Science “This parasitic ‘love vine’ is sucking the life out of freeloading wasps” A plant evolves to parasitize the parasitic structure of an animal parasite that targets another plant. You can’t make this stuff up folks: it’s nature…
A Minor Post, Coevolution, Parasitism, UncategorizedNature “Trump’s science-adviser pick hedges on climate change” There’s not a lot of reason to think that anyone can soften President Trump’s irresponsible stance on climate change action, but maybe Kelvin Droegemeier is trying to sneak some climate realism into the White House? It’s bizarre how these things work, but I am actually somewhat more optimistic Read More
A Minor Post, Climate Change, Political Science, Public Policy, UncategorizedPNAS “Income inequality not gender inequality positively covaries with female sexualization on social media” This study kind of blew up my head (well, at least blew up the preconceptions in my head). It would seem so logical to predict that gender inequality would be the main cause of the sexualization of women on social media. Read More
A Minor Post, Competition, Economics, Human Evolution, Human Nature, Sexual Competition, UncategorizedNature “Sizing up human brain evolution” Nature “Inference of ecological and social drivers of human brain-size evolution” This is an interesting study that I simultaneously think is really cool and has some major flaws. What’s cool about this study is that it trys to get at this question with a model that’s (reasonably) constrained by observed parameter Read More
A Minor Post, Allometries, Articles, Brain size, Cognitive Ability, Evolution, Human Evolution, Individual-based Models, Modeling (General), Neuroscience, UncategorizedMount Hood on the descent into Portland, Oregon Ah, what a privilege it is to get to go to academic conferences! A whole week during which I get to re-connect with old academic friends, make new connections, and do the backstroke in science. And it does not hurt a bit when the conference is in Read More
A Major Post, Conferences, Conservation Biology, Ecological Society of America, Ecology, Ecology Education, Ecosystem Services, Higher Education, Sustainability, UncategorizedAlison Dell’s Moral Sense III cover art subjected a Richard Alexander figure to paper chromatography Next week, a variety of natural and social scientists will converge on Saint Francis for Moral Sense III, a one day colloquium exploring the human “moral sense”. In part inspired by the work of Richard Alexander, the colloquium marks the Read More
A Major Post, Conferences, Ethics, Evolutionary Psychology, Gene-Culture Coevolution, Human Evolution, Human Nature, Human Uniqueness, Population Pressure, Reproductive Fitness, Sex and Reproduction, Sustainability, UncategorizedOne of the activities that I regularly have my students complete in my Evolution course is called “Future Evolution“. The activity sends students on what most evolutionary biologists consider a fool’s errand: to try to predict the future evolution of some particular trait in some particular species. Making such predictions is really difficult for these basic reasons: Read More
A Major Post, Adaptation, Animal Domestication, Anthropogenic Change, Coevolution, Cultural Evolution, Evolution, Evolution Education, Human Evolution, Lesson Ideas, MSCI-260, Evolution, Prediction, UncategorizedA good friend and former colleague of mine, Aman Gill, now works on Bombardier Beetles. And the Bombardier Beetle is in the running for a unique award: having its genome sequenced. How will the Bombardier Beetle win this award? Well, folks, we are pretty well into the new millenium by now, so you probably have Read More
A Minor Post, Adaptation, Behavior, Convergence, Evolution, Experiments (General), Genetics, Natural Selection, Public Outreach, Science (General), UncategorizedResearchers from Pratt Institute and Brooklyn College discuss the results of their study Today I spent my lunchtime listening to an intriguing talk given by three Brooklyn College psychology researchers and a member of Pratt’s Foundation Art department. Aaron Kozbelt, Jennifer Drake, and Rebecca Chamberlain teamed up to describe their study of Pratt Foundation Art Read More
A Major Post, Art & Design, Pratt Institute, Psychology, Talks & Seminars, Uncategorized, Visual PerceptionI am excited to be speaking on March 7th, 2016 at Columbia University about the topic of my book-in-progress: Breeders, Propagators, & Creators. The talk, a part of the Columbia Population Biology seminar series, starts at 6 pm at the Faculty House. Here’s an abstract for the talk: For most species, evolutionary immortality can be Read More
A Major Post, Behavior, Breeders, Propagators, & Creators, Cultural Evolution, Evolution, Gene-Culture Coevolution, Human Evolution, Human Uniqueness, Memetic Fitness, Public Outreach, Uncategorized