Behavioral Ecology Blog

In case you have a mess of time to waste, I thought I’d recommend you a site that is perfect for just that:
http://www.freerice.com/ 
It is basically a vocabulary quiz (remember all those GRE words).  With each correct answer, the organization claims to donate 20 grains of rice to some poor and starving child.  The catch is [...]

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[source]
 BERKELEY, CALIFORNIA–The foggy, eucalyptus-studded hills above the San Francisco Bay are a world away from the African savanna, but the spotted hyenas that live here seem content. On a recent afternoon, they excitedly jostled one another to get a better look–and sniff–at some visitors passing by their enclosure at the Field Station for the Study [...]

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Tuesday February 19, 2008 4:00 PM
J. Craig Venter-J. Craig Venter Institute
“From reading to writing the genetic code” 
Sponsored by the Marian E. Koshland Memorial Lecture Series
100 Genetics & Plant Biology Building
Pre-seminar tea and reception following the seminar in Koshland.

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OK, so jury duty unfortunately means that I have not been keeping up on current literature.. So, this paper: Wasp Gene Expression Supports an Evolutionary Link Between Maternal Behavior and Eusociality from the 27-Sept issue of Science was missed completely…
Before I get into the paper, I want to rant for a minute about “Next generation” [...]

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Published in 1974, this paper is arguably Bob Trivers 2nd most influential paper behind the paper describing reciprocal altruism… Because very few people read long blog posts, and the idea is to introduce these ideas to people that might not already be familiar, I’l go ahead and list the main points/finding, and then go into [...]

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I’m liveblogging a paper that should have been read a long time ago…. An Ecological and Evolutionary Perspective on human-microbe mutualisms and disease from the October 18 issue of Nature. 1st, the abstract:
The microbial communities of humans are characteristic and complex mixtures of microorganisms that have co-evolved with their human hosts. The species that make [...]

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Are you as pumped about Just Science 2008 as I am?? I hope so, cause I expect to see some really nice, well thought out posts on science i the next few days…
I’ll have to admit that my effors will be severely hampered by Jury Duty (I’m on a jury), but we’ll see what I [...]

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It’s always coolto hear about a new species discovery, especially when it’s a mammal. Unlike other taxa (thinking insects and “bugs”) there are probably very few new species left to discover.. Those new species are usually from relatively unexplored regions of the world. Particularly troubling is the fact that these areas are extremely threatened by [...]

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