Next week we will be discussing macro consequences of phenotypic plasticity. Hope to see you there!
West-Eberhard M.J. 1989. Phenotypic plasticity and the origins of diversity. Ann. Rev. Ecol. Syst. 20: 249-278.
Rajakumar R., San Mauro D., Dijkstra M.B., Huang M.H., Wheeler D.E., Hiou-Tim F., Khila A., Cournoyea M. & Abouheif E. 2012. Ancestral Developmental Potential Facilitates Parallel Evolution in Ants. Science 335: 79-82.
Rd of 64:
Jess and The Travelers are tied for first with 25 points. Ke, Cindy, Wyatt Earp, and Sina are right behind with 24. Amazingly, three people anticipated Harvard’s win (Sina, Ke, and Shamis) and Shakespeare called Florida Gulf Coast’s win over GTown. For the full breakdown visit the Google Doc above.
Remember, this is a marathon! There’s plenty of time for your prescience to get you ahead. I’ll update this post tomorrow night to reflect scores after the next round.
This week we will be reading two papers by faculty candidate David Platchetzki. His research focuses on Cnidarian sensory evolution.
The evolution of phototransduction from an ancestral cyclic nucleotide gated pathway. Proc. R. Soc. B 2010
Cnidocyte discharge is regulated by light and opsin-mediated phototransduction. BMC Biology 2012
Next week we will be reading a couple of foundational papers and two empirical papers about reinforcement.
Brown, W. L., and E. O. Wilson. 1956. Character Displacement. Systematic Zoology 5:49–64.
Dobzhansky, T. 1940. Speciation as a stage in evolutionary divergence. American Naturalist 74:312–321.
Noor, M. A. 1995. Speciation driven by natural selection in Drosophila. Nature 375:674–675.
Rundle, H., and D. Schluter. 1998. Reinforcement of stickleback mate preferences: Sympatry breeds contempt. Evolution 52:200–208.
We will be reading Repression of competition favours cooperation: experimental evidence from bacteria by Kummerli et al. for Journal Club on Tuesday A paper by Travisano and Velicer will provide background on how microbes may prevent cheating.
There has been some madness.
No one has emerged as a frontrunner. Cindy is ahead with 46/64 points, D’s Mike and Sluggo are next with 45, and Daven and Darlene are right behind with 44. Cindy looked especially prescient, calling the Norfolk upset over Missouri. Duke and Missouri definitely busted most, if not all, brackets. Dave Wheeler is showing his keen basketball chops, getting 34/64 points. Most people are clustered around 40.
Elite Eight Update: Cindy continues to lead with 70/96 points. Sluggo is next with 69, then Patrick and Dan McNabney with 67, followed by D’s Mike with 65. We’re starting to see some bracket stratification! 5ish people are in the low 60’s and could be poised to make a jump with some good Final Four predictions.
Final Four Update: Wow. There have been some great games. Dan McNabney got 3/4 of his Final Four and thus made a jump to 91/128 pts to take the lead. Next is Cindy with 86, then Patrick with 83, then D’s Mike with 81, followed by Daven and Cindy(again!) with 80 pts. I’ll update again on Saturday night.
I switched to updating the emails rather than the blog, so sorry for the delay here! The winners for the drawings are Kristin, Festus, and Dufus, receiving 38,19, and 7 dollars, respectively. For the brackets, Dan McNabney won 87 dollars, Cindy won 43, and Zhonghe won 15. I will be double checking these points(Patrick was only one point behind Zhonghe) and then I will be distributing the winnings. Thanks for your participation!
We will be reading ‘Ancestral capture of syncytin-Car1, a fusogenic endogenous retroviral envelope gene involved in placentation and conserved in Carnivora’ at the next Journal Club. Everyone is welcome to come at 12:30 on Tuesday!