Andrew Berry

Tuesday, October 8th
Virtual Zoom Option
7:30 PM EST

Alfred Russel Wallace: Insects and the Discovery of Evolution

Andrew Berry

Assistant Head Tutor of Integrative Biology

Lecturer on Organismic & Evolutionary Biology

Harvard University

In 1908, at an event to mark the 50th anniversary of the publication of the theory of evolution by natural selection by Charles Darwin and Alfred Russel Wallace, Wallace addressed a simple question: why did it fall to him and Darwin (who had died a long time previously, in 1882) to make the discovery?  Why had the simple insight that is natural selection not occurred to other arguably more penetrating contemporary thinkers?  Wallace’s answer: Beetles.  Both he and Darwin started their careers as naturalists as avid beetle collectors.  Historians of science have traditionally dismissed this claim as a typical instance of Wallace’s modesty, but I will argue that in fact studies of beetles — and other groups of insects — did indeed provide the scientific foundation of the Darwin-Wallace theory. 

Thalles Lavinscky Pereira

Tuesday, May 13th

In-Person Meeting
Virtual Zoom Option
7:30 PM EST

North to Alaska: from NextGen sequencing to Citizen Science aiming to understand the subarctic and Arctic biodiversity

Scientists estimate that there are over 7.5 million species of plants and animals that have yet to be discovered and described. But in a world where extinction may outpace discovery, and global changes are occurring at a faster rate in Arctic and subarctic regions, like Alaska, how can citizen scientists get involved? Join me as I share how residents in Alaska helped me discover and describe a new species of snakeworm gnat (Diptera) and how I used DNA barcoding  (nanopore sequencing technology) to find 50 new species of Phoridae (Diptera).

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