The Unlikeliness of Earth-Like Extraterrestrial Life

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Dr. Jonathan Losos is the William H. Danforth Distinguished University Professor and Director of the Living Earth Collaborative at Washington University in St. Louis. He is an internationally renowned scholar in the field of evolutionary biology. Within the biology department at Washington University, the primary focus of the Losos Lab is on the behavioral and evolutionary ecology of lizards and the study of evolutionary adaptation of wild species to urban habitats. He is the author of several books, including Improbable Destinies: Fate, Chance, and the Future of Evolution.

In this episode, we focus on Improbable Destinies. We start by talking about the work of Stephen Jay Gould and how it influenced Dr. Losos. We talk about the mechanisms that play a role in evolution, convergent evolution, how to study the evolutionary origins of traits, and experimental evolutionary science. We also discuss speciation, how fast evolutionary change can occur, whether we can predict evolution, whether the species we find on Earth are inevitabilities or evolutionary flukes, and whether we would get the same results if we replayed life’s tape again. Finally, we talk about what we should expect life on other planets to look like.

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