The invasion of elephants
15 Chinese Elephants Are on a Long March North. Why, No One Knows: Maybe they’re looking for better food. Maybe they’ve gotten lost. Maybe they’re just adventurous and having a […]
The Insight Show Notes — Season 2, Episode 30: Evolution of Family
The Insight Show Notes — Season 2, Episode 30: Evolution of FamilyThis week on The Insight (Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher and Google Podcasts) Razib talks to Dr. Rebecca Sear, a behavioral ecologist at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medi…
Dogs, domesticated before agriculture
The domestication of the dog is a complex and unresolved topic. But at this point I am convinced that this is one domestication event which well predates agriculture. To some extent this is common sense. There are tentative archaeological finds of dome…
Evolution, not ecology
One of my major gripes with my friends in ecology is that there is a tendency to look at every problem through the lens of ecological models. Garrett Hardin, who popularized the term “tragedy of the commons” is an exemplar of this. People i…
Why the Amazon Rainforest is species rich
A monkey frog
The Pith: The Amazon Rainforest has a lot of species because it’s been around for a very long time.
I really don’t know much about ecology, alas. So my understanding of evolution framed in its proper ecological context is a t…
Evolutionary pressures, within and without
Foraminifera, Wikimedia Commons
The Pith: The tree if life is nourished by agon, but pruned by the gods. More literally, both interactions between living organisms and the changes in the environment impact the pulsing of speciation and extinction.
No…
A cloud forest in….
A “cloud forest”
The lush image above is of a cloud forest biome. Can you guess where it is? The Arabian country of Oman! How’s that for a surprise? I had known of the Green Mountain of northeast Oman, which is ~3000 meters above sea level and receives ~15 inches of rain (enough for shrubby […]