Alyrium Denryle

Basic Description and Off-Board Life

Thinker, behavioral biologist, homosexual, argumentative jackass with a heart of gold. Alyrium's real name is Benjamin Allen. He is a 21 year old biology alumnus at Arizona State University, the New American University according to its president Michael Crow. He is now a graduate student at the University of Texas in Arlington, where he is the newest grad student in Professor Daniel Formanowicz' lab. Once he gets there, his thesis project will look at what life history traits and anti=predator behavior contribute to the ability of invasive organisms to successfully colonize new and novel habitats. His organisms of choice for this project are anuran tadpoles, specifically the tadpoles of the American Bullfrog, Cane Toad, Rio Grand Leopard Frog, and Cuban Treefrog.

Bullfrog

Cane Toad

Rio Grand Leopard Frog

Cuban Treefrog

Alyrium has been doing research in Juergen Gadau's lab at ASU for the past two years working with hymenopteran insects. His primary work was with the parasitoid wasps Nasonia vitripennis. He has assisted in the ongoing annotation of its recently sequenced genome, and looked for speciation genes in the oxidative phosphorelation pathways of it and the closely related Nasonia giraulti. This project has involved hybridization experiments, as well as thermal respirometry.

Nasonia

Another major project with this species has been a study of genes and proteins that regulate and control facultative diapause in N. vitripennis. He has also worked with the harvester and ogonomyrmex californicius, and has contributed to a dissertation project studying aggression in pleometrotic and haplometrotic colonies with multiple foundresses.

P. californicus

Alyrium is an alumnus of Sigma Phi Beta Fraternity, a national Queer/Allied collegiate fraternity based at Arizona State. He served as chair of the Finance Committee and also served on the Judiciary board and as a Peer Mediator.

Alyrium also indulges in several guilty pleasures. The first is engaging in a weekly game of Dungeons and Dragons in which he plays arcane spellcasters almost exclusively. The second is a penchant for checking out, flirting with, and otherwise enjoying attractive men, straight or gay. Thankfully Alyrium has a disarming harmless demeanor which does not threaten the masculinity of the straight ones. Another pleasure is hunting street preachers and nursing his special hatred for creationism.

Political Positions

Alyrium, after a paradoxical early college rebellion that compelled him to accept components of conservative political philosophies, has swung back to his true liberal/leftist inclinations. He supports abortion rights and has joined in pro-choice protests and argues with pro-life demonstrators. He was against the Iraq war from the start, however feels that if we leave at this point, civil war and open genocide in are inevitable and Iraq will be annexed by one of its neighbors in whole or in part. He is obviously for gay marriage and does public speaking to advocate for GLBTQ issues and to educated people about GLBTQ people. He supports any any all scientific research so long as it is conducted ethically. Including stem cell research, genetic modification, and both reproductive and therapeutic cloning. He is against the death penalty in practice because the justice system is not infallible, but recognizes that some people cannot be rehabilitated and need to simply be removed from society. An outspoken critic of any and all forms of creationism, he also publicly advocates the Theory of Evolution. Oddly however Alyrium is very critical of gun-control laws that would disarm the common citizen.

Religious/Philosophical background

Alyrium accepts a form of philosophical naturalism and views religion as being irrational and unsupported by evidence. However he also views religion as having consequences based upon those who hold it. He views religion as offering justification for undesired actions only in individuals already prone to commit such acts, or in individuals who are easily persuaded to commit such acts. He also finds that different people use religion as their justification for committing desired actions and feels that it does not matter how a person rationalizes doing good things so long as they do good things. He will however viscously attack the concept of a supreme being. He just does not denigrate the holder of a god belief as often as others of his atheistic bent.