Biology friending meme?

[sciatrix]

It occurs to me that I have an awful lot of subscribers and friends who have varying interests and expertises in biology, psychology, and all sorts of related topics and ideas. 'Related' being read broadly here--if it touches on natural or social sciences and you want to share, please do.

Therefore, I thought I'd spin up a biology friending meme. What kind of background in the subject do you have? What things do you find interesting?

Comments

[sciatrix]

Belatedly, I thought I should mention what it is I do: by training, I do... uh... well, fuck.

Okay, I'm an integrative biologist, which means that what I'm really interested in right now is sexual selection as driven by models that come out of evolutionary biology, but my actual research plays a lot in behavioral ecology, hormonal signaling, and energy balance. I'm generally interested in things that touch on how individuals respond to context, so I've been dabbling in reading the human trauma literature (which is not my background) and epigenetics as well as the plasticity stuff that is my real background. I play around a lot with a hormone called leptin, which is mostly thought about as a satiety hormone but actually affects a bunch of things up to and including social/sexual behavior.

But I'm interested in all of it! The "people are doing things and it's fascinating" segment is of course very much what I'm in here for, and I wanted to hear what everyone else is into because--*flails hands* you all have wide varieties of interesting backgrounds and expertise and that includes both formal credentials and informal areas of expertise and I find I learn so many things from so many people here.