If you need some background sound while you’re crunching numbers, coding in R, walking back from a field session or just when you’re cooking, podcasts are a great idea. For me the best combine information and entertainment. Podcasts are ideal not only to just fill silence and let you get on with things that are mundane but also for providing random topics of conversation: I have no idea of the number of people I told about the molasses explosion in Boston. They’re a simple way to keen up-to-date with topics you’re interested in but don’t have the time to research or to find out new areas of interest.
 
Below are my top four podcasts and a brief explanation of what they are and why I like them:
 
Radiolab
I was first told about Radiolab by an old work colleague. I first thought that it’d be a typical science podcast that talks about new research etc but it is so much more. There are two main presenters (Jab and Robert) but a plethora of guest presenters and producers make it highly varied. Each episode is typically one or more detailed reports into a huge variety of topics, often taking unexpected looks at things you may think you know a lot about. The podcast isn’t just science, it looks at history and often blurs the lines of traditional divides between the sciences and the arts. Radiolab also has a great acoustic element to it, with lots of really good sound production that brings it to life. It’s awesome!
http://www.radiolab.org/
 
Stuff You Should Know
This is the first of two podcasts that I love from How Stuff Works. The best part about SYSK is that it is presented by Chuck and Josh. Initially it took me a while to warm up to them, as they have an amazing ability to go off on tangents but that is precisely why I think they’re great. Their personalities really bring the subjects they talk about to life. SYSK covers a huge range of subjects from ejector seats to Jack the Ripper. If you want to listen then go to their website rather than itunes, as it has all of their episodes not the last few hundred. I love this podcast but I would take some of what they say with a pinch of salt, having listened to a number of episodes that I am knowledgeable about I found a few holes or misconceptions in what Chuck and Josh said (but don’t let that put you off, it’s awesome).
http://www.stuffyoushouldknow.com/podcasts/
 
Stuff You Missed in History Class
Missed in History is another How Stuff Works podcast but it is so different to SYSK. The current presenters, Holly and Tracey, religiously prepare and research each episode. Where SYSK is a fly by the seat of your pants affair, missed in history is well planned and is a brilliant ride through random bits of history you’ll never have heard of. History is something that I’ve always loved but fell by the academic wayside, so this is a guilty pleasure. The show has a penchant for exhumations, missing ships/people and serial killers/unsolved murders. They have also enlightened me about some amazing women from history like Ada Lovelace and Freya Stark. Binge listen to Missed in History while measuring skulls on the Isle of Rum!
http://www.missedinhistory.com/podcasts/archive/
 
Guardian Science Weekly
This is a fairly straightforward science news podcast. However, the presenters and reporters really bring things alive with their enthusiasm for the job they do. It fun and entertaining while at the same time keeping you up-to-date with the latest innovations in science. Because it’s made by the Guardian it’s of a high standard and you can trust what you hear.
http://www.theguardian.com/science/series/science

​I’ve not done this for a while so I thought I’d collate some recent(ish) papers that I found interesting and thought would be good to share. As my interest in mainly family dynamics there is a strong leaning to this in my selection of papers. Below at the names, abstracts and then links to the papers. I hope you enjoy them!!
 
Pilakouta et al. (2015) State-dependent cooperation in burying beetles: parents adjust their contribution towards care based on both their own and their partner's size. JEB, DOI: 10.1111/jeb.12712
Handicapping experiments on species with biparental care show that a focal parent increases its contribution when its partner is handicapped. Such results are interpreted as evidence for negotiation, whereby each parent adjusts its amount of care to that of its partner. However, it is currently unclear whether the focal parent responds to a change in its handicapped partner's behaviour or state. To address this gap, we conducted an experiment on the burying beetle Nicrophorus vespilloides where we first generated different-sized males and females by varying the duration of larval development. We then used a 2 × 2 factorial design in which a small or large male was paired with a small or large female. Small females provided less direct care (food provisioning and interactions with larvae) than large females, and both males and females provided less direct care when paired with a small partner. Thus, the focal parent adjusted its contribution towards care based on both its own state and that of its partner. There was also evidence for negotiation between the two parents as the focal parent adjusted its contribution based on the amount of care by its partner. However, there was no evidence that negotiation accounted for how the focal parent responded to its partner's size. Our results have important implications for our understanding of biparental cooperation as they show that each parent adjusts its contribution not only based on the amount of care provided by its partner but also based on its own state and its partner's state.
LINK
 
Kilner et al. (2015) Parental effects alter the adaptive value of an adult behavioural trait. eLIFE, DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.7554/eLife.07340
The parents' phenotype, or the environment they create for their young, can have long-lasting effects on their offspring, with profound evolutionary consequences. Yet, virtually no work has considered how such parental effects might change the adaptive value of behavioural traits expressed by offspring upon reaching adulthood. To address this problem, we combined experiments on burying beetles (Nicrophorus vespilloides) with theoretical modelling and focussed on one adult behavioural trait in particular: the supply of parental care. We manipulated the early-life environment and measured the fitness payoffs associated with the supply of parental care when larvae reached maturity. We found that (1) adults that received low levels of care as larvae were less successful at raising larger broods and suffered greater mortality as a result: they were low-quality parents. Furthermore, (2) high-quality males that raised offspring with low-quality females subsequently suffered greater mortality than brothers of equivalent quality, which reared larvae with higher quality females. Our analyses identify three general ways in which parental effects can change the adaptive value of an adult behavioural trait: by influencing the associated fitness benefits and costs; by consequently changing the evolutionary outcome of social interactions; and by modifying the evolutionarily stable expression of behavioural traits that are themselves parental effects.
LINK
 
Gasperin & Kilner (2015) Friend or foe: inter-specific interactions and conflicts of interest within the family. Ecological Entomology, DOI: 10.1111/een.12259
1. Interactions between species can vary from mutually beneficial to evolutionarily neutral to antagonistic, even when the same two species are involved. Similarly, social interactions between members of the same species can lie on a spectrum from conflict to cooperation.
2. The aim of the present study was to investigate whether variation in the two types of social behaviour are interconnected. Is the fitness of the various classes of social partner within species (such as parent and offspring, or male and female) differently affected by interactions with a second species? Moreover, can inter-specific interactions influence the outcome of social interactions within species?
3. The present experiments focus on the interactions between the burying beetle Nicrophorus vespilloides Herbst and the phoretic mitePoecilochirus carabi G. Canestrini & R. Canestrini. The approach was to measure the fitness of burying beetle mothers, fathers, and offspring after reproduction, which took place either in the presence or absence of mites.
4. We found that male, female, and larval burying beetles derive contrasting fitness costs and benefits from their interactions with the mite, despite sharing a common family environment. From the mite's perspective, its relationship with the burying beetle can, therefore, be simultaneously antagonistic, neutral, and possibly even mutualistic, depending on the particular family member involved. We also found that mites can potentially change the outcome of evolutionary conflicts within the family.
5. We conclude that inter-specific interactions can explain some of the variation in social interactions seen within species. It is further suggested that intra-specific interactions might contribute to variation in the outcome of interactions between species.
LINK
 
Kuijper & Johnstone (2015) Parental effects and the evolution of phenotypic memory. JEB, DOI: 10.1111/jeb.12778
Despite growing evidence for nongenetic inheritance, the ecological conditions that favor the evolution of heritable parental or grandparental effects remain poorly understood. Here, we systematically explore the evolution of parental effects in a patch-structured population with locally changing environments. When selection favors the production of a mix of offspring types, this mix differs according to the parental phenotype, implying that parental effects are favored over selection for bet-hedging in which the mixture of offspring phenotypes produced does not depend on the parental phenotype. Positive parental effects (generating a positive correlation between parental and offspring phenotype) are favored in relatively stable habitats and when different types of local environment are roughly equally abundant, and can give rise to long-term parental inheritance of phenotypes. By contrast, unstable habitats can favor negative parental effects (generating a negative correlation between parental and offspring phenotype), and under these circumstances even slight asymmetries in the abundance of local environmental states select for marked asymmetries in transmission fidelity.
LINK
 
Flower et al. (2015) Dual parasitism of Fork-tailed Drongos by African and Jacobin Cuckoos. Ostrich, 86:1-2
Different species of brood parasitic birds, which lay their eggs in the nests of host foster-parents, rarely target the same host species population. We report brood parasitism of Fork-tailed Drongos Dicrurus adsimilis in the southern Kalahari Desert by both African Cuckoo Cuculus gularis and Jacobin Cuckoo Clamator jacobinus serratus. Drongos are the only known host for the African Cuckoo, and were more frequently parasitised by this species (21.8% nests). Nevertheless, parasitism rates suggest that in the Kalahari, drongos are also an important host for Jacobin Cuckoo (4.6% nests). Jacobin Cuckoos likely compete with African Cuckoos for drongo hosts, as exemplified by the occurrence of both African and Jacobin Cuckoo eggs in the same drongo clutch. The drongo's defensive adaptations to parasitism by African Cuckoos, including egg rejection, may also curtail parasitism by Jacobin Cuckoos. The extent of competition between these cuckoo species and whether they possess adaptations to prevent one another's access to drongo hosts remains to be explored.
LINK

Very, very quick blog post. I have just come across a really interesting report by the Parliamentary Office of Science and Technology (POST), that looks into how we unintentionally make decisions that can impact on court hearing. I love stuff about human decision making and the factors that influence it, especially when they are 'subconscious'. Here is a link to the report: LINK

And here is an excerpt from the press release:

• Confirmation bias occurs when people seek, weigh or interpret information in a way that conforms to their pre-existing beliefs or assumptions. For example, mock jurors who endorse statements about the leniency of the justice system tend to favour conviction in a burglary case at a higher rate than those who do not.
• Contextual bias occurs when information about the context of an event, or the way in which some information is presented, influences reasoning but is logically irrelevant to the decision at hand. For example, the presence of routine, day-to-day contextual information (such as whether the suspect has an alibi) can influence the results of forensic fingerprint identification. Read more about this bias in the POSTbrief , Unintentional Bias in Forensic Investigations.
• Unintentional stereotype bias occurs when people associate certain traits with their perception of a person’s social group, such as race, gender or age. These associations can influence decisions and behaviour, even though people are unaware that they harbour them. For instance, in a video-game simulation, US police officers tended to shoot unarmed black suspects at a higher rate than unarmed white suspects, an effect known as ‘weapon bias’.

This blog is a bit of fun, an evolutionary pop-psychology slant on an issue that seems to plague modern Britain. It’s nepotism. The governing class of the UK, and particularly the Tories, come under a huge amount of criticism for promoting their own and for running the country like an ‘old boys club’. Whether or not this is completely true or not isn’t going to be the subject of this blog, but having said that: social mobility in the UK does seem to be stagnant.
 
But when common sense and evidence suggests that low social mobility and income inequality reduce economic growth, why would any government act in a way to promote their own? This assumption is based on the idea that people behave in a way that always maximised the benefits for the whole group. If you look at the way animals behave this is not the case, decisions are typically made to get the best rewards for the individual, sometimes these coincide with behaviours that benefit the group and in these cases cooperation occurs. But taking humans as a good example, Robert Mugabe benefits by using state funds to let his wife go shopping in Europe but the country as a whole suffers.
 
How does this relate to our beloved Tories? (Just remember this is pop-evo-psychology) I place nepotism in our political classes squarely at the feet of mutualism and reciprocal altruism. Both parties are likely to benefit from these interactions, but as Bill Hamilton pointed out: many of these benefits may not be realised until the future. Vampire bats famously give blood meals to individuals who were unsuccessful on their nights foraging, but bats are more likely to share with individuals who have previously given them food. Helping progress the career of someone from a high socioeconomic class may be more likely to result in a benefit to you further down the line, after all they are wealthier. Also knowledge of past interactions helps inform how likely you are to gain future benefits, cheating is rife in animal systems and like vampire bats past interactions may play a role in shaping who we chose to help. If someone has gone to the same school or university as you and moves in the same social circles then it’s easier to gauge these things.  You may also have more accurate information about their actual ability, so you may be more certain of what you are getting compared to an individual from outside of your group.
 
But to keep things honest, and I am not saying nepotism is honest, costs are often used to deter cheating. When the cost of cheating is high then it is less likely to happen. If an individual is in your social circle or friendship group and cheats then the social cost is quite high. Therefore, it may be harder to enforce the reciprocal nature of altruism when helping individuals from outside a known group.
 
Finally, on our tour of why people help each other, is kin selection. The theory here is that you assist those who share more of their genes with you than other individuals, to improve their chances of breeding and increasing those shared genes. How on earth does this relate to politicians? Well it doesn’t relate directly, but kin selection and relatedness is a strong factor in group structure in animals and potentially our ancestors. This is really straying into pop-psychology now, but if these same attitudes have been extended to for example the football teams we support then why not our social classes? In group- out group dynamics, an idea of us and them may be a by-product of kin selection on our ancestors. An idea of we help our own not those other people, may have arisen from this.
 
All of the above don’t take into account the pervading culture of societies, as these will change the costs and benefits of nepotism. For example strict policing, by police not by other individuals as happens in ants and bees, may provide a high cost to nepotistic behaviour. But I hope that I’ve given some insight into why it might be that the ‘old boys club’ might exist, and by understanding why it exists we can seek to change the costs and benefits of this behaviour to stop it from happening and improve social mobility and our economic future.
 
If this rambling post has piqued your interest into why animals and humans cooperate then here are a few interesting papers that deal with altruism and cooperation:
 
Fehr & Fischbacher (2003) Nature, 425:785-791
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v425/n6960/abs/nature02043.html
 
Clutton-Brock (2002) Science, 296:69-72
http://www.sciencemag.org/content/296/5565/69.short