Eco-Evo Evo-Eco

My name is Ben Haller.  I was a graduate student once, but I have reached my next life stage.  It is time to disperse.  During my juvenile stage, I worked on my PhD with Andrew at McGill; protected from predators, and optimally oxygenated as he fanned his nest, I flourished and grew.  But now I have hatched; I passed my defense on June 3rd, moved from Montreal to New York on June 4th, and submitted my final thesis on June 6th.  Now it’s time for me to start foraging […]

Carnival of Evolution #60 is now up!  Our contribution this month is from Hendry Lab member Kiyoko Gotanda, making us all envious with her adventures in the Galápagos.  As usual, there’s a wide variety of other nifty entries about evolution, so check it out!The theme this month was 60th anniversaries, since it’s Carnival #60.  2013 is also the 60th anniversary of the discovery of the structure of DNA by Watson, Crick, and Franklin, so...

Ecology and evolutionary biology – and their intersection (evolutionary ecology, eco-evolutionary dynamics) – strive for inferences that are robust, consistent, and stable. For instance, investigators commonly explore how organisms differ between habitats (different “ecotypes”) and how these ecotypes have different ecological effects. Once the differences are discovered and the patterns established, we would expect them to be at least relatively consistent through time: year after year […]

Every few years a group of ecologists or evolutionary biologists experiences existential angst about the decline of natural history knowledge. This angst is wholly justified when many biologists no longer take the time to experience how the organisms they study actually live in nature. At best (and this is better than most), many biologists run off to the field for a day, stop at a bridge over a stream or along a forest trail, quickly collect their samples, and then run back to the lab to […]

Throughout an organisms’ life, the expression of genes, regulated by the biotic and abiotic environment, gives rise to traits that determine how fast it can run or how tall it can grow. Many traits also affect species interactions; for example, are you fast enough to outrun predators? Do you look tasty to herbivores? Most traits (e.g., running speed) cease to be important once an organism dies, but some traits linger and have “afterlife” effects on the environment. A prominent example of […]