My post at Deep-Sea News on How Presidential Elections Are impacted by a 100-Million-Year-Old Coastline was selected for Open Lab 2013, an anthology of the best science writing on the web! I feel very honored to have been selected from all the outstanding entries.
Lessons From Creating an Online Outreach Empire from Craig McClain I delivered a preliminary talk on the opening night of ScienceOnline Oceans. I am extremely flattered by the invitation and the enthusiastic reception to my talk. Many asked me to post my slides online but I felt I needed to go a step further to provide more discussion, links, and points that an 10 minute presentation allowed. 1. I come from ocean outreach from a perspective that Read more…
My new article about a few of my favorite things–the south, evolution, heat, and of course roaches–is now up at Scientific American The sticky Southern summer heat makes me slightly insane. It’s an agitation that grows deep within me as the season ripens, and the humidity and temperature rise in equal fashion. This heat has been both a blessing and a curse throughout my life. The giver of swims in the local creek and refreshing Read more…
A great project with great collaborators that came together into a great paper*. We go after the question of the processes that actually drive the evolution of mammals on islands. The answer? It’s complicated. From the abstract: The island rule, a pattern of size shifts on islands, is an oft-cited but little understood phenomenon of evolutionary biology. Here, we explore the evolutionary mechanisms behind the rule in 184 mammal species, testing climatic, ecological and phylogenetic Read more…
NSFW features some choice quotes from me on why Giant Squid’s aren’t larger.
In June, I wrote at Deep-Sea News how an ancient coastline through the south is reflected today in the voting patterns through a linkage of plankton, soil, cotton, slavery, and demography. A little teaser: Hale County in west central Alabama and Bamberg County in southern South Carolina are 450 miles apart. Both counties have a population of 16,000 of which around 60% are African American. The median households and per capita incomes are well below Read more…
My first lead author paper in Proceedings of the National Academy of Science! McClain, C.R., A.P. Allen, D.P. Tittensor, and M.A. Rex (2012) The Energetics of Life on the Deep Seafloor.Proceedings of the National Academy of Science, U.S.A. online early With frigid temperatures and virtually no in situ productivity, the deep oceans, Earth’s largest ecosystem, are especially energy-deprived systems. Our knowledge of the effects of this energy limitation on all levels of biological organization is very incomplete. Here, we Read more…
A recent online article in Forbes about whether a Lion’s Mane Jellyfish is truly big or not links to my prior post at DSN (also see my discussion here about this). Best part of the post this juicy quote. Why am I convinced that millions of people are wrong and “Dr. M” is right? Simple, he’s a geek and he did his homework Which will now (and must) become a new byline for this website!
Busy few months! Cameron completed a manned dive to the Marianas Trench. Along with Sylvia Earle, I discuss this feat on NPR’s Talking Points (you can listen here). In contrast to the positiveness of this story, io9 also features my blog post on the death of deep-sea science. The lack of knowledge surrounding the oceans’ depths isn’t particularly surprising when you realize that funding for deep sea research has been dwindling for years. And according to Craig Read more…
A marine giant is found and Craig McClain is to the rescue to dispel myth from fact! Have you seen this picture? Apparently it’s been floating around on the internet for a while now, but has experienced something of a comeback as of late, usually with some version of the following caption: The Lions Mane Jellyfish is the largest jellyfish in the world. They have been swimming in arctic waters since before the dinosaurs (over 650 million Read more…