Tahiti, Bermuda, Madeira, Bali. Everyone loves islands, but no one loves them more than an evolutionary biologist. From the dwarf elephants of Crete to the carnivorous caterpillars of Hawaii and the snaggly-fingered aye-aye of Madagascar, islands present a cornucopia of biodiversity. Darwin drew much of his inspiration from island stopovers on his fabled Beagle voyage, as did Alfred Russel Wallace on his own perambulations through the East Indies. Ever since Darwin and Wallace jointly proposed their theory of evolution by natural selection, biologists have returned to islands to gain fresh insights. Jonathan Losos, Monique and Philip Lehner Professor for the Study of Latin America, Department of Organismic and Evolutionary Biology and Curator in Herpetology, Museum of Comparative Zoology, Harvard University, will discuss the relevance of islands to our understanding of evolution and its processes on Thursday, April 23 at 6 pm at the Geological Lecture Hall, 24 Oxford Street. Free and open to the public. Free parking is also available at the 52 Oxford Street Garage.
