State of the Planet

News from the Columbia Climate School

evolution4

  • Evolutionary Psychology of Climate Change

    Evolutionary Psychology of Climate Change

    Why haven’t we rallied our collective power to mitigate climate change? Daniel Gilbert, a professor of psychology at Harvard University, argues that human brains evolved to respond to threats that have four features, ones that global warming lack.

  • The Male Seahorse – Supermom?

    The Male Seahorse – Supermom?

    The term, male-pregnancy, may seem to border on oxymoronic, but seahorses will prove to you otherwise.

  • Critter Corner: News Roundup on Biodiversity – Week of 9/12

    Critter Corner: News Roundup on Biodiversity – Week of 9/12

    Read more about the Iconic Nile Crocodile, Honeyguide Brood Parasitism, Vibrations of a Hummingbird, and Flying Snails in this week’s edition of The Critter Corner.

  • Critter Corner: News Roundup on Biodiversity – Week of 9/5

    Critter Corner: News Roundup on Biodiversity – Week of 9/5

    Read more about White Nose Syndrome Bats, Hen Sex Strategy, Circadian Clocks in Blind Fish, The Discovery of an Ancient Woolly Rhino, a New Shark Species in this week’s edition of The Critter Corner.

  • Biomimicry: Learning From Nature’s Genius

    Biomimicry: Learning From Nature’s Genius

    Biomimicry is the science of studying and emulating nature’s solutions to the problems that human beings are trying to solve. Over the 3.8 billion years that life has existed on Earth, nature, through evolution, has come up with sustainable and robust solutions that work and that endure.

  • Penguin With a Pocket Square of Blue

    Penguin With a Pocket Square of Blue

    Whether waddling amongst its young in snowy Antarctica or swimming in the northern shores of the Galápagos Islands, the familiar image of the penguin, with its black and white tuxedo is truly iconic. The Little Blue Penguin, however, reminds evolutionary biologists and wildlife enthusiasts that the world is rarely black and white.

  • The Red Queen and The Evolution of Sex

    The Red Queen and The Evolution of Sex

    In the biological world, both within and between species, adaptive progress and success are relative. This notion of evolutionary relativism is known as the Red Queen Effect, a term derived from the Red Queen’s race in Through the Looking-Glass by Lewis Caroll.

  • Katherine Pollard: What Makes Us Human?

    Katherine Pollard: What Makes Us Human?

    For the past six years Katherine Pollard has been working with the Chimpanzee Sequencing and Analysis Consortium comparing the genes of chimps and humans in order to more fully understand how the human genome has evolved. Using the software she created to study genomic data, Pollard was able to identify the areas of the human…

  • Ruth DeFries – Denning Professor of Sustainable Development; Professor of Ecology, Evolution, and Environmental Biology

    What can satellite imagery tell us about the impact of humanity’s transformation of the landscape on climate and ecosystems? A lot, according to Ruth DeFries, ecosystems expert, Denning Professor of Sustainable Development, and professor of ecology, evolution, and environmental biology at Columbia University and the Earth Institute’s Center for Environmental Research and Conservation (CERC). DeFries…

  • Evolutionary Psychology of Climate Change

    Evolutionary Psychology of Climate Change

    Why haven’t we rallied our collective power to mitigate climate change? Daniel Gilbert, a professor of psychology at Harvard University, argues that human brains evolved to respond to threats that have four features, ones that global warming lack.

  • The Male Seahorse – Supermom?

    The Male Seahorse – Supermom?

    The term, male-pregnancy, may seem to border on oxymoronic, but seahorses will prove to you otherwise.

  • Critter Corner: News Roundup on Biodiversity – Week of 9/12

    Critter Corner: News Roundup on Biodiversity – Week of 9/12

    Read more about the Iconic Nile Crocodile, Honeyguide Brood Parasitism, Vibrations of a Hummingbird, and Flying Snails in this week’s edition of The Critter Corner.

  • Critter Corner: News Roundup on Biodiversity – Week of 9/5

    Critter Corner: News Roundup on Biodiversity – Week of 9/5

    Read more about White Nose Syndrome Bats, Hen Sex Strategy, Circadian Clocks in Blind Fish, The Discovery of an Ancient Woolly Rhino, a New Shark Species in this week’s edition of The Critter Corner.

  • Biomimicry: Learning From Nature’s Genius

    Biomimicry: Learning From Nature’s Genius

    Biomimicry is the science of studying and emulating nature’s solutions to the problems that human beings are trying to solve. Over the 3.8 billion years that life has existed on Earth, nature, through evolution, has come up with sustainable and robust solutions that work and that endure.

  • Penguin With a Pocket Square of Blue

    Penguin With a Pocket Square of Blue

    Whether waddling amongst its young in snowy Antarctica or swimming in the northern shores of the Galápagos Islands, the familiar image of the penguin, with its black and white tuxedo is truly iconic. The Little Blue Penguin, however, reminds evolutionary biologists and wildlife enthusiasts that the world is rarely black and white.

  • The Red Queen and The Evolution of Sex

    The Red Queen and The Evolution of Sex

    In the biological world, both within and between species, adaptive progress and success are relative. This notion of evolutionary relativism is known as the Red Queen Effect, a term derived from the Red Queen’s race in Through the Looking-Glass by Lewis Caroll.

  • Katherine Pollard: What Makes Us Human?

    Katherine Pollard: What Makes Us Human?

    For the past six years Katherine Pollard has been working with the Chimpanzee Sequencing and Analysis Consortium comparing the genes of chimps and humans in order to more fully understand how the human genome has evolved. Using the software she created to study genomic data, Pollard was able to identify the areas of the human…

  • Ruth DeFries – Denning Professor of Sustainable Development; Professor of Ecology, Evolution, and Environmental Biology

    What can satellite imagery tell us about the impact of humanity’s transformation of the landscape on climate and ecosystems? A lot, according to Ruth DeFries, ecosystems expert, Denning Professor of Sustainable Development, and professor of ecology, evolution, and environmental biology at Columbia University and the Earth Institute’s Center for Environmental Research and Conservation (CERC). DeFries…