Last week at Icy Strait Point Alaska we skipped the whale watching zodiac tour. As happy hour started, I saw a peculiar circle of bubbles next to the ship and took out my phone just in time to record a humpback whale bubble net feeding. Astounding!

Thanks to display nom de plume. This video is now featured on the Wikipedia site on bubble net feeding. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bubble-ne…

These categories have endured because they have been useful to many researchers in the 30 years since George Williams and I proposed them, but I now think they are a bit muddled. I will present my new version at #ISEMPH2024, where I can count on constructive critical comments.

So glad to see attention to fitness cliffs here! Lovely recent work by Mitteroecker provides solid modeling of how it could help to explain schizophrenia. Another example of intrinsically vulnerable systems. sciencedirect.com/science/articl…

Dan Stein and I spent a year trying to build a better nosology on an evolutionary foundation. We concluded that the DSM categories provide useful descriptions even if they fail to recognize that negative emotions can be symptoms, not diseases. bmcmedicine.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.11…

Just arrived in Durham, UK for the two day #EvolutionaryPsychiatry pre-meeting befor #ISEMPH2024. So eager to see friends and colleagues and take the pulse of this field that is growing fast thanks to efforts by co-organizers Riadh Abed and Paul St John-Smith

Thanks for that illustration, Adam Hunt. It illustrates the tacit creationism in views of basic emotions as distinctly separate modules with specific functions. Emotions are overlapping suites of changes with blurry boundaries that increase fitness in overlapping situations.

#ISEMPH2024 made me feel good about human nature as well as evolutionary medicine. Dozens of people generously shared their time, skills, and creative ideas without compensation to create an event that satisfies curiosity and advances science. What a great species!

I conducted the study to look for evolutionary functions of grief, expecting to find problems in individuals who did not experience grief. But they had no special problems before or after the loss. Grief varies a lot in normal people. @robertwilbin randolphnesse.com/articles/grief

Like genes, neurotransmitters, organs, and emotions, proteins serve functions. But looking for THE function fosters tacit creationism & a distorted view of evolved organisms as if they were designed machines. Arvid Ågren prof. Robot Sapolsky Guru Madhavan sites.google.com/site/randolphn…

This amazing mechanism appears to be a failure caused by positive feedback but it may instead be a self destruction mechanism shaped by kin selection that benefits genetically identical bacteria nearby. Is it perhaps more common in bacteria that grow on viscous media?

Warmest thanks to Adam Hunt for making possible these recordings that provide a fine overview of #EvolutionaryPsychiatry.

Evolutionary explanations for morality and committed relationships are a huge advance. Are they useful for psychiatry? I share my hopes and hesitations in this 30 min. video. Thanks to Adam Hunt Riadh Abed ISEMPH HBES youtu.be/gVJ88CTMQbQ?si…