Behavioral Ecology Blog

See The MVZ Job Posting web-page, where over 30 jobs and volunteer opportunities are listed.

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No E.O. Wilson is not marrying Haggard….
Right wing evangelical types and scientists are joined in an effort solve one of the more troubling issues of out times- climate change. In a story in SEED, their efforts to prevent (or maybe limit) the 6th mass extinction are detailed. Both sides seem to have (at [...]

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The Emlen-Oring Hypothesis Revisited (this time looking at groups): a semi-update for the study that defined the way behaviorists think about the ecology of mating systems. As usual pretty nice work coming from T.C.B.
Abstract: (doi)
Extra-group paternity (EGP) can form an important part of the mating system in birds and mammals. However, our present understanding of [...]

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The EDGE of Existence
I have to say guys that while I am a huge fan of conservation efforts in general, I am not a fan of how animals are chosen to be beneficiaries of those efforts. Generally speaking- animals that are chosen are:

Cute and cuddly
Look or act sufficiently like humans
Have economic value
Not living near oil [...]

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Parasite infection may benefit MS patients
A steady rise in autoimmune diseases such as multiple sclerosis (MS) has been noted in recent decades, and environmental factors could be the cause of this increase. One theory, similar to the “hygiene hypothesis” in which an excessively germ-free environment may contribute to an increase in allergies, holds that a [...]

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Social transmission of face preferences among humans: Read it here
In an interesting story available today in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B, Jones and colleagues unravel of facet of human mate choice that has been long recognized in other vertebrates- a mechanism for the paradox of the lek, which basically asks the question- [...]

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UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, BERKELEY: Pending budgetary approval, the Department of Psychology is seeking to fill a tenure-track, assistant professor faculty position, with a starting date effective July 1, 2007. We are interested in candidates in any area of psychology for this open-area search. The current areas represented at Berkeley are Behavioral Neuroscience; Change, [...]

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US government reading your email, US mail, phone records, bank statements, love notes
The Pentagon has been using a little-known power to obtain banking and credit records of hundreds of Americans and others suspected of terrorism or espionage inside the United States, part of an aggressive expansion by the military into domestic intelligence gathering.
The C.I.A. has [...]

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Go see it here: a blog carnival devoted to the best ecology and environmental science posts from across the blogosphere

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Read the paper (doi), and see the story here.
Dr. Rauri Bowie, who recently joined Integrative Biology as an assistant professor, has been studying the evolutionary history of montane-forest birds in East Africa, and most recently, the relationships among forest batises (small corvid-like birds).
He and collaborators Jon Fjeldså of the University of Copenhagen, and Jacob Kiure [...]

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