Battle of the sexes – Niche contraction in females but not males in high density island populations
Darren O’Connell on his recent paper showing competition between males and females of the Olive-backed Sunbird in Sulawesi, Indonesia
Outfoxing the fox: an urban/wild conflict
Featured post by Adam Fowler, Connected Nature Intern at Trinity College Dublin. An outlaw, a scoundrel, a trickster… the cunning fox. From Roald Dahl’s depiction of Mr. Fox, the tricky, shrewd thief in Fantastic Mr. Fox, to Jason Bateman’s voicing of the ‘shifty and untrustworthy’ Nick Wilde in the 2016 movie Zootopia, foxes are often …
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Everything’s Better Down Where It’s Wetter: Benthic Ecology Meeting 2015
Conference attendance can really impact your development as a Ph.D. student and give you great ideas for future collaboration and research. In March, I was lucky enough to attend the 2015 Benthic Ecology Meeting (or Benthics) in Quebec City, Canada. The Benthics meeting focuses on the ecology of the bottom layer of water systems, and …
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Ecology of religious beliefs
It is well known that your country of birth has a big influence on your religious outlook. That’s why Ireland is dominated by Christians whereas Iran has a mostly Muslim population. Your scientific outlook doesn’t escape from this either. For instance, it’s arguable that the idea of group selection is viewed much more favourably in …
Seminar series highlights: Phil Stevenson
As mentioned previously on the blog, Andrew Jackson and I started a new module this year called “Research Comprehension”. The module revolves around our Evolutionary Biology and Ecology seminar series and the continuous assessment for the module is in the form of blog posts discussing these seminars. We posted a selection of these earlier in the …
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Seminar series highlights: Amy Pederson and Christine Maggs
As mentioned previously on the blog, Andrew Jackson and I started a new module this year called “Research Comprehension”. The module revolves around our Evolutionary Biology and Ecology seminar series and the continuous assessment for the module is in the form of blog posts discussing these seminars. We posted a selection of these earlier in the …
Continue reading “Seminar series highlights: Amy Pederson and Christine Maggs”
Seminar series highlights: John Hutchinson
As mentioned previously on the blog, Andrew Jackson and I started a new module this year called “Research Comprehension”. The module revolves around our Evolutionary Biology and Ecology seminar series and the continuous assessment for the module is in the form of blog posts discussing these seminars. We posted a selection of these earlier in the …
Continue reading “Seminar series highlights: John Hutchinson”
Bumblebees are not deterred by ecologically relevant concentrations of nectar toxins
In a previous blog post I wrote about my work on “toxic nectar.” This paradoxical phenomenon occurs when potentially deterrent or toxic plant secondary compounds, usually associated with defense against herbivores, are found in floral nectar rewards. Throughout my PhD I’ve spent countless hours in the lab performing experiments on toxic nectar, discussed this work at …
Dying without wings* Part I
Last week our newest EcoEvo@TCD paper came out in PRSB (it will be Open Access soon but currently it’s behind a pay wall – feel free to email me for a copy in the meantime. Also code to fit multiple PGLS models can be found here). This paper is exciting for me for two reasons – …
A Rose by Any Other Name
Carl Linnaeus has a lot to answer for. As a young medical student he became obsessed with botany, then a necessity as most medicines were derived from plants. At the time the naming of plants was a rather haphazard affair, some names were given to multiple plants, others could be many words long. It all …