Alistair Blachford
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Email
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Office phone
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History
PhD UBC in Zoology, MSc UBC in Zoology, BSc(Hon.) Queen's in Biology, lots of computer science
The geek
Manager of the Zoology Computing Unit, responsible for the research and teaching computing infrastructure of Zoology and the Biodiversity Research Centre.
The nerd
Thinking about spatial heterogeneity, migration load and sexual reproduction led me into assortative mating for a while. And then the narrow specificity of patterns in environmental change which favour sex led me to consider sex with respect to 'no pattern' ... noise (individual luck). More recently I have been working on the puzzle of lemming cycles, in particular why cyclic small mammals reduce reproduction at the craziest time -- when numbers are dropping fast and/or are very low. Turns out that's actually adaptive if one assumes that reproduction means additional risk of dying. And I noticed an effective way that animals might cue their plasticity in reproductive output without monitoring the actual mortality agents.
I am also very interested in philosophy of science, in particular the foundations of evolutionary theory. Among other things.
The regular guy
Talk to me about sea kayaking on Canada's left coast, southern Alaska, and the arctic.