Society & Culture
Synopsis: This week on "Learn Me Something," Rich is missing in action, but Aaron and producer Alex Knight are here to talk about indoor biomes, an area that few biologists have studied. Few biologists have studied the evolutionary processes at work in indoor environments. Yet indoor environments comprise approximately 0.5% of ice-free land area – an area as large as the subtropical coniferous forest biome. Here we review the emerging subfield of ‘indoor biome’ studies. After defining the indoor biome and tracing its deep history, we discuss some of its evolutionary dimensions. We restrict our examples to the species found in human houses – a subset of the environments constituting the indoor biome – and offer preliminary hypotheses to advance the study of indoor evolution. Studies of the indoor biome are situated at the intersection of evolutionary ecology, anthropology, architecture, and human ecology and are well suited for citizen science projects, public outreach, and large-scale international collaborations. Make sure to signup for Audible today to get your FREE audio book and 30-day trial. Please support our podcast by making a sustaining monthly donation. Please also check out our GoFundMe campaign as we're trying to raise enough money to help cover our studio build costs. Duration: 37:26:00 Present: Aaron Stewart, Alex Knight Episode Links THE GOOD, THE BAD AND THE UGLY: CRITTERS THAT LIVE IN OUR HOMES Evolution of the Indoor Biome Trends in Ecology & Evolution Evolution of the indoor biome - NESCent Working Group on the Evolutionary Biology of the Built Environment00038-5?_returnURL=https%3A%2F%2Flinkinghub.elsevier.com%2Fretrieve%2Fpii%2FS0169534715000385%3Fshowall%3Dtrue) The average house has 8,000 different types of bacteria and bugs Should You or Shouldn't You Kill Spiders in Your Home? Follow your hosts, guests, and the show on Twitter @LMSPodcast on Twitter Learn Me Something on Facebook @HologramRadio for updates on other interesting podcasts Subscribe to Learn Me Something! Get Learn Me Something on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, TuneIn, RadioPublic, or via RSS.