EEB Seminar: December 12th

This week, we welcome our own Bob Montgomerie.

DAZED AND CONFUSED: a naturalist in the 20^th century

Abstract: As I am retiring from my faculty position at the end of this month, I have been asked to give this exit seminar, though I am not actually going anywhere. I will reflect on what it was like to be a naturalist in the last half of the twentieth century, with the coming of age of evolutionary biology and the emergence of evolutionary ecology and behavioural ecology as vibrant and exciting subdisciplines. This has truly been a golden age for evolutionary biology with new concepts (kin selection, sperm competition, honest signalling, island biogeography, selfish genes), new instruments for tracking, recording and observing animals and plants (GPS, drones, satellites, citizen science) , and new tools for data analysis, writing, and drawing graphs (desktop computers, GUIs, R, machine learning). While I have embraced all of these ideas and technologies with a passion, I still see a lot of value in getting out into the wilds with a pencil, a notebook, and an enquiring mind.