Evolution 2012: Meeting preview

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1 July 2012

It's almost here: the biggest (~2400 attendees) evolution conference ever! I'm excited. I've only ever attended the evolution meeting once before, in 2009 in Idaho when it was much smaller because there were fewer societies involved. Evolution 2009 was the best...

The ecology of hipsters

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29 June 2012

The Dependent magazine wins the internet by estimating the population density of hipsters in Vancouver, using capture-recapture methods . If they continue sampling and build up a time series, Ted Hart at UBC can show them how to estimate past hipster abundances . HT...

Evolution 2012: presenters will literally be treated like children (UPDATEDx5 --no, they won't be))

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28 June 2012

FINAL UPDATE: The snark in this post is out of line, and for that I apologize to Howard Rundle and the other Evolution 2012 organizers. It was and remains true that I'm personally skeptical of the need for the chimes, based on my own experience over many years at an...

Research dynamics and part-time work: an ecological model for factors driving gender imbalance in science and engineering.

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27 June 2012

Press release: The academic jungle: ecosystem modelling reveals why women are driven out of research. DOI: 10.1111/j.1600-0706.2012.20601.x A large proportion of women and a growing number of men wish to work part-time in order to balance the demands of family and work...

Yet more on the inclusive fitness - kin selection - group selection kerfuffle

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25 June 2012

If you can't get enough of heavyweight intellectuals arguing about how to think about group selection, Steven Pinker has a lengthy post at The Edge , which has drawn responses from Dan Dennett and David Queller, among others (Queller's response is particularly on point...

Rapid evolution of evolutionary biology (and ecology): what's changed since 2005

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20 June 2012

Over at Nothing in Biology Makes Sense , newly-minted PhD evolutionary biologist David Hembry reflects on the biggest changes in evolutionary biology and ecology since 2005. It's a thoughtful piece, reflecting on some less-noted aspects of widely-noted trends. For...

Take-home messages vs. the devil in the details

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15 June 2012

As scientists, whether we're reading a paper or listening to a talk, we often focus on the take-home message. The main conclusion. The key point. The bottom line. The gist. The summary. But should we do that? Always? Because the devil is in the details. And not just...

Intuition, education, and zombie ideas (UPDATED)

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13 June 2012

Here's an intriguing little cognitive psychology experiment, which shows that highly educated people evaluate the truth or falsehood of statements less quickly and less accurately if those statements are ones that appear true under a "naive" theory, but which education...

Elinor Ostrom, 1933-2012

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13 June 2012

Elinor Ostrom , the first woman ever awarded the Nobel Prize in Economics, has died. Ecologists, including me, mostly don't know her work (I only know of it). But we should. She did hugely important work on the management of common pool resources, and argued that...