Edward O. Wilson Renowned PhD Biologist, The Ant Man, has died at 92

[jedishrfu]

https://apnews.com/article/edward-o-wilson-dead-biologist-bc3d64fceb5200dd88d67187ef2a5cee

 

[BillTre]

He was a giant of biology and a visionary!

 

[jedishrfu]

There was one experiment though where he and a colleague surveyed all life on an island, then killed it off completely and waited for it to come back. It did but with a markedly different ecosystem. An important result but at the cost of killing a thriving island ecosystem. It always bothered me about the dark reality of science.

 

[BillTre]

Although, biology is the study of life, it often involves killing things.

 

[jedishrfu]

Heres more on the island experiment

http://eo-wilson.weebly.com/island-biogeography.html

 

[BillTre]

Heres more on the island experiment

http://eo-wilson.weebly.com/island-biogeography.html

I believe that there are lots of these kind of experiments.

There are also similar natural experiments, such as: Krakatoa (an island) and Mount St. Helens (not an island, but everything was killed for quite a distance).
Islands are harder to repopulate, non-islands easier.

 

[jedishrfu]

Except they needed an accurate survey before the event.

 

[BillTre]

Here is a NY Times obituary on Wilson.

It also has a little video of him being interviewed.
It does a good job of briefly describing his biological work.

There were three parts:

1. Island biogeography, population isolation, and likelihood of extinction in small populations
2. Evolution of behavior, sociobiology (including those irascible humans). The evolution behavior connection also paralleled on going research in the physiological basis of behavior and the nervous system underlying those behaviors was strongly influenced by genetics (and the developmental mechanisms that generate the nervous system). This in turn lead to the study of evolutionary development (EvoDevo).
3. Conservation and habitat protection.

His renowned expertise in ants was a big part of the first two.

 

[BillTre]

Found a fun quote from E.O. Wilson:

The entomologist E. O. Wilson has characterised parasites as "predators that eat prey in units of less than one".[2]

 

[mathwonk]

Re: post #3; Danny (Daniel Simberloff, Wilson's co-author on that island repopulation experiment) was a friend of mine as a math major in undergrad school, (I remember especially how smart and generous he was), and the famous study seems to have been his PhD thesis project:
https://reflectionsonpaperspast.wordpress.com/2018/03/12/revisiting-simberloff-and-wilson-1969/

Since he switched out of math, I didn't know before how famous he is, until now, but I am not surprized.