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Evolution 2014: Aphids protect themselves from parasitoids by harboring a...
Andrew Smith of Drexel University spoke about a four-species interaction that could best be described as “my symbiont’s enemy is my parasitoid’s toxic enemy” scenario. Aphids can avoid being...
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Evolution 2014: Lemurs display huge diet diversity, and their gut microbes...
Erin McKenney of Duke University talked about three lemur species with different diets: a frugivore (fruit-eater), a generalist, and a folivore (leaf-eater). Not surprisingly their gut morphologies...
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Evolution 2014: Is thyme a facultative mutualist with leguminous plants?
Mary McKenna of Howard University presented work that suggested that thyme plants may be facultative mutualists when associated with various legume species. In work done at the Blandy Experimental...
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Evolution 2014: Are island mutualist communities more likely to be nested...
The interactions in ecological communities can be structured in a variety of ways, and recently there has been a push to categorize these networks along the spectrum between modular (smaller clusters...
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Evolution 2014: Could the right symbionts provide protection from chytrid...
Patrick McLaughlin showed work on Bioko Island suggesting that frogs there may be protected from the ill effects of chytrid infection by the presence of bacterial symbionts. These symbionts produce...
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Evolution 2014: Day 1
My first session of the day was spent entirely in a Symbiosis session. I am fascinated by symbiosis, particularly mutualistic symbiosis, so I am always looking for cool new stories to help illustrate...
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Evolution 2014: The Evolution Film Festival was on fire!
The Evolution Film Festival was amazing! So many great films and such a wonderful, fun social atmosphere in which to enjoy them. The Evolution 2014 meeting would not be the same without these kinds of...
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Evolution 2014: A clever way to see if creationist students understand...
Rebecca Price and Tessa Andrews have a clever way of assessing the understanding of students who harbor creationist beliefs in evolutionary biology courses. Rather than force them to state answers to...
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Evolution 2014: EvoGrader will take the grading out of assessing student...
Ross Nehm talked about the EvoGrader resource, which uses machine learning to automatically score student assessments designed to look at student understanding of the evolutionary process.
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Evolution 2014: Want to teach both sides? Have your students deconstruct...
Patricia Hawley points out a great way that you can “teach both sides of the controversy” between evolution and intelligent design. In her Evolutionary Psychology course she has students deconstruct...
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Evolution 2014: Day 2
About five years ago I developed my Evolution course, which is aimed at my non-majors art and design students. I have not taught this course in more than two years, and as it has sat on the shelf I...
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Evolution 2014: Day 3
After a couple of pretty busy days at the Evolution 2014 meeting, I figured that I would go selective on the talks, take a little field trip away from the meeting, and make sure that I was ready for...
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Evolution 2014: Synthesis centers can serve as incubators if they buffer...
NESCent director Allen Rodrigo suggested that if synthesis centers want to serve as research incubators, they need to allow researchers to pursue risky research questions without having to pay the...
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Evolution 2014: Day 4
Tuesday was a busy day for me, with a pair of Education sessions in the morning, including the one containing my own talk. Thus far I have been really impressed with the education-related sessions...
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Evolution 2014: Overall Impressions
Great organization of a great conference I had a great Evolution 2014 conference, and that has a lot to do with how it was organized. Raleigh was a nice location for the conference: it has an intimate...
View ArticleMy Evolution 2014 talk is on YouTube
One nice thing that organizers of the Evolution 2014 conference did was to offer the opportunity for presenters to have their talk recorded and archived. These recorded talks now have their own...
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Lev Ginzburg Fest: celebration of a “retirement”
“Lev Ginzburg has retired”. For anyone who knows Lev, this combination of words does not make a whole lot of sense. Is it possible that such a lively and active scientist would hang up his yellow pad...
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Moral Sense III approaches, June 2nd at St. Francis College
Alison 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...
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Hey, ho, Portland Oregon ESA 2017, let’s go!
Mount 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...
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I will present my EnviroAtlas class activities at NCSE 2018
I guess that some people are really good at planning out where they are going with their careers, but for me serendipity seems to play a really big role. Rather than charting a particular course and...
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