Interview Prep
Your task is to prepare for a podcast interview with Dr. Joe Parker. Start, by reading through the information below.
+ Guest Bio
Joe Parker is a biologist at Caltech who works on evolutionary patterns in insects.
Here’s his profile from his lab’s website: Interactions between species have been central to life's diversification. We are interested in the mechanisms underlying evolutionary change, particularly in the context of symbiosis. Our focus is on the behaviorally complex interspecies relationships that have evolved within the Metazoa. We use rove beetles (Staphylinidae) as our exploratory system, a hugely species-rich clade that has repeatedly evolved highly intimate and phenotypically elaborate symbioses with ants. Such species embody evolution in the extreme, with dramatic behavioral, anatomical and chemical adaptations for life as social parasites inside ant colonies.
The widespread evolution of this symbiosis in staphylinids provides a unique paradigm for understanding how obligate interspecies interactions can evolve between free-living organisms. We are interested in the core molecular and neurobiological circuitry by which reciprocal signals are exchanged between ant and beetle, fostering their interaction.
Our work is integrative, combining genomics and developmental biology with chemical ecology and behavioural neuroscience to explore all facets of the ant-beetle interaction and its evolutionary basis. We have found that some of the most remarkable symbiotic phenotypes have evolved convergently many times in Staphylinidae, often in distantly related lineages. The system illuminates the enduring question of how complex phenotypic changes can arise repeatedly and predictably over a deep evolutionary timescale.
+ Twitter feed
Dig into what Joe has been thinking about recently by browsing through his Twitter feed.
+ Key Papers
Read through these papers that deal with key ideas from Joe's research.
First, analyze the papers in detail:
- For both papers, what are the main questions that Parker and his colleagues are setting out to answer?
- What did they do to answer their questions?
- What kinds of data did they collect and how did they interpret them?
- What are strengths and weaknesses of their study?
- What new questions do his studies raise and how might one go about answering them?
+ Dig Deeper
- Browse through the recent publications from Joe's lab to get a sense of what he works on.
- Watch this video from Caltech to see the cool beetles that Joe works with.
Next, develop one page of questions that you will ask Dr. Parker during the interview. The questions should focus both on Dr. Parker as a scientist and what the papers tell us about insects and evolution.
Third, listen to the full episode, taking notes on the structure of the conversation and the questions that hosts asked.
How similar are the questions asked to those you wrote down? Which questions seemed particularly good and particularly weak? What questions do you wish the hosts had asked that they did not?