After reading Stuart Pimm’s book review in Biological Conservation, in which he compared a fellow scientist to a whoring prostitute, which is a very gender-specific and woman-degrading metaphor, I wrote a letter (BiolCons 2014) to Book Review Editor Phil Cafaro, … Continue reading
We’re working on the website!
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We’re meeting tonight to update the website!
Excellent article about how to make effective figures
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This is a really nice article with examples of 10 basic rules for effective figures.
Back to teaching! And, getting some writing done at the same time!
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Back from sabbatical and back into teaching. This year, I’m incorporating a lot of learning activities into the lecture section of my upper division course in ecological genetics. Some of this is motivated by my reading of Magdalene Lampert’s Teaching … Continue reading
Selection for cheating in rhizobia
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Check out our new paper: Porter_Simms_2014_EcologyLetters, which reports that natural selection favors cheating in rhizobia but not host legumes.
New paper on specialization trade-off among mutualists
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Specialization-Generalization Trade-off in a Bradyrhizobium Symbiosis with Wild Legume Hosts Abstract Specialized interactions help structure communities, but generalist can occupy more environments and partake in more beneficial interactions. So, why do specialists persist? The “Jack-of-all-trades is a master of none” … Continue reading
Congratulations to Helen Kurkjian, who advanced to Ph. D. candidacy this month!
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Helen passed her quals and is ready to embark on her research using bacterial microcosms to explore how the spatial arrangement of subpopulations affects the resilience of metapopulations to disturbance.
Undergraduate honors theses
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Undergraduates pursuing honors sometimes feel adrift and overwhelmed at the prospect of writing their thesis. The following links provide helpful information: UNC-Chapel Hill UC Berkeley MCB Department UC Berkeley IB Department (pdf)
Kimbery La Pierre joins lab!
Kimberly La Pierre has joined our lab as a postdoc. Kim arrives here from the Smith lab at Yale U. She will study how different methods of managing and eradicating invasive legumes affect soil populations of rhizobia. She is particularly interested in how plant-soil feedbacks influence the durability and economic feasibility of various management methods. Her work is funded through the BiGCB with a grant from the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation.
Outdoor group meeting
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Today we enjoyed the summery weather by holding our group meeting in the VLSB courtyard. The venue, complete with chalkboard, helped us work our way through the second chapter of Samir Okasha’s Evolution and the Levels of Selection. We’re finding … Continue reading