Royal Entomological Society
~ Darwin-Wallace Celebratory Meeting ~
Insect evolution below the species level: ecological specialisation and the origin of species
Registration form and full programme can be found at the following link http://www.royensoc.co.uk/meetings.shtml
Wednesday, 22nd April 2009
The Conference Hall, Rothamsted Research, Harpenden, Hertfordshire, AL5 2JQ, UK
Although several people had previously seriously considered the possibility of evolution as the driving force in the origin of species, including Jean-Baptiste Lamarck (1744-1829), Robert Chambers (1802-71) and Erasmus Darwin (1731-1802), it was Erasmus's grandson, Charles Robert Darwin (1809-82) along with Alfred Russel Wallace (1823-1913), who independently put forward the theory of evolution by natural selection in 1858. Darwin subsequently wrote his seminal work, On the Origin of Species the following year, whilst Wallace became a devout follower of Darwin, even publishing a book entitled Darwinism in 1889. Both men provided a workable, and to some extent testable, mechanism for evolution and as such, have freed humanity from myth and superstition. Both were entomologists, being especially interested in beetles (Order Coleoptera), and both were strongly associated with the Royal Entomological Society (Entomological Society as it then was, not gaining its prefix ‘Royal' until 1933): Darwin became a member of Council and Vice-President in 1838, and Wallace was President from 1870-1. Despite the decline of Darwinism at the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th centuries, the acceptance of the ‘Modern Synthesis' in the 1930s-40s onwards has put the theory back centre stage and now few biologists disagree with its basic tenets. Darwin and Wallace are of course famous for other important contributions to biological thought, including Sexual Selection and Zoogeography, respectively. The year 2009 is the bi-centenary of the birth of Darwin in Shrewsbury, England in 1809 and the one hundred and fiftieth anniversary of the publication of the Origin in 1859. The present meeting on insects is thus a celebration of their works, concentrating on the first (and last) stages of evolution...that is to say, at the ecological level. We are fortunate as a Society to have attracted many famous international ecological and evolutionary entomologists as speakers, including:
Igor Emelianov (Rothamsted Research, Harpenden, UK); James Cook (Reading University, UK); Wolfgang W. Weisser (Inst. of Ecology, Jena, Germany) & Wolfgang Völkl, (Bayreuth University, Germany); Alfried Vogler (Imperial College, UK); Daniel Funk (Vanderbilt University, Nashville, Tennessee, USA; Bernhard Seifert (Staatliches Museum für Naturkunde Görlitz, Germany); Gerhard Schöfl & Astrid Groot (Max Planck Institute of Chemical Ecology (MPICE), Jena); Tobias Kaiser & David Heckel (MPICE, Jena); Jean-Christophe Simon & Jean Peccoud (INRA, Rennes, France); Jeffrey L. Feder et al. (University of Notre Dame, Indiana, USA); Brian Fenton (Scottish Crop Research Institute, Dundee, UK) & Steve Foster (Rothamsted Research); Bill Symondson et al. (Cardiff University, UK); David Smith et al. (formerly of the Natural History Museum, Eton College, UK) and Jim Mallet (University College London, UK).
See for further details: www.royensoc.co.uk/meetings.shtml
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