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- 04 Dec 2017
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Dr. Eric Libby exposes the similarities between microbial colonies and human economies. While he can't take the heat, he can help us understand why multicellular life evolved, and why species that are too selfish doom themselves to extinction.
Listen below, or follow the feed at greenchilescience.podbean.com.
From all of his cells to yours, Eric invites you to explore the evolution of complex life by looking more closely at microbes. Predators, resources, and a fear of green chile are all contributors to increases in biological complexity according to this suffering scientist. He clearly prefers the company of green algae to green chile, as you hear him proclaim "I'm pretty sure the Level 3 is just poison" while outlining a few paradoxes of microbial trade that have interesting parallels to human economies. Find out if it's better to be good at making either really fantastic corn tortillas while getting your flour tortillas somewhere else, or keep making your own average flour and corn tortillas on your own. Whatever you do, be sure to smother your tortillas in green chile!
*We’d like to thank not-evil Katie (Katherine Mast) for recording this episode.
Explore Eric's research in more depth:
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Yoav Kallus, John H. Miller, and Eric Libby (2017). Paradoxes in leaky microbial trade. Nature Communications 8: 1361. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-017-01628-8
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Laurent Hébert-Dufresne, Antoine Allard, Pierre-André Noël, Jean-Gabriel Young, and Eric Libby (2017). Strategic tradeoffs in competitor dynamics on adaptive networks. Scientific Reports 7: 7576 . https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-017-07621-x
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