So maybe you guys already saw this in an email about renewing memberships, but APS has decided to create a blog too! Okay, well they did theirs before ours, but still, apparently (professional?) blogging's all the rage. Anyway, I thought it was a good sign that they did a write-up of some EP stuff a while back, which you can read here.
Also, if you're interested, we read this great overview of behavioral ecology written by Parker (G.A., of sperm comp fame) for class. He polled some other BE's about the most influential papers and people, so you can see how many of the top 10 people and papers you've actually read (I'm a bit embarassed by how few I have!). It's also a good theoretical and historical overview. Anyway, I'll try to put that up somewhere so you guys can check it out, or you can email me if you're interested.
What're y'all up to?
11 comments:
I wish I could say I have been up to exciting things but classes just started for me yesterday! My EP seminar will be good I'm sure because we get to pick our topics & the articles for the topics (instead of picking from a preset list). There are 2 biology majors and 1 economics major in the class so I'm hoping we'll have some interesting discussions! We also have our 1st lab meeting next week so again I'm sure then I'll have some interesting things to talk about!!
Anyone else have anything good going on?
And since I'm the author of this post..I'll use as many exclamation points as I want!!!!!! :-)
Thanks for the info on the APS blog. And yes, please send me that Behavioral Ecology overview. Thanks.
I've spent the past few days off from school. Hurricane/Tropical Storm/Tropical Depression Ernesto blew threw but only gave us a little bit of rain. We still had two days off, but it was completely unnecessary. Seriously, I only lost power for 5 minutes. I got some reading done, but I also watched about three movies. But now it's back to the grindstone. The Emily Grindstone. (jk)
Judy, have fun with your classes, and be sure to blog any particularly interesting discussions that arise in your classes or meetings.
haha, yes, I am a VERY demanding blogger. ;) (Any good movies among those three, BTW? Aaron (and Judy!) you might like this movie Blackballed I saw recently. Check it out on IMDB)
Blackballed. Thanks Emily. If I lived in West Virginia, I would definitely be a paintball champion. But yeah, I do want to check it out.
We rented Dancer in the Dark starring Bjork. It was okay, but I didn't like it that much because it was a musical. I'm not a big fan of musicals.
Yeah, I remember how much you liked Rent. (shh, don't tell Judy! ;)
hahahahah Emily you already told me about how much Aaron loves musicals...it's ok...we can't all love them. :-) (But for the record, I'm not really a fan of Dancer in the Dark...it's a little too strange for me)
I just watched Me and You and Everyone We Know which was fabulously wonderful. But I think you guys have already seen that.
I'll keep everyone posted on what we discuss in my classes...our first reading assignment for EP is Buss's 95 paper and Tooby & Cosmides chapter from the Handbook so I'm not really expecting any revolutionary discussions but who knows??
Judy, you guys might discuss how Tooby & Cosmides still see personality differences as nonadaptive evoluitonary noise (p. 40). Buss disagrees with them on this, so that might generate an interesting discussion.
Aaron--that's a good point; thanks for mentioning it. I've always thought it is rather odd that they write off individual differences but after re-reading their explanation for why they do...it somewhat makes sense. Although, still I think ID are worth noting; particularly when the differences still lead to reproductive success. Maybe as T & C indicate that means those differences are in fact just noise; but how can we say for certain unless we truly examine them? I found it particularly interesting that T & C assume that future behavioral genetics work will support exactly what they're saying (p. 39-40), that all our adaptations will have heritability close to zero. I would think, to be on the safe side, we should investigate ID just in case, because if the heritability isn't close to zero, we'll need an explanation. What do you guys think?
How interesting that this ties in closely to what we just discussed in my behavioral ecology (BE) class! (I guess it's the "introductory days" across capuses. ;) We read an old paper by Jon Seger, a biologist here at Utah, and he talks about how most evolved phenotypes are unlikely to indicate high heritability, because (from an adaptationist perspective) they're likely to already have been selected for by natural selection and to have (generally) stabilized in the population, and the variation we see today a result of differences in environment (or noise, as T & C say, I guess--I admittedly haven't read their Handbook chapter yet!). So the idea is that even though a trait may not presently be highly heritable, it can still be investigated with selection pressures and natural selection in mind, and the variation resulting from environmental differences evaluated within a framework of evolved "norms of reaction" (a term frequently used here in Utah and in BE). (Norm of reaction being an expected trait/behavior given a particular environment.) I haven't read their chapter so I can't comment on how his ideas from a geneticist's/biologist's P-O-V relate to theirs, but they sound very complementary. How'd the class discussion go?
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