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Erol Akcay

@akcay.theoretical.bio

4K followers 3.8K following 351 posts

Ecology, evolution, and social dynamics at the University of Pennsylvania. He/him akcay.theoretical.bio

Erol Akcay @akcay.theoretical.bio · 29/10/2025

These finches eat seeds and the various species have different sized beaks that make them better at cracking different sized seeds. We propose that we can think of political parties analogously: they take positions in a political space that make them more or less appealing to different voters. 6/

A graph of three normal (bell shaped) curves with the x-axis denoting political position: a black curve gives the distribution of voters, with most voters around the center position. Red and Blue curves gives the appeal of parties 1 and 2 to voters at each position. In this example, the parties’ modal appeals are offset from the center to either side.

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Erol Akcay @akcay.theoretical.bio · 29/10/2025

We take a fresh approach to the question, taking inspiration from another major branch of science that studies competition: Ecology. Ecologists have been thinking for a long time about how species that rely on similar resources, like Darwin’s finches in the Galapagos, can co-exist. 5/

Illustrations of heads of four Darwin’s finch species, by John Gould (14.Sep.1804 - 3.Feb.1881) - From "Voyage of the Beagle" as found on https://darwin-online.org.uk/converted/published/1845_Beagle_F14/1845_Beagle_F14_fig07.jpg]; also online through Biodiversity Heritage Library at https://www.biodiversitylibrary.org/page/2010582., Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=3918303

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Erol Akcay @akcay.theoretical.bio · 15/10/2025

😂😂😂

Screencap from the Turkheimer article reading: “In our email exchange, Murray said that any argument I'd lay out here would be insufficient to make this case. "We're not talking about something that lends itself to 1,500 words, or 3,000 for that matter, written for a lay audience, but a 20-page (at least) technical presentation," he wrote. (He did not respond to an invitation to elaborate on this, or respond to the argument made in this piece.) Certainly …”

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Erol Akcay @akcay.theoretical.bio · 10/08/2025

Screen cap from story reading: “It is unclear why the Trump administration seeks to end the missions. The equipment in space is state of the art and is expected to function for many more years, according to scientists who worked on the missions. An official review by NASA in 2023 found that "the data are of exceptionally high quality" and recommended continuing the mission for at least three vears.”

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Erol Akcay @akcay.theoretical.bio · 14/04/2025

I mean not to mention the fact that the virus circulating for three months prior to detection is utterly incompatible with the genomic data!!

Figure S20 from Pekar et al 2022 Science. It shows that the SARS CoV 2 virus accumulates about one mutation every two weeks, and started out with almost zero genetic diversity mid December.

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Erol Akcay @akcay.theoretical.bio · 04/09/2024

My department, Biology@UPenn, is searching for a new faculty member working on the Biology of Human Altered Environments (a broad area, see ad below). We are an integrative and collegial department and supportive of junior colleagues! More details and application at: apply.interfolio.com/153362

Front view of Leidy Labs at the University of Pennsylvania, where the Biology Department is located. Picture Credit: Daily Pennsylvanian.

View of the Schuylkill River and Philadelphia skyline looking towards Center City from a high vantage point.

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Erol Akcay @akcay.theoretical.bio · 12/07/2024

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Erol Akcay @akcay.theoretical.bio · 20/03/2024

Wait till they hear of the Tree of Sex (I always show these in my reproductive strategies class as part of Intro Ecology). Paper here: www.nature.com/articles/sda... All these sex is binary types are just ignoramuses.

Graph showing the distribution of different sexual systems across a plant phylogeny, including monoecy, dioecy, gynodioecy, androdioecy, hermaprodites, and “other.” There is an incredible diversity of how plants arrange their sex.

Graph showing the diversity of sex determination/sexual systems in vertebrates. Includes XY/ZW (ZW, found in birds and reptiles, is similar to mammals XY but inheriting different sex chromosomes typically makes the animal female not male), environmental sex determination (ESD, eg by temperature), hermaphroditism (either simultaneously male and female or first one than the other), “other” and “complex sex chromosomes (so not just two types). Upshot: sex is complicated even in vertebrates!

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Erol Akcay @akcay.theoretical.bio · 27/09/2023

We are hiring in Ecology at UPenn Biology! The search is open to any area of Ecology. We are a integrative, collegial department, supportive of junior colleagues, and are located in the great city of Philadelphia. Apply at: apply.interfolio.com/133155

View of the Schuylkill River and Philadelphia skyline, from a high vantage point.

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