Sunday, June 29, 2014

73rd CoE on Pleiotropy


Due to a lack of host volunteers, I will host the 73rd edition on Pleiotropy.

Any takers for the 74th edition on August 1st?

Monday, June 2, 2014

72nd CoE is up

Latest CoE is the 72nd, and it's up now at Evolution: Education and Outreach Blog. Thanks to Adam Goldstein for hosting. Spread the word.

There are 22 posts this month. That's not bad at all. It's not very many either (but the quality of the writing is top-notch). Participation in Carnival of Evolution is down. It seems Carnivals are a thing of the past. My guess is that social media has made this particular form of sharing blog-posts superfluous. I hope I'm wrong.

The number of different people who submit has gone down significantly. CoE now relies on a few regular contributors who submit their own as well as others' blog-posts. Notably Bradly Alicea (who has been active for a long time) and Charles Goodnight, who is a relative newcomer to blogging. Charles writes about theoretical evolution once a week and shares his posts via the CoE Facebook page. But I fear this is akin to biological systems of low diversity: they are more likely to go extinct when the system relies on a few generalist species.

I suppose it's good news that science bloggers don't feel the need to boost their readership by sharing their blog-posts with the 357 people who are subscribed to the feed on Facebook.

Interested in hosting this summer? Months open are July, August, September. Still a few seats left for those who hurry.