We often associate success with winning, but more fundamentally success is persisting . We see success in seemingly endless physical and...

“Complexity in the Evolution of Cooperation.” In Foundational Papers in Complexity Science. Edited by David C. Krakauer. Volume 3. Santa Fe.

This came out of left field It’s weird Embarrassing Frankly unbelievable Possible? Yes! I like old people! Well, some old people. This...

Each year the second floor of the Institute for Evolutionary Sciences at the University of Montpellier (ISEM) organizes a Christmas...

I didn’t expect to reflect on hair-cutting experiences until seeing the Colloquium by Barbara Thériault at the Wissenshaftskolleg zu...

The card led to cobbles but the lead, the road was too, far, too off in the distance to start again, to mend, to the end. Yet he lay...

It’s 25 years this month since the publication of the first issue of Ecology Letters. I remember this as the culmination of more than a...

Life's trajectories are unpredictable. Sure, statistics can be used to predict life events, such as I am extremely likely to still live...

Life’s paths change from time to time. Some unexpected, apparently harmless forks turn out to have major ramifications. The prime...

The main objectives of peer review are to improve manuscript quality and advise the editor regarding acceptance. But peer review’s two...

All of our lives have bifurcation points. Many of them. Choices in education. Choices in jobs. Choices in friends. We carefully navigate...

I go along with the flow. I trust people, especially those (seemingly) with expertise. When I prepare for what’s to come, I know which...

In recently scanning Tweets, my eyes halted for a second on a closeup of someone smiling. He didn’t particularly stand out from what I...

Email, blogs, interviews, podcasts, Facebook, Twitter and conferences are only a few of the many ways scientists communicate with each...

I received my Bachelor’s in Bioresource Sciences in June 1982. It took the usual 4 years to complete, split between two universities....

I grew up in the San Fernando Valley in the 60s and 70s. Life seemed to follow a straight path. From the youngest age I wanted to be an...

You will not be surprised to learn that the number of journal articles published yearly is growing. What you probably don’t know is that...

We all know how annoying it can be not to receive a reply to a well-intentioned email. The default is the person is probably 'busy'. Busy...

Your working environment influences both motivation and writing quality. In this first of a series of Blog posts about writing scientific...

“. . . In that Empire, the Art of Cartography attained such Perfection that the map of a single Province occupied the entirety of a City,...

When COVID-19 emerged in early 2020, scientists, particularly those with some background in virology and epidemiology, began applying...

This brief essay from December 2015 [1] presents the hypothesis that social environments and psychological distributions lay behind the...

Ask a scientist—particularly at the start of their career—how journals work and you will either get a blank stare or a logical but...

We sometimes underappreciate the extent to which science is a community endeavor. Yes, science is done by individuals, laboratories, and...

One of the great challenges to science is the ever-increasing number of publications. More items mean greater difficulty keeping up with...

Imagine going to a major conference and only 100 people show up. All the name badges fit on a table. No locals to greet you with a...

Science exists if published. Achieving a publication in an accredited journal is the culmination of hundreds if not thousands of...