Miscellaneous
The living world is infinitely more complex than the categories we create to contain and constrain it. This week, we turn to an ancient reservoir of biological wisdom to illuminate life’s wondrous complexity. We are referring, of course, to the humble snail. In this episode, Jocelyn and Bradley are joined by Dr. Maurine Neiman, an evolutionary biologist who was once branded a “snail pornographer” by conservative media outlets. Maurine explains that, far from being a trivial or esoteric topic, the sex lives of snails—or, sometimes, lack thereof—offer crucial insights into one of the biggest open questions in evolutionary biology, namely, why sexual reproduction evolved in the first place. Maurine explains how snail species vary widely in their reproductive strategies, from hermaphroditic garden snails to the freshwater snails she studies in her own research, which have both sexually reproducing and asexually reproducing lineages. By comparing the fates and fortunes of these lineages in various environments, Maurine’s research sheds light on the costs and benefits of different reproductive strategies. The friends also discuss how studying the evolutionary origins of sexual difference can impact how we think about maleness and femaleness, challenging our conventional assumptions about (binary) sex in both science and society. Follow Maurine on Twitter at @mneiman, and learn more about her amazing work at the links below! http://bioweb.biology.uiowa.edu/neiman/index.php https://clas.uiowa.edu/gwss/people/maurine-neiman Iowa City Darwin Day: https://iowacitydarwinday.org/ “Everything You Never Wanted to Know About Snail Sex”: https://www.kqed.org/science/1446777/everything-you-never-wanted-to-know-about-snail-sex Matt Ridley, The Red Queen: Sex and the Evolution of Human Nature: https://www.amazon.com/Red-Queen-Evolution-Human-Nature/dp/0060556579 The Lively Lab @ Indiana: https://lively.lab.indiana.edu/index.html Robert J. Richards, The Romantic Conception of Life: Science and Philosophy in the Age of Goethe: https://www.amazon.com/Romantic-Conception-Life-Philosophy-Foundations/dp/0226712117 Andrew Cunningham & Nicholas Jardine, eds., Romanticism and the Sciences: https://www.amazon.com/Romanticism-Sciences-Andrew-Cunningham/dp/0521356857 Andrea Gambarotto, “Lorenz Oken (1779–1851): Naturphilosophie and the reform of natural history”: https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/british-journal-for-the-history-of-science/article/lorenz-oken-17791851-naturphilosophie-and-the-reform-of-natural-history/AA5EBBBE4ED2FDBBA7E23C4466D854C7