Darwin Day 2019: Darwin's finches

Welcome to the annual Darwin Day lectures at the University of Oslo! Lectures by Peter R. Grant, B. Rosemary Grant, Arkhat Abzhanov and Leif Andersson. Since Darwin’s time insights from the fields of genetics, genomics, behavior and ecology have continued to illuminate how and why species evolve. At this event you will hear about the progress that has been made in our understanding of speciation and related topics. The event is part of the Oslo Life Science Conference 11–14 February 2019.

Portrait of Darwin Day speakers for 2019.
From left to right: Peter Grant, Rosemary Grant, Arkhat Abzhanov, and Leif Andersson. Their talks will be accessible and of interest to biologists and non-biologists alike. Peter & Rosemary Grant have been studying Darwin’s finches on the Galápagos islands since 1973, and their work combines ecology and behavior with genetics and more recently genomics.

Scroll down for the program. You can read more about all the talks at the abstract page.


Peter Grant is a Professor (Emeritus) of Ecology & Evolutionary Biology at Princeton University, USA. He retired in 2008, but continues his research on the finches, seeking to understand the origin of new species, their ecological interactions, their persistence in different communities and their ultimate extinction.

Rosemary Grant is a Senior Research Biologist (Emeritus) at Princeton University, USA. Together with her husband Peter – both born in England – she has been studying Darwin’s finches on the Galápagos islands since 1973.

Arkhat Abzhanov is a Reader in Evolution and Developmental Genetics at Imperial College London and Natural History Museum, London, England. His research group is interested in a variety of topics related to the vertebrate head development and developmental evolution. They use morphometric, molecular, cellular and genetic approaches, and the species they work with range from the laboratory "model" systems, such as chicken embryos and mouse mutants, to the "non-model" species used for evolutionary developmental studies, for example, Darwin's Finches and their relatives.

Leif Andersson is a Professor in Functional Genomics, at Uppsala University, Sweden, and Visiting Professor of Animal Genomics at Texas A&M University, USA. He completed his PhD in Animal Breeding and Genetics in 1984, at the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences, Uppsala, and was – in the late 1980s – among the first scientists to apply molecular genetics to domestic animals.

(Source: Mainly the speaker's homepages.)


PROGRAM

10:15 Introduction

Nils Chr. Stenseth (Homepage)
CEES & The Faculty of Mathematics and Natural Sciences, UiO (Norway)


40 years of evolution: Darwin’s finches on Daphne Major island

Peter R. Grant & B. Rosemary Grant, Princeton University (USA)
(Peter's homepage & Rosemary's homepagePeter and Rosemary in Wikipedia.)


(30 minute break.)


Shaping the beaks of Darwin's finches: developmental mechanisms of the famous adaptive radiation

Arkhat Abzhanov, Imperial College London and Natural History Museum (UK) (Homepage)


Evolution and ecological adaptation as revealed by whole genome sequencing of Darwin’s finches and other species

Leif Andersson, Uppsala University (Sweden), Texas A&M University (USA), Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences (Sweden), Princeton University (USA) (Homepage)


13:45 End


Abstracts

Published Feb. 23, 2018 10:12 AM - Last modified Mar. 9, 2021 9:32 AM