Meeting 1200 Minutes

Minutes from the 1200th Meeting of the Cambridge Entomological Club

President Tianzhu Xiong called the 1200th meeting of the Cambridge Entomological Club to order at 7:35 pm on Tuesday, December 10th 2019 in MCZ 101.

Approx. 23 members and guests were in attendance.

Old business: Nichole Merullo, Helen McCreery, and Fernando Seixas were approved for Club membership.

President Tianzhu proposed taking a photo documenting the 1200th  meeting, a photo was taken at the conclusion of the meeting and posted on the Club’s FaceBook page.

New business:

Members are reminded to pay their dues.

Rook Zheng was nominated for membership.

Our speaker was Prof. Sean Mullen of Boston University. His talk was entitled “Why more evolutionary biologists should study Admiral butterflies #moreinterestingthanheliconius

North American admiral butterflies (genus Limenitis) are well known for examples of mimicry and hybridization. Sean began his talk with a discussion of early investigations involving Limenitis, including the first experimental evidence of Batesian mimicry and the historical debate about the nature of species boundaries. More recent work has revealed a close phylogenetic relationship between Limenitis and the hyper-diverse Neotropical genus Adelpha. This has inspired questions about the evolutionary processes shaping latitudinal gradients in species richness, and illustrates the power of this system as a testing ground for mimicry theory. Sean presented recent work from his lab about the history of mimetic character evolution in the genus, and discussed some future opportunities for research.

The meeting was adjourned at 8:50 for discussion and refreshments.

Respectfully submitted, Andrea Golden, CEC Secretary