I blogged some time ago about a Cafe Scientifique talk I gave on the topic of “Avoiding Attack” (broadly mimicry and camouflage in animals). I stole the title of the talk wholesale from the excellent book of the same name written by former colleagues Mike Speed and Tom Sherratt along with Graeme Ruxton). After giving that talk, I was asked to contribute to the Leeds Festival of Science – a great initiative where University of Leeds staff engage local people (particularly schools) with their research through on-campus and external events. As part of that event this year I took part in the “schools roadshow” where researchers go out into schools to teach about their work. I thought I would post the resources that I used here with some notes so that teachers can make use of the materials that I produced. Everything here is released on a Creative Commons license (CC-BY 4.0).
Tag: biology
Is battling biodiversity decline like tackling terrorism?
I attended a talk recently given by Dr Sara Savage from Cambridge University entitled “Bad Religion: when is faith healthy or unhealthy?”. The title was a bit of a misnomer, as there was little discussion of religion per se, but there was a greater deal of fascinating psychological research on the drivers of extremist ideology. Dr Savage outlined the theory of “integrative complexity“, developed by Peter Suedfeld over the past 30 years. Integrative complexity is a method of metacognitive reasoning (i.e. being aware of how and what you are thinking, and why) that incorporates empathic and diverse approaches towards the views of others in an attempt to construct a coherent and objective view of a given situation. The argument has been made that extremist ideologies (whether these are religious, political or social) tend to stem from a narrowing of perspectives (a drop in integrative complexity, or “IC”), and that conflict resolution is best achieved by those who “see complexity”. Indeed, Suedfeld and colleagues have published analyses of IC within the context of the Cuban missile crisis and surprise attacks.Read More »
PhD funding for biological research at the University of Leeds
If you are interested in doing a PhD but are struggling to find funding that fits your project or have been unsuccessful in applications to the funding schemes that are scattered around (e.g. the NERC DTP schemes that are interviewing at the moment) then don’t despair! There are always funny little pots of money that you can apply to. The University of Leeds has three such scholarships available that can be used to fund PhD research in biological sciences (and some other areas). These all close on 1st June but if you are interested in applying please do get in touch with me (or one of my colleagues in the Ecology and Evolution Research Group) to discuss a potential project. The sooner the better!Read More »
Ecology and Evolution PhD Opportunities at the University of Leeds
I’m delighted to announce a suite of additional PhD projects in the School of Biology at the University of Leeds (scheme details are here). These are in addition to the dozen or so competitively-funded projects through our NERC DTP, so please do check there as well if you are interested. Most titles are indicative of the broad research area, but there will usually be a great deal of flexibility in the nature of the project depending on the interests of the student. The deadline for all projects is Thursday 29th January 2015, and applicants will need to have submitted a research degree application form (see our “How to apply” page) and be in receipt of a student ID number prior to application for the scheme. Briefly, the titles are:
- The Evolution of Plant Form
- Marine microbial processes and interactions
- Improving piglet survival and subsequent performance
- Managing soil plant processes to enhance the sustainable intensification of agriculture
- Emerging Infectious Diseases
- Continental trends in, and drivers of, the spread of European aquatic invasive species
- Biomimicry, biophilia, and urban design solutions
- Identifying and investigating factors which improve sow performance in Irish pig herds
See the project summaries below for more details.Read More »
Funding for academic outreach in biology (and other sciences)
I recently heard a keynote talk by Sophie Duncan, the Deputy Director of the National Co-ordinating Centre for Public Engagement, and was really impressed by her enthusiasm for embedding outreach and engagement at every stage of research. Sophie pointed out that there are a number of problems with public engagement as it stands:
- There can be a lack of support and reward for good engagement within departments.
- Outreach tends to be centred on the academic, rather than on the public.
- Groups outside of academia tend not to pro-actively seek academic collaborators.Read More »
“Camouflage on the edge” – a new paper on concealing colouration
In 2012, the US Government cancelled a $5 billion camouflage project under which it had already supplied uniforms to soldiers in Afghanistan. The pattern of camouflage, called the “universal camouflage pattern” (UCP) was supposed to allow soldiers to blend in equally well in forests, deserts, and urban environments but had been deployed but never properly tested to ensure that it provided proper protection. When this testing was finally carried out, it demonstrated that the camouflage performed poorly, and was actually putting soldiers at unnecessary risk. It got so bad that US Army soldiers were trading their uniforms with locals so that they could wear something with appropriate colouration. What this goes to show is how poorly we understand the mechanisms underlying camouflage, even while we spend enormous amounts of money attempting to exploit the phenomenon. A new paper that my colleagues (based at Carleton University) and I published today in the Royal Society journal Biology Letters adds a key piece to the camouflage puzzle by illustrating for the first time the mechanism behind “disruptive colouration“. The paper can be viewed for free at the journal homepage, as can all Biology Letters articles, until 30th November 2013 – go browse, it’s a fascinating journal with short, varied, interesting papers.
My PhD thesis in the ten hundred most used words
Inspired by this xkcd comic, and facilitated by this online tool, people have been summarising all kinds of ideas using the 1,000 most common words. Naturally PhD students have latched onto this as a source of procrastination and, in a show of solidarity, I decided to join them (this was during my lunch break – honest!). Here’s my PhD thesis:
My work looks at how animals change as the world gets warmer. My animal is like a fly but it has four flying bits, eats other animals, and has big eyes. By looking at where people saw these animals in the past, I figured out how the place and time at which they appear changes with how hot it is. I found that they appear earlier when it is hot, which is interesting because these animals spend most of their lives in water. Animals in water had not been shown to change when they appear in this way before. I also looked at the ways in which we look at changes in where animals appear and showed the best way to look at this problem. Last, I looked at how the form of these animals changes as they move when it gets hotter. I found that the animals that had moved a long way had a form that made it easy for them to move (like big flying bits). In short, the changes shown by the animals that I looked at can be used to build a case for a warming world.
Wasp – this one adopted this stranger pose when I dumped him out of the box. I made me think of Rodin’s “Thinker”…
The Flying Spaghetti Monster, in all his noodly majesty… (or maybe an old spider)
Woodlouse
Many moths (as you might expect from a light fitting)
A few beetles
I liked the colours that this fly managed to retain (I have no idea how long any of these have been stuck there!)
I struggled to get high-quality photos without more magnification, so here are some pins :-)
52 Weeks of Photography: Week 3 (Insect Graveyards)
Last week I mentioned being inspired by this fascination post from Dragonfly Woman, who looked at the diversity of insects that had passed-on in various light fittings around her home. I thought I would try the same thing, as it gives an opportunity to get close to the wee beasties without them running away. Here’s the result: […]
Why does breast cancer research receive more research funding than prostate cancer?
“Men’s Rights Activism” (MRA) is a dirty phrase in many circles. The MRA movement is a fairly diverse beast ranging from claims of inequality in child custody cases to accusations of full-blown, societal-scale misandry typified by higher death rates in men and lower levels of social investment. One claim in particular that the MRAs make is that breast cancer (a cancer that predominantly, though not entirely, affects women) receives substantially more money in terms of research funding than prostate cancer, despite similar numbers of people dying from each. First I’ll review some of the specific claims made, I’ll look at the data on funding, then we can delve into a few stats on the impacts of these two cancer types (bear with me!). I’ve also included some more detail on whether younger men are more at risk from prostate cancer as an appendix for those who are interested.Read More »
Do all species age?
“…no life schedule, even under the most benign ecology possible, could escape my spectrum of forces of senescence..in the farthest reaches of almost any bizarre universe.”
– Hamilton (1966)
Katatrepsis 