The Tangled Bank: Evolution and Species Interactions

Send a textToday on the BioAudio podcast, it's all about dating! (no not that kind). Have you ever wondered how we figure out when things happened way in the past? When a scientist says "it's 100 million years old..." just how did they figure it out?Today I'm talking to Dr. Matthew Jones. He's a paleontologist at Arizona State University and his specialty is fossil mammals (though he admits he was a dinosaur kid). It's often his job to figure out just how old is this rock and he's going to tell us about the science of dating ancient things. Stratigraphy, radioactive clocks, iridium rain and a commit that slammed into the earth. Who knew dating was so risky. 

Send a textIn this episode I"m joined by Bahar Roohshad, an undergraduate student from one of my classes to talk about phylogenetics. What are they? what are they for and how might we use on? 

Send a textWe keep hearing that biodiversity is in decline. But what does this mean? How is biodiversity distributed and what does "decline" look like? In this episode PhD student Hadil Elsayed talks to us about her experience tracking insects in some of the most protected habitats in Canada. 

Send a textToday on the BioAudio podcast Prof Alex Mills returns to talk about how we recognize and describe an "ecological community" and the unique roll of keystone species, ecosystem engineers and apex predators. We will also talk about three famous trophic cascades, where the removal or introduction of a species has consequences that rebound across the entire system. 

Send a textThis week on the BioAudio podcast we are talking about disease ecology with Prof Dan Becker. It's a field that combines mathematical modeling, ecology, evolution, medicine, veterinary science... and he actually got into this as a cultural anthropologist interested in social justice. How do you get from social justice to the fate of vampire bats in a fragmented ecosystem? tune in to find out in this episode of the BioAudio podcast where we explore community disease ecology in wild populations. 

Send a textIn this episode of the BioAudio podcast we revisit Natural Selection and Sexual Selection. I am joined by Professor Alex Mills and we are going to compare and contrast these two ideas. We talk about what kept Darwin up at night and how he solved the problem of the peacock's tail. 

Send a textIn this episode Prof. Gordon Fitch explains the ways that individuals from two different species can interact in the wild, and the evolutionary consequences of this for species evolution and the stability of ecosystems. We cover competition, predation, mutualism, commensalism and the co-evolution of species... we even manage to work in Darwin and Taylor Swift! This is what Darwin referred to as the "tangled bank", complicated to unravel and critical to survival. 

Send a textIn this episode Prof. Erin Fraser joins me for part two of our introduction to primary scientific literature. This time... did you know most of us don't read these "papers" from start to finish? in this episode we try to demystify the process and we admit... we have to look up words just like everyone else! 

Send a textToday in the BioAudio podcast part one of a two part session on scientific literature. Today Prof. Erin Fraser joins me to talk about what we mean by "primary scientific literature". We will go through the basic structure of a scientific "paper" and what each section is for. We are out to demystify the world of scientific writing on the BioAudio podcast. 

Send a textIn this episode of the BioAudio podcast I'm joined by Christian Nakla, a former student in my senior evolution class, someone who always had a good question for me. Now i'm flipping our roll and he's going to help explain how barriers to reproduction can lead to speciation. It's all about isolating barriers today on the BioAudio podcast.