Current Topics in Behavior, Ecology, Morphology and Evolutionary Biology (BEMEB)
Each presenter should choose one (short) review article and one primary data paper from
the literature that complements the review article.
1) Suggested Journals: Science, Nature, PNAS, Proceeding Royal Society B,
American Naturalist, Evolution, Current Biology, Trends in Ecology and
Evolution, Functional Ecology, others??
2) Reviews must be of broad interest and significance in the fields of Evolution,
Ecology, Morphology, Behavior or Comparative Biology.
3) The best articles are those that integrate many areas of biology (genetics,
morphology, behavior, systematics, functional morphology, development, etc) to
paint a synthetic story or test major hypotheses laid forth in the review.
4) Please: do not select articles that focus ONLY on genetics, molecular biology,
miniscule aspects of morphology, phylogeny/systematics, ecological modeling, or
articles steeped in mathematics or equations. Again think broadly and stick
with what will interest a diverse group of EEBers and stimulate discussion.
5) Each week an assigned person will choose one review and one topical article and
will email the PDFs to other participants (at least 4-5 days before the class).
a. The presenter will briefly recap the review and there will be a general
discussion of issues or misunderstandings from the review
b. The presenter will then lead a discussion of the article in light of the
review. The presenter should be prepared with three or four discussion
topics that relate directly to the article….hopefully at least one will
stimulate a lengthy debate/discussion.