If you want to know if a parthenogenetic pea aphid is all done reproducing, look at her abdomen. If there are eyespots, she still has embr...

For as long as I've been a scientist, and longer, there has been extensive discussion on the many ways that peer review is broken. Peer...

The world is full of science that only half exists: Experiments done but not written up, manuscripts waiting for revis...

The feeling of a soft little one gradually melting into my arms is lovely, and I wouldn't soon give up rocking my baby to sleep. That sa...

We've intentionally left some dead wood and tangled sticks in the cedars at the back of our yard. This morning during breakfas...

I frequently come across statements implying that a particular trait evolved because it increases the fitness of the species or that a behav...

In some weird way things have settled down enough that I can consider blogging (briefly) again. I do miss it. So much to say, so little time...

It has been a long time. Here, to get things rolling again, is an awesome little video (with English subtitles) that SDU made about the di...

You are a post-reproductive pea aphid. You have spent a long and happy life sucking the juices out of a pea plant. As ...

To establish a case for an adaptive post-reproductive life-stage, one needs to show (at least) the following things: ...

For years, I've been worrying about about my chronic backlog of papers I should have written a long time ago and just haven't had t...

Before writing a paper I make lots of figures. Some will be improved upon and included in the paper. Others just help me understand what the...

Several years back, I was unbearably excited to be, for the first time, submitting my own manuscript to a real scientific journal. I'd s...

There is something peculiarly satisfying about publishing an experiment which has, for its central instrumentation, a small magnet suspended...

Always order paper reprints for your undergraduate coauthors to give to their parents.

The key step in the planning of any good field course is to spend some time at the field site observing and asking questions. What is the ha...

Last week was the second annual meeting of the Evolutionary Demography Society . It was fabulous. Close to 100 people, over three days, at S...

Isaac Asimov's essays have been favorites of mine since I was a teenager, and while I can't claim to have read them all (he was the ...

Yesterday, two students came to my office. They asked me to help them organize a BioBlitz , a rapid assessment of what species are present, ...

My three year old has already learned that she can insult us in Danish with relative impunity.   Recently, when angry, she shouts "J...