Over the past decade as a grad student and postdoc I've spent a fair chunk of time thinking about how to do science outreach. By "science outreach" all I mean is efforts by academic parties (institutions or people) to communicate about science outside of academia. This could be events like a "Reptiles Day" at the … Continue reading The why and how of science outreach (part I)
I'm a few months late to posting this, but in December I got some exciting news -- my first full NSF grant was awarded! Topher Weiss-Lehman (PI) and I are combining experiments, genomics, and theory to investigate how interactions between important ecological (e.g., environmental gradients, competition) and evolutionary (e.g., gene flow, dispersal evolution) processes shape … Continue reading New NSF award!
Four years ago (2019) we started to "re-wild" our South Minneapolis lawn. The basic goal is to restore the yard to ecologically functional habitat. Even on our tiny, 1/10th acre lot, it's incredible to see how quickly you can attract native fauna (mostly insects, but birds too!) if you provide resources for them. And it's … Continue reading The TinyHaus Prairie
Below are the songs I got most excited about in 2020. Between the pandemic and having our first kid...I didn't get much music discovery in! As per usual, most of these were not released in 2020 -- I just found 'em then. You can listen to them all via a YouTube Music playlist here.2019 post … Continue reading Music I listened to in 2020
There are people very dear to me that voted for Trump in 2016. Below are some of my arguments against a Trump vote in 2020, which I wrote down in hopes of persuading them, and perhaps others, to vote Biden/Harris. I will be the first to admit I am no policy wonk, and there are … Continue reading Arguments against a Trump vote
Below are the songs I got most excited about in 2019. The majority of these were NOT released in 2019 (some are quite old) -- they just occupied a significant portion of my listening time during the year. I've tried to keep the list concise. You can listen to them all via a YouTube Music … Continue reading Music I listened to in 2019
I defended my PhD! In case anyone wants to see my seminar, I've linked to it here. If you're pressed for time, the wordcloud below sums it up quite well.
Microbes, lagomorphs, and the geographic range limit of a California endemic wildflower
A while ago I had some climate data that I needed to play with, but they were in a "wide" format that made analysis in R difficult. These data were obtained from weather stations across the range of C. xantiana, and their format may make sense to us humans, but for data wrangling / analysis, … Continue reading Using tidyr to clean messy, wide data
This always happens -- I have grand plans to post while in the field, then things get too crazy and I don't end up writing anything til I'm back home. But better late than never, I suppose. Summer 2015 field season was hot, dry, and productive -- kinda like the Central Valley! As we all know, … Continue reading Summer Field Season 2015
John Benning 