What questions do you have for a professor of biological sciences?
Added 2020-01-07 18:18:26 +0000 UTCHey, eonites! The Patreon pod is back! Our next guest will be Dr. Douglas Emlen, a professor in the Division of Biological Sciences department at the University of Montana. He's also the author of two books: Animal Weapons: The Evolution of Battle and Beetle Battles: One Scientist's Journey of Adventure and Discovery.
What questions should he and Kallie discuss? Let us know in the comments of this post!
Comments
I just started reading the passages in your book about knights competing for noble heiresses. Assuming that football games and other sports are the evolution of those tournaments, for at least a portion of the population, these contests select for the physically fit. Outside of these, are there any other traits that humans are selecting for? I was just thinking that wealthier couples seem to have fewer children (may be a myth, but a quick search seems to bear this out). Add modern medicine and other factors (cancer shows up relatively late in life, birth rates seem tied more to socio-economic and location factors), and it seems that there's no real selection pressure on humans. Have we stopped (or greatly slowed) our evolution? How will humans in 50,000 years look? (By odd coincidence, I just read about the "ghost worms" -- annelid worms that are relatively in millions of years.) Will humans follow a similar path -- changing our environment rather than ourselves -- and be mostly the same in a far future age? Thanks so much for the opportunity to ask these..
Kwan Lowe
2020-01-08 18:45:40 +0000 UTCI live in Florida and we are being overrun by non-native species. When new species are introduced into an environment and dominates because of lack of other predators or competitors, how soon (if ever) do the native species react to balance things out? How worthwhile are eradication or control efforts?
Kwan Lowe
2020-01-08 13:59:34 +0000 UTCWhat are some of the least known animal weapons that you find interesting. For your book how did you define "weapon".
Primarch359
2020-01-08 03:59:32 +0000 UTCI'm curious about how sexual selection for traits that appear to have no survival advantage can take a foothold in a species. When the driving pressure is to develop better weaponry, longer legs etc, why doesn't the preference for, say, blue faces or orange tail feathers simply dissipate due to those more vital selection criteria?
Sonja van den Ende
2020-01-07 20:11:33 +0000 UTCWhat do you think about the red queen hypothesis?
Floris Fokkinga
2020-01-07 19:32:40 +0000 UTCWhat are the currently most accepted mechanisms of evolution at the species level? E.g. punctuated equilibrium
Raffaele Negrin
2020-01-07 18:39:24 +0000 UTCHow do species like blister beetles and bombardier beetles avoid harming themselves when they use their chemical defenses?
cacodaemonia
2020-01-07 18:38:05 +0000 UTC
