This week on UnDisciplined, we're talking about scientific puzzles. For instance, why is it that hundreds of tree species can exist within a single acre of rainforest, but the same species is almost never found next to itself?
Or, here's another one: Why is it that individual animals from the same species — dogs, for instance — can exhibit such tremendously different traits when it comes to aggressiveness?
Our guests might just have these questions answered.
We're joined first by Dale Forrister, a doctoral candidate at the University of Utah who just scored his first-ever first authorship of a paper in the journal Science. In that paper, he and his colleagues propose a partial solution to the question of why similar species rarely grow next to one another in tropical forests.
Also joining us, from Oregon State University, where she is also a doctoral candidate, is Nicole Kirchoff. She also just scored her first-ever first authorship of a paperthat explores the relationship between the aggressiveness of dogs and the microbes in their guts.
