biology

#828 Greger Larson: Animal Domestication and Human Evolution

Aug 31, 2023

Dr. Greger Larson is a Professor in the School of Archaeology at the University of Oxford and Director of the Wellcome Trust Palaeogenomics and Bio-Archaeology Research Network (PaleoBARN). His research interests include evolutionary genomics, ancient DNA, domestication, human and animal dispersal, and phylogenetics. His work on the domestication of canines and the origin of the domestic dog has provided insights into the prehistoric bond between humans and early dogs. More»
#805 Lisa Yon: Elephant Welfare, Environmental Pollutants, and Zoonotic Pathogens

Jul 7, 2023

Dr. Lisa Yon is an Associate Professor in Zoo and Wildlife Medicine at the School of Veterinary Medicine and Science at the University of Nottingham. She is Head of the Behaviour Subgroup, and Vice Chair, of BIAZA's Elephant Welfare Group. She is a member of the Health and Welfare Committee at Twycross Zoo, and served for 8 years as a member of the Ethics Committee for the Zoological Society of London and. She is a member of the IUCN Wildlife Health Specialist Group. She is a member of the Board of Trustees of the Frozen Ark Project. She is a Member of the Royal College of Veterinary Surgeons. She is interested in the health, welfare and conservation of captive and free-living wildlife (with a particular focus on elephants), which includes a One Health approach looking at the interface between humans/domestic animals/wildlife and their environment. More»
#804 Deborah Gordon: Ant Colonies, Distributed Intelligence, and Systems Without Central Control

Jul 6, 2023

Dr. Deborah Gordon is a Professor in the Department of Biology at Stanford University. She studies how ant colonies work without central control using networks of simple interactions, and how these networks evolve in relation to changing environments. Her projects include a long-term study of a population of harvester ant colonies in Arizona, studies of the invasive Argentine ant in northern California, arboreal ant trail networks and ant-plant mutualisms in Central America. More»
#803 Lee Dugatkin - Power in the Wild, The Ways Animals Strive for Control over Others

Jul 3, 2023

Dr. Lee Dugatkin is a Professor of Biology and Distinguished Arts and Sciences Scholar in the Department of Biology at the University of Louisville. He is a behavioral ecologist and historian of science and his main area of research interest is the evolution of social behavior. He is the author of numerous books, including, Behind the Crimson Curtain: The Rise and Fall of Peale’s Museum, How to Tame a Fox and Build a Dog, and textbooks like Principles of Animal Behavior, and Evolution. His latest book is Power in the Wild: The Subtle and Not-So-Subtle Ways Animals Strive for Control over Others. More»
#799 Pasquale Raia: The Impact of Climate Change on Evolution, and the Extinction of Species

Jun 23, 2023

Dr. Pasquale Raia is Professor of Paleontology and Paleoecology at the University of Naples Federico II. His scientific interests concern the evolution and the dynamics of extinction of animal species, and in particular the fossils of hominid species. His most notable scientific contributions regard evolutionary theories about the evolution of insular species, the complexity of organisms, and the dynamics of extinction of hominids. More»
#782 Gillian Forrester: The Evolution of Handedness, Cerebral Lateralization, and Language

May 15, 2023

Dr. Gillian Forrester is a Professor of Comparative Cognition in the School of Psychology at the University of Sussex. She is the director of the Comparative Cognition Group investigating the behaviors and brain organization of children, gorillas and chimpanzees focusing on how cognitive abilities evolve and develop over time and across species. More»
#778 Carles Lalueza-Fox - Inequality: A Genetic History

May 5, 2023

Dr. Carles Lalueza-Fox is Director of the Natural Science Museum in Barcelona. He participated in the Neanderthal Genome Project and led the first retrieval of the genome of an 8,000-year-old European hunter-gatherer. He is the author of Inequality: A Genetic History. More»
#756 Donald Hoffman: The Case Against Reality, and the Interface Theory of Perception

Mar 16, 2023

Dr. Donald Hoffman is a Professor Emeritus in the Department of Cognitive Sciences at the University of California, Irvine. Dr. Hoffman studies consciousness, visual perception and evolutionary psychology using mathematical models and psychophysical experiments. He is the author of The Case Against Reality: Why Evolution Hid the Truth from Our Eyes. More»
#753 R. Paul Thompson: Evolution, Morality and the Fabric of Society

Mar 9, 2023

Dr. R. Paul Thompson holds appointments as Professor in the Institute for the History and Philosophy of Science and Technology and the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at the University of Toronto. He has published extensively on evolutionary theory, population genetics, mathematical modelling in biology, theory structure in biology, philosophy of medicine, and ethics. He is the author of Evolution, Morality and the Fabric of Society. More»
#750 Adam Rutherford - Control: The Dark History and Troubling Present of Eugenics

Mar 2, 2023

Dr. Adam Rutherford is Lecturer in Biology and Society at University College London’s Department of Genes, Evolution, and Environment, and President of Humanists UK. His interests are in evolution, genetics and developmental biology, and the history of biology. He has written extensively on Darwin, the development of evolutionary theory, the Modern Synthesis, early microscopy, synthetic biology and genetic engineering, behavioral ecology, gene-culture co-evolution, human evolution, and ancient DNA. He is the author of several books, including Control: The Dark History and Troubling Present of Eugenics. More»