The Edge Effect

The Edge Effect

 

            Most people think that scientists are part of geekdom when in reality, we are down-to-earth people who simply think beyond the box, applying  science to everyday life.  About ten years ago, a visiting professor filled an empty faculty position in my department, satisfying an environmental position.

He was a dynamic, full of life, thirtysomething who added greatly to our faculty, alas to leave after his one year stint was complete.

 

            His research specialty was a phenomenon known as the Edge Effect, which explains why in herds of wildebeests, schools of fish, gaggles of geese, and other populations, the sacrificial lambs are relegated to the fringe of the population.   This is called the Edge Effect.  The Edge Effect explains why the non-reproductive members of the population are restricted to the geographical edge of the population.  Those on the edge are most likely subject to predation, thus eliminating their genes from the gene pool.  The high quality breeders reside in the geographical interior of the population, protecting them from predation.  As interior members succumb, their positions are quickly filled by those working their way in from the edge.  Alas, some members of the population never make it into the inner circle and are deprived of their capability to sexually reproduce, losing their genome to history. 

 

            What does this have to do with society?  I played basketball with a group of over-the-hillers, twice a week for a number of years.  Some of us looked forward more to the beer-sucking ribaldry that followed the game than the game itself.  The group was composed of lawyers, doctors, and industrialists who enjoyed a good story.  The watering hole that we frequented, happened to be located alongside a darkened, defunct bowling alley with the overflow parking from the bar, diffusing into that nearby blackhole.  It was a dismal location, always leaving a bar customer with a feeling akin to leaving a child in a parked car.

 

            The day after I had first heard of the Edge Effect, and the evening of a game of basketball (in which I wasn’t the last kid picked), I arrived at the bar too late to get a prime spot in the parking lot, thus subjecting my reasonably new car to a spot in the predatory zone (my friends now affectionately refer to as The Edge.)  As I left my vulnerable car to the vagaries of vandals, the euphoria of the recent game left me ambivalent as to its potential fate.

      As I approached the door to the watering hole, I noticed a parking spot directly in front of the door.  Would it be worth the ATPs invested to walk back and rescue my vehicle from The Edge?  Would I be in time?  Would another interloper supercede me?  I had to make a decision and as a potential breeder, I made the decision to rescue my investment.  I made it to the desired parking spot and therein secured my car’s spot amongst the breeding elite, though I realized that cars are not  reproducible as any lemon owner realizes.

 

            Well, tongue-in-cheek, I entered the bar, greeted with a Bronx cheer by my buddies who had a head start on me. ” Buck”, they asked, what is the lecture for the evening?  (They had heard so many of my lectures, they requested continuing education credits from my university).  Calmly, after a pregnant pause, I stated that the lecture for the evening was entitled, The Edge Effect.  I gave them a short explanation of the genetics of the Edge Effect and then how it applied to that evening.  “What a bunch of crap”, one exclaimed.  Is that what higher education is all about?  noted another.  The biggest complainer happened to be a bigshot at the local newspaper and I foresaw a future editorial denouncing higher education as a waste of money.  After an evening of laughs and self-deprecating humor, I won the crowd over, but not before the newspaper honcho left the bar to find his car vandalized.  He had made the mistake of parking it at The Edge.