The Evolution 2008 conference, where academic researchers from all over the world get together to share their latest data and ideas on evolutionary biology, occurred from June 20-24. I gave a short talk on the last day, but was around for the entire conference sitting through lectures, viewing posters, and schmoozing with grad students […]
The insistence by some biologists that we must halt economic growth in order to save the environment has bothered me for some time, but I was prompted to write about it now because yet another, albeit minor, group has adopted a policy statement on the issue. That a naturalist group has agreed to this nonsense […]
I have started reading Charles Darwin’s 1871 book Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex. Darwin published this book well after he introduced the idea of evolution by natural selection in his 1859 book On the Origin of Species. Despite persistent claims to the contrary, Darwin initially dealt very little with […]
At risk of merely propagating other’s ideas instead of making novel contributions to the blogosphere, I recommend everyone reading this short piece from Paul Krugman regarding his disillusionment with the Obama campaign.
A new blog on science/evidence based medicine caught my eye. It is written mostly, if not completely, by practicing doctors - most of them seem to be academic researchers. They plan to have a daily entry reviewing the evidence for some medical topic or debunking a medical modality that is not supported by […]
A new article (subscription required) in Ecology Letters, a prestigious research journal, outlines an ecological and evolutionary research program on the relatively new area of epigenetic inheritance. Epigenetic refers to traits that are heritable across generations but that are not encoded by DNA. The most common form of epigenetic regulation involves methylation (binding […]
That economic growth, however defined, has caused environmental degradation (e.g. pollution, biodiversity loss, depletion of natural resources) is unquestionable. As I discuss below, it does not follow from this premise that policies aimed at halting economic growth are optimal (or even good) for environmental protection. Nevertheless, a sizable minority, if not majority, of ecologists and […]
From climate change to species extinctions, ecology has joined economics among the ranks of dismal sciences, and evolution may not be far behind. A short piece in this week’s edition of Science summarizes numerous studies across many species demonstrating the sinister impacts of fishing, and what it means for optimal management. It has […]
As I don’t have time tonight to finish an entire entry, let me briefly introduce myself to the reader and give her a flavor for what I will be writing about on the MP Blog. Currently I am a first-year graduate student at Indiana University studying evolutionary biology. For MP, I am working […]