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SUMMARY:Simpson's question: How does behaviour determine evolution? - Prof
 essor Rebecca Kilner\, Department of Zoology 18.00 - 19.00 
DTSTART:20200224T180000Z
DTEND:20200224T190000Z
UID:TALK130675@talks.cam.ac.uk
CONTACT:Beverley Larner
DESCRIPTION:\nFor more than 50 years\, the scientific study of animal beha
 viour has been defined by Tinbergen’s Four Questions. Two of his questio
 ns consider the connection between evolution and animal behaviour. They as
 k: how is behaviour is adaptive\, and what is its evolutionary history?\n\
 nFive years before Tinbergen asked his Four Questions\, G. G. Simpson pose
 d a question of his own. Simpson was a palaeontologist and one of the arch
 itects of the Modern Synthesis (the body of work in the first half of the 
 20th century that married a Darwinian view of natural selection with genet
 ic analyses of variation and inheritance). Simpson had successfully introd
 uced the concepts of the Modern Synthesis into palaeontology and set his s
 ights on achieving the same for animal behaviour. His question gets straig
 ht to the heart of the matter: How does behaviour evolve and how does it t
 hen determine subsequent evolution?\n\nYet Simpson’s question has been o
 vershadowed by Tinbergen’s Questions\, and largely forgotten. Far more w
 ork has considered how behaviour is adaptive than how behaviour contribute
 s to evolution. In this talk\, I will explain why the answers to Simpson
 ’s Question matter now\, and describe some experiments that explain exac
 tly how behaviour can affect the course of evolution.\n\nOur research focu
 ses on the burying beetle (or sexton beetle)\, an insect that is abundant 
 in the woodlands surrounding Cambridge and that has a remarkable natural h
 istory. It is named for its habit of burying the dead\, and tending the gr
 aveyard. It locates a small corpse to breed upon\, such as a mouse or a so
 ngbird\, shaves off the fur or feathers\, rolls the flesh into a ball and 
 then inters it in a shallow grave where it becomes an edible nest for its 
 larvae. The parent beetles then tend to their young\, by feeding them and 
 defending them from attack. The natural history of these animals lends its
 elf to experimental evolution\, and lets us test directly how behaviour de
 termines evolution.
LOCATION:Bristol-Myers Squibb Lecture Theatre\, Department of Chemistry
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