What do we mean by ‘extreme ecological events’? What’s more important to a population, more frequent extremes or changes to average conditions? How should we link the performance of individuals to the success or failure of entire populations?
On this episode, we talk with Mark Denny, Stanford University professor of marine science and former director of the Hopkins Marine Station. In his 2019 paper, “Performance in a variable world,” Mark reviewed how organisms perform in highly variable environments -- a problem that has taken on new urgency as climates change. We also talk about extreme ecological events -- what they are, why they occur, and how they affect organisms. Often, extreme conditions arise from unusual combinations of otherwise normal patterns of variation in multiple underlying factors. Predicting the effects of climate extremes therefore requires holistic approaches to monitoring environments coupled with an integrative understanding of animal physiology and behavior.
This episode of Big Biology is sponsored by the Hopkins Marine Station of Stanford University. Founded in 1892, Hopkins Marine Station is the oldest marine laboratory on America’s west coast conducting research that addresses fundamental questions at every level of marine biology, from genes to ecosystems.
Cover art: Keating Shahmehri
--- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/bigbiology/supportEp 24: Mental Smoke Detectors
Ep 23: Beauty of the Beasts
Season 2 Preview
Ep 22: Whale Aware
Ep 21: Replaying the MP3 of Life
Ep 20: Ask Us Anything
Ep 19: Microbial Garden of Eden
Ep 18: Bug in the system
Ep 17: 1000 ways to make a baby
Ep 16: Rules of Life
Ep 15: Climate change: should they stay or should they go?
Ep 14: Plasticity? Sounds fishy.
Ep 13: Unraveling Genetic Knots
Ep 12: Containing Cancer with Squirrel Ecology
Ep 11: The Vagina Research Institute (Full Conversation)
Ep 11: The Vagina Research Institute
Ep 10: Tangling the Tree of Life
Ep 9: Information, Aliens, and the Origin of Life (Full Conversation)
Ep 9: Information, Aliens, and the Origin of Life
Ep 8: Immune System: Make Love not War (Full Conversation)
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