xia@cc.helsinki.fi (10/02/90)
Dear population biologists, This news group has been empty for quite some time. Is this because population biologists unaware of it, or because no one thinks it beneficial to discuss ideas through computers? I hope that someone would suggest some topics for discussion. My own specialty is in behavioural ecology, but I am also interested population dynamics. As far as I know, many people are interested in the following three fields: 1. Life history theory; 2. Metapopulation theory; 3. Game theory applied to social organization; and 4. Optimality model applied to foraging behaviour. Please post your ideas, research projects and whatever that might be interesting to other fellow population biologists. Xuhua Xia University of Helsinki
kristoff@genbank.bio.net (David Kristofferson) (10/03/90)
Dear Dr. Xia, Actually I get a fair number of people who request to sign up for POPULATION-BIOLOGY, but it seems like people are just "listening." There is a moderator for this group (hello?), but you are right that traffic has been low. Seems like we are still in the pre-critical mass stage such as the METHODS newsgroup used to be in. Once people start posting queries and find out that they can get useful information back, others will follow. As usual, though, it takes someone to "break the ice." Thanks for your interest. -- Sincerely, Dave Kristofferson GenBank Manager kristoff@genbank.bio.net
JAHAYES@MIAMIU.BITNET (10/03/90)
I have to disagree with Dr. Kristofferson (hope I got that right!). Last winter I posted a request for suggested references on the interaction between gene flow and local selection, and got zero responses. I eventually found a couple of references myself (but, the paper I needed them for was rejected anyway :-( ). And I hate to bring this up, but there is a certain degree of reticence on the part of theorists, because one's work can so easily be, uh, "borrowed" by others. I had the unfortunate ex- perience of having a discussion with a professor (who shall remain nameless) on a problem I was working on turn into a paper for him in Nature....one experience like that can lead to a lot of quiet on the net. But I'm safe now as I no longer have any really good ideas :-). Interestingly enough, there is currently a discussion in sci.bio about peculiar sex ratios in sequential hermaphrodites, and I have been able to inject a fair amount of science into that thread. I think the reason for the lack of traffic in this group is exactly that suggested by the first poster, that is, that there are so few pop-biologists of any sub-discipline that are net-literate. I know several hundred workers in my field, and of those one (yes, ONE!) knows enough to be able to send me e-mail. I encourage anyone out there to post queries, or comments, or maybe reviews of current articles (e.g. "I read in American Naturalist an article which I found really irritating because...."). I have a couple of those in my files that came out recently and I would be happy to give that kind of thread a push. Josh Hayes, Zoology Department, Miami University, Oxford OH 45056 voice: 513-529-1679 fax: 513-529-6900 jahayes@miamiu.bitnet, or jahayes@miamiu.acs.muohio.edu Now look inside; what do you see? That's easy: that's a pickle.
kristoff@genbank.bio.net (David Kristofferson) (10/04/90)
> I have to disagree with Dr. Kristofferson (hope I got that right!). Yes, but as you can tell from my signature I don't usually pay too much attention to announcing my degree 8-)! > Last winter I posted a request for suggested references on the > interaction between gene flow and local selection, and got zero > responses. I eventually found a couple of references myself (but, > the paper I needed them for was rejected anyway :-( ). Sorry to hear that. Being a former veteran of the publish or perish wars, I am acutely aware of the problem of divulging one's ideas. However, I often found when reading the literature that published papers were skimpy on details or perhaps raised interpretations of data with which I disagreed. I would feel perfectly comfortable discussing these points with competitors at meetings without feeling that I was compromising my position. I've always wondered why this type of exchange that goes on at meetings couldn't happen here. Actually I have seen people like Joel Felsenstein respond to queries on this newsgroup, so there have been brief flurries of messages, but the overall statistics for POPULATION-BIOLOGY have been pretty paltry, despite the fact that it garnered an initial vote of approval from the community. Perhaps either the readership should start using the group more regularly or else perhaps we should just close it down for lack of interest?? I have hesitated to suggest that to date because it requires extremely little effort to maintain once it is set up. My general hope remains that even if it takes another 5-10 years to build of a sufficient population of net-wise population biologists, this group may yet take off. I'd love to see it happen sooner, but there is not much I can do other than send in these exhortations once in a while. It's the readers' forum, and its success or failure is in their hands. -- Sincerely, Dave Kristofferson GenBank Manager kristoff@genbank.bio.net
UNASMITH@pucc.Princeton.EDU (Una Smith) (10/04/90)
In reply to Josh Haynes comment about low participation, I'd say
no, there aren't many population biologists who read email. Yet.
But there is also the newsgroup-usage effect; a newsgroup needs
a certain amount of devoted attention (TLC) from a handful of
regulars, before it can develop a readership and a style and
ethic. The absence of such persons from this group so far is the
primary reason, in my opinion, why this group has never gone
anywhere in the 3 years I've been checking in on it. Since I
read and don't contribute, I am as much at fault here, if there
is any 'fault' to go around.
Since I don't know who you are, or what you're interested in, I
have little to say. This is _not_ a suggestion that we all send
little biographies out onto the net. That's been done, and it
didn't work. What I am suggesting is that the next time you or I
read something nifty or stupid that we just have to share right
away, we share it here, in this newsgroup.
- Una UNASMITH@PUCC : BITNET
unasmith@pucc.Princeton.EDU : Internet
una@tropic.Princeton.EDU : Internetelmo@uhura.cc.rochester.edu (Eric Cabot) (10/10/90)
In article <90276.104313JAHAYES@MIAMIU.BITNET> JAHAYES@MIAMIU.BITNET writes: >I have to disagree with Dr. Kristofferson (hope I got that right!). >I think the reason for the lack of traffic in this group is exactly >that suggested by the first poster, that is, that there are so few >pop-biologists of any sub-discipline that are net-literate. I know > I have to agree with you to some extent. However, I personally have another problem with participating in some of the debates on the network, namely redundancy. For example, a few months ago there was a debate about inter-species hybridization in the Usenet group sci.bio. I spent a considrable amount of time giving a detailed explanation of this phenomenon, relating all kinds of work that we are doing in this field in our lab. I thought that the issue had been exhaustively aired. A week or so ago a new thread started up in sci.bio concerning the relatedness of human and chimp DNA. This discussion wandered into the realm of inter-specific hybridization and there it got stuck. At first I intended to reply and straighten out some of the ill-informed concepts that were being bandied about. The next day, when I planned to respond, there were 20 or more new messages on the subject, each more ludicrous than the previous. At this point I got quite frustrated and realized that it would be pointless to reply because my response would simply be buried in a sea of complete myth that we seem to have concerning this particular phenomenon. Not to mention that the time that I spent reading the new messages (for a laugh mind you) used up all the time that I would have spent typing in my thoughts on the matter (again). Therefore, I feel that net-illiteracy is only part of the problem. Reticence to participate is another big component. I'm not sure of the ideal solution to the problem that I describe. I realize that in many cases a thread is initiated by some non-biologist (say an electrical engineer) asking some simple question like "what's this DNA got to do with evolution", and the immediate respondants are also biologically unsophisticated. This chain of events, turns off many biologists, which is unfortunate, since the goal of the network is to promote commnunication between workers in diverse fields. Well that's my two cents. For my part I try to be tolerant and participate in the debates to which I think I can add something useful, eh-hem, time permitting. -- =+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+= Eric Cabot | elmo@{uhura | db1}.cc.rochester.edu "insert your face here" | elmo@uordbv.bitnet =+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=