Ecology, Reviews, Temperate Forest
Posted 26 Sep 2010 / 4
I just watched The Cove, a 2009 documentary that followed the efforts of activists from the Oceanic Preservation Society as they chronicled the seasonal capture and slaughter of dolphins in Taiji, Japan. As a person concerned with biodiversity conservation and animal rights, I was eager to watch this film after hearing about its focus on Read More
Biodiversity Loss, Conservation Biology, Ethics, Film, Television, & Video, Marine Ecosystems, Reviews, Teaching
Posted 25 Sep 2010 / 1
One of the most difficult challenges that my non-major students face is gaining access to the scientific process. Although almost all of my students have been given some version of the “scientific method”, very few of them have any real sense of how to go about assessing the validity of claims that “sound scientific”. Of Read More
Adaptation, Coevolution, Ecology Education, Evolution Education, Lesson Ideas, MSCI-270, Ecology, Teaching
Posted 09 Sep 2010 / 3
I just started a new semester of The Evolution of Cooperation, a class that I taught for the first time in the Fall of 2008 and was shelved for a couple of years while I worked on developing other new courses. Now I am excited to get back to the initial framework I laid out Read More
Cooperation, Evolution, Evolution Education, Game Theory, Lesson Ideas, MSCI-463, The Evolution of Cooperation
Posted 24 May 2010 / 1
As a professor charged with teaching science at an institution where there are no science majors, I cannot avoid thinking about how to make material accessible to my students. I don’t think that this is a bad thing. From my experience as a graduate student at a big research university, it seems that most professors Read More
A Major Post, Course Readings, Ecology Education, Learning Management Systems, Lesson Ideas, Teaching, Textbooks
Posted 19 May 2010 / 0
This month’s Scientific American contains a great article (“Arctic Plants Feel the Heat“) on how scientists are documenting climate change in the Arctic. Focusing on the two dominant biomes of this region, the tundra and the taiga, author Matthew Sturm explains how three sources of data are allowing us to see recent changes linked to Read More
A Major Post, Articles, Climate Change, Data Limitation, Long Term Ecological Research, MSCI-270, Ecology, Phenotypic Plasticity, Taiga (Boreal Forest), Tundra
Posted 05 Mar 2010 / 0
This month’s National Geographic features a really beautiful article on carnivorous plants written by Carl Zimmer. The article presents the numerous independently-evolved adaptations possessed by a diversity of plants which live in nitrogen-poor soil. These adaptations are a great example of coarse-scal evolutionary convergence, as a variety of plants have all come up with the Read More
A Minor Post, Adaptation, Articles, Bogs & Wetlands, Convergence, Evolution, MSCI-260, Evolution, Predation
Posted 04 Aug 2009 / 1
Sunny Power started off the first full day of ESA’s meeting with a great overview of where the society has been and where it is headed. My impression has been that ESA has been slowly asserting its rightful place as not only a source of scientific information relevant to policy but also an active commentator Read More
A Major Post, Conferences, Ecological Society of America, Ecology Education, Public Policy, Senescence, Sustainability, Traditional Ecological Knowledge, Urban Ecology
