Demystifying Evolutionary Biology: My Summer Plans

Welcome to the channel! I'm Zach Hancock, an evolutionary biologist who specializes in population genetics, phylogenetics, and genome evolution. This summer, I'm embarking on a new project focusing on the spatial genetics of beach moles (small crustaceans that live on sandy beaches), and I'm bringing you along for the ride! I will be filming the whole study, from beginning to end, and this project will serve to demystify evolutionary biology for the general public. Hope you'll stick around for it! In the meantime, enjoy the other content on the channel that ranges from evolution education, pseudoscience debunking, and invertebrate systematics.

Find me on twitter [at]zachbbionerd.

References

[ianchenofficial]

Wow. This is so different and excited for you and also to follow your journey here.

You’re right though. To have more of the “transparency” as you say would be great. Though for me it’s really a “day of the life in a research paper” that I’m very excited about!

Though I think people can see your excitement to make this for us all is palpable!

[Kammerliteratur]

Science is more open and inclusive than it ever was before. This of course is a good and important thing. But if people distrust science more while science is more open, it also means that this recent spike of people distrusting science and scientist has other reasons than scientific reclusiveness. Our societies have a big problem with misinformation, conspiracy believes, religious and nonreligious indoctrination and a bad educational system.

I also can't wait for your video documentation. This is really intriguing. Makes my mouth wet.

[tamjammy]

This sounds like a great idea! I'll look forward to it. Meantime....enjoy your time in the field.

[dieguillo]

I'm currently in MS program and wanted to do something like this. A video vlog to document the research experience, but my PI said that that's boring stuff and should focus on my research (fair enough). I disagree. An inside look of how scientists really work is invaluable to everyone. Thanks for doing this. I'll be looking forward to it.

[jamesdownard]

Be sure to put in the video description direct links to the papers mentioned (or at least the open access ones). I do that for my shows, to make it as easy as possible for viewers to do their own follow-up.

[CreationMyths]

This is awesome and I can't wait to see the final product.

[moteovdust]

We have so many of these cool organisms at our beaches. I will definitely be following this project!

[gordmain]

Another one from Dr. Dan via Dapper Dinosaur via Gutsick Gibbon. Subscribing after the Cambrian Bunny Awards.

[madamsloth]

I'm a layman and am highly interested. One specific topic is how scientific consensus is reached currently and historical (idk if there's a difference), as well as how i can figure it out without buying textbooks 😅

[siim]

Let's get you to that 1K subs milestone Zach!

[allanforce]

Think that's a fantastic idea...hopefully it will work out and inspire others to do the same...

[silverharloe]

Too bad most papers are behind pay walls. Fortunately, since you're going to be so thoroughly documenting the process of writing, submitting, being reviewed, and editing, it will be difficult for this paper to be pay walled - is there a concern that prestigious journals will pass on considering your paper if it's openly available?

[A]

Cut the babble & come to fundamental terms