How have organisms changed the Earth and what can humans learn from its deep past?

On this episode, we talk with Stephen Porder, a Professor of Ecology, Evolution, and Organismal Biology and the Associate Provost for Sustainability at Brown University. Stephen is also the author of Elemental: How Five Elements Changed Earth’s Past and Will Shape Our Futu…

How do natural selection and sexual selection interact? What can observing adaptive radiation in the wild teach us about evolution?

On this episode, we talk with Dale Broder, an Assistant Professor at American University, and Robin Tinghitella, an Associate Professor at the University of Denver. They study the Pacific field cricket, a fascinating organism that exemplifies both adaptive radiation and the interaction of natural selection and sexual selection. This species uses song for mate attraction, but the song also attracts Ormia ochracea, a fly that parasitizes the cricket. The fly recently invaded areas where the cricket is common and in response, some crickets evolved differentsongs and even silence. We talk with Robin and Dale about how their research team characterizes these cricket songs and the different wing morphologies that produce the songs. We also discuss the role of female preference (or lack thereof) in the evolution of different mating songs and how remarkably rapidly this song evolution occurred.

This episode was supported by a grant to Dale and Robin from the National Science Foundation.

Cover art: Keating Shahmehri.

What are spiny mice and why are they so social? What about their brains makes them gregarious? Might network neuroscience be a useful framework for understanding spiny mice behavior?

On this episode, we talk with Aubrey Kelly, an Assistant Professor in Psychology at Emory University. Aubrey is a behavioral neuroscientist working on many vertebrate species, mostly in regards to their social behaviors. In our conversation with her, we focus on one of her main study species, the spiny mouse. Spiny mice have been found in groups of over sixty in the wild, and individual mice have “best friends,” another mouse they prefer to spend time with. Aubrey talks about the neural and hormonal underpinnings of their social behavior and her growing interests in network neuroscience. This episode was supported by a grant to Aubrey from the National Science Foundation.

Cover art: Keating Shahmehri. Find a transcript of this episode on our website.

What was life like in wartime England for a young female scientist? What about living and doing research for months each year with your daughters and husband on a remote island?

On this episode, we talk with Rosemary Grant, Emeritus Professor of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at Princeton University. Rosemary is best-known for her foundational research on the Darwin’s Finches of the Galapagos Islands, conducted in collaboration with her husband, Peter. Our conversation focuses on Rosemary’s new autobiography “One Step Sideways, Three Steps Forward: One Woman’s Path to Becoming a Biologist.” We first discuss her upbringing in the Lake District during WWII, and how her family and the people she met there, as well as later scientific mentors like Conrad Waddington, shaped her path to science. Then, we talk about her work with Peter on the finches of Daphne Island, discussing their contributions to evolutionary biology. Rosemary also describes the joys of raising her girl in the Galapagos and gives advice to young people thinking about a career in biology.

Art by Keating Shahmehri. Find a transcript of this episode on our website.

How do biologists study the influence of heat on organisms and how can this be applied to the study of climate change? What impacts mountaineer survival at high altitudes?

On this episode of Big Biology, we talk with Professor Emeritus at University of Washington and recently elected member of the National Academy of Sciences, Ray Huey. Ray is well known for his work on the thermal physiology of lizards, but has also worked broadly in physiology, ecology, and evolution. In our conversation with Ray, we first discuss his paper, an “Acynical Guide to Graduate School,” and its ongoing relevance to graduate students. We then talk about his career path into thermal biology, how he became interested in the science of mountaineering, and his philosophy for writing science. 

Art by Keating Shahmehri. Find a transcript of this episode on our website.

Can we predict evolutionary outcomes if we know starting conditions? Do the products of evolution in nature differ from those studied in well-controlled lab experiments?

On this episode, we talk to Katie Peichel, head of the Division of Evolutionary Ecology at the University of Bern, Switzerland, and Andrew Hendry, professor in the Department of Biology at McGill University, Canada. Katie and Andrew are part of a massive research team working on the evolution of threespine sticklebacks as they are reintroduced into lakes in Alaska. Sticklebacks have been a favorite species for evolutionary biologists since almost the origins of modern evolutionary theory. Traits like spine size and lateral plate armor evolve rapidly when populations colonize new habitats, leading populations to barely resemble one another. Unlike traditional evolutionary experiments, which try to infer what occurred in the past, the Alaska  project is tracking in unparalleled detail changes in the phenotypes and genotypes of fish that went into each lake population. 

We talk to Katie and Andrew about the origins of this incredible project, the pros and cons of different approaches to studying evolution, and the need for long-term experimental studies of evolution in the wild. This is the first of a series of episodes we will be doing on the Alaskan research project, so stay tuned!

Cover art: Keating Shahmehri

Can we study evolution in the wild? Are some species “super-evolvers”?

On the episode, we talk with Alison Derry, a professor of biology at the University of Quebec in Montreal, and Andrew Hendry, a professor in the Department of Biology at McGill University, Canada. This episode is the second we’ve done on the team’s work, and Andrew was also a guest on our first episode in the series. This conversation was recorded live in front of an audience at Kenai Peninsula College, in Soldotna, Alaska. 

The college is just a few miles from the lakes where Alison, Andrew, and many of their colleagues and students carry out experiments on threespine sticklebacks. We ask Alison and Andrew about their research on the rapid evolution of these fish, which were recently reintroduced to the lakes, and how the introduction of two distinct stickleback ecotypes are affecting the evolution of zooplankton in the lakes. We also discuss the central position of sticklebacks in the food web and how the sticklebacks are impacting the ecosystems now as well as how they likely impacted the lakes in the evolutionary past. 

Art by Keating Shahmehri. Audio from Hunter Morrison at KDLL. Find a transcript of this episode on our website.

We have finished Season 6 of Big Biology. Learn more about the future of the podcast.

What is mutation bias and how can scientists study it? How does changing a population’s mutation bias influence its evolutionary trajectory?

In this episode, we talk with Deepa Agashe, an Associate Professor at the National Centre for Biological Sciences in Bangalore, India. We first talk with Deepa about mutation bias and how she uses  E. coli to understand it. We then focus on a 2023 PNAS paper about the fitness effects of experimentally changing the mutation bias in E. coli. In this research, Deepa and her team used a strain (MutY) of bacteria containing a mutation that knocks out an important DNA repair enzyme. They then isolated subsequent single mutations produced within both MutY and wildtype lines and studied the fitness effects of those mutations. Surprisingly, more than a third of mutations in the mutant lines were beneficial, and often across several different environments. Zooming out, the big picture is that shifts in mutation bias seem to generate new kinds of mutations that weren’t previously accessible to lineages, and a greater fraction of those may be beneficial in some circumstances.

Art by Keating Shahmehri. Find a transcript of this episode on our website.

This week on Big Biology we're sharing an episode from The Naked Scientists Podcast about how humans lost their tails.

Humans, chimpanzees, gorillas and orangutans do not have tails. It sets us apart from other primates, but suggests that our shared evolutionary ancestors had them. So why did we lose them, and how? Speaking with Chris Smith, from The Naked Scientists Podcast, NYU Grossman School of Medicine's Itai Yanai explains that the way this study began was literally a pain in the "tail" for one of his colleagues...

Credit: The Naked Scientists Podcast