Carnival of Evolution #39, and notes on how to help

September 1st edition of Carnival of Evolution has been up for a couple of days already at The End of the Pier Show - biology editor of Nature Henry Gee's blog.

Despite carnivals going extinct here and there, CoE is doing really well. When I can get my act together, it is really no problem finding hosts; right now all slots are taken through January next year (go here and click on 'future hosts'). And while the number of submissions does vary quite a bit - between the low thirties and to over sixty - there are always plenty for the host and readers to dig into. Probably few people get thought them all, except of course for the host who has to, and that is easily a full days work, if not more. So from here a heartfelt thanks to all past and future hosts, and everyone doing what they can to keep CoE running, whether it be by submissions or by linking on their blog, tweeting, updating their FB status, announcing CoE at conference talks*, making it required reading in college, etc. Thanks!

I'm often thinking about new ways to improve the carnival, both in terms of making each edition better and in terms of increasing the number of readers. It's up to the hosts how to put the CoE together, though suggestions are allowed. If you have good ideas that you'd like to share, you'd be welcome to let us know (comments, email, @carnyevolution #carnyevol). And if you think of new ways to promote CoE, feel free to let us know that too. Right now, when a new edition is up, an email is shot out to the email list, which has some 80 contacts, and then a number of people link to CoE on their blog (though that number is usually not greater than ten or so, which I think is too little). If you have done that, go ahead and put a link to your blog in the comments of that edition, like this. And I tweet (ir)regularly now, so perhaps a few of the current 442 followers find their way to it like that. But I really don't know, as I never get around to asking the hosts to find out how many visitors they get to their edition and how they get there. Except, when Larry Moran hosted last month, he showed me that visits went up an order or magnitude compared to the baseline, which was mostly due to a link on Pharyngula. Oh how I wish PZ would link every month, but alas that is like getting the attention of a celebrity.

Now, go check it out.

* Incidentally, I did this recently, and I got nothing but blank stares from an audience of about 200.