Thirty or 40 years ago, the textbook for an evolutionary biology class would be thick with facts on the fossil record, comparative anatomy and taxonomy.
By contrast, the chapter on genetics as supporting Charles Darwin’s notion of descent with modification would be somewhat slim. Today, that chapter has all but consumed textbooks.
“If you look at the modern textbook on evolutionary biology, they’ve become predominately stories about genetics and what complete genomes, or even just extensive genome sequencing, have been telling us,” said Robert Wayne, professor of ecology and evolutionary biology, pointing at his crammed office bookshelves as evidence.
“Darwin himself would have been surprised at the detail we know about how genes are inherited and how the expression is regulated,” he said.
To highlight modern science’s elaboration on evolution and to mark the 150th anniversary of Darwin’s breakthrough publication of “On the Origin of Species,” the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology teamed up with the UCLA Center for Society and Genetics last year to host the Darwin Evolving series.
The popular lecture series continues this year with professors from the department speaking about their latest research. Beginning with Professor Blair Van Valkenburgh’s discussion on the sabertooth tiger, the lectures in the series have focused on Darwin’s naturalistic curiosity and the diversity of life in mammals, said department chair and professor Daniel Blumstein. His lecture on the evolutionary function of alarm calls was held earlier this month.
“The lectures are a pubic outreach effort to highlight modern evolutionary biology and really communicate our excitement about it,” Blumstein said of the current series, which will wrap up on May 12 with Professor Wayne’s lecture on the evolutionary history of the domestic dog.