What is Open Mic Science?

"Open Mic Science" invites the community to an evening at The Treehouse Café on Bainbridge Island to explore ideas in all aspects of science and technology in an informal, social setting. Talks are held the first Tuesday of every month at 8 PM. Enjoy pizza and beer, and stay abreast of current knowledge. Open Mic Science, A Bainbridge Science Café, is based on the principles of Cafe Scientifique and is committed to the public understanding of science. 

Intellectual curiosity required.
No specific science knowledge needed. 

All talks are Free

When:  8pm on the first Tuesday of the month
Where:  The Treehouse Cafe
               4569 Lynwood Center Road NE
               Bainbridge Island, WA 98110

News

June 4, 2019 at 8:00pm

Speaker: Dr. John Christy

Talk Title:  The Design of a Beautiful Weapon

ABSTRACT:
Males of most animals compete for mates both directly, by fighting, and indirectly by competing for a female’s attention. Some males fail, and some succeed producing what Darwin called “sexual selection”. But what happens when competition among males to attract females for mating favors morphology that compromises the male’s ability to fight for mates? Does “sexiness” win out over fighting prowess, vice versa, or is a compromise struck?  A detailed study of how crabs fight revealed a third option – behavior and morphology that compensates for the negative effect of sexiness on fighting ability. These compensatory traits work together to allow males to develop weapons that are both beautiful and powerful. In contrast to “trade-offs” the evolution of compensation in traits that have multiple functions is not well documented or understood. Perhaps Dr. Pangloss had a point!

Bio:
Dr. Christy was raised in San Francisco. John’s father was a business executive who was a naturalist at heart, took John and his family “tide-pooling” on the weekends and backpacking in the summers.  These early experiences lead John to earn a BS with a major in Biology from Lewis and Clark College in 1970 and a Ph.D. in Animal Behavior and Population Ecology from Cornell in 1980. Frustrated early on by the difficulty of studying howler monkeys in Costa Rica, John opened up a lawn chair, waited for the tide to recede, sat down and began a 45 year-long study of the reproductive behavior and ecology of fiddler crabs. John spent 33 years in Panama as a member of the research staff of the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute. John has about 90 publications which have received about 4,900 citations to date. John retired in early 2017 and, with his wife Beate, left the tropics to enjoy the climate, culture, and new friendships on Bainbridge Island. ​
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