Each year, Director William (Ned) Friedman and the Arnold Arboretum present the Director’s Lecture Series, featuring nationally recognized experts addressing an array of topics related to Earth’s biodiversity and evolutionary history, the environment, conservation biology, and key social issues associated with current science. Visit the Winter 2012 DLS to listen to audio and view videos from last year’s series.
Plant biodiversity. How did it all begin? And what are some of the key evolutionary twists and turns that have deposited us into a world teaming with photosynthetic life? Join us as we explore how lunch for a unicellular organism inadvertently laid the groundwork for the first plants, and how they then went on to produce exquisitely beautiful multicellular photosynthetic lineages dozens of times, only one of which made it out of the water and onto land 475 million years ago. And finally, we will reflect on what might have been (and what might be) if one or two of these twists and turns had gone differently in evolutionary history.
James Hanken, Alexander Agassiz Professor of Zoology, Curator in Herpetology, and Director, Museum of Comparative Zoology; and Professor of Biology, Department of Organismic and Evolutionary Biology, Harvard University
Monday, February 25, 7:00–8:30pm [Hunnewell Building]
The state of biodiversity in 2013 presents a tremendous paradox. Biodiversity science is more productive today than ever before; the rate of new species discovery, for example, is higher than it’s ever been. At the same time, the rate of species extinction is increasing dramatically due to human-mediated environmental degradation on a global scale. This crisis for the future of biological diversity offers unparalleled challenges and opportunities for the professional scientific community, which is responding with new approaches and a heightened sense of urgency, with increasing focus both on conservation of species and their habitats and on the major drivers of extinction. Register »
As coal fueled the industrial revolution, one could say that plastic built the modern world. But a century into our love affair with plastic, we’re starting to realize it’s not such a healthy union. Plastics draw on dwindling fossil fuels, leach harmful chemicals, litter landscapes, and destroy marine life. And yet each year we use and consume more; we’ve produced as much plastic in the past decade as we did in the entire twentieth century. Journalist Susan Freinkel will speak about our dependence on this material, guiding us through history, science, and the global economy to assess the real impact of plastic in our lives. She’ll present a new way of thinking about a substance that has become the defining medium—and metaphor—of our age. Her book, Plastic: A Toxic Love Story, will be available for purchase and signing. Register »
What defines an individual? Can an animal be construed an individual if its anatomy, physiology, development, and even its immune systems depend on symbiotic microorganisms? What becomes of the genetic and evolutionary individual when inherited symbionts provide selectable variation for the host? Animal plus symbiont equals…what? Super-animal? Team? Holobiont? Have we been lumping and sorting erroneously only to learn through advances in biotechnology that individuals are really communities or, perhaps, relationships? Join us for a mind-bending presentation that may leave you reassessing your place in the biosphere. Register »