Oct. 24-26, 2009, Yingjie Overseas Exchange Center, Peking University, Beijing, China中文版

Genes and Speciation - 150 years of Darwin and (nearly) 150 years of Mendel

Chung-I Wu

Beijing Institute of Genomics
University of Chicago

Abstract

It is not generally recognized that genetic architecture may play a decisive role in speciation. Darwin famously conceived a blending-genetics model of evolution by natural selection. The re-discovery of Mendelian genetics in the dawn of the 20th century thus triggered a backlash which was later rectified by neo-Darwinism after the incorporation of Mendelian genetics into the model. The debate on the mode of speciation in the days of Ernst Mayer also has much to do with the genetic architecture driving speciation. The popular allopatric view of speciation is based strongly on the pre-supposition of "genomic integrity". I will discuss 6 sets of genomic data that suggest speciation may be happening all the time in the presence of continual gene flow. Parapatric, rather than allopatric, speciation is likely the more common mode of specation.

Chung-I Wu

Beijing Institute of Genomics
University of Chicago

Biography

Michael Benton is Professor of Vertebrate Palaeontology at the University  of Bristol, UK.  His major current interests are the origins of novelty in evolution, mass extinctions, and dinosaurs.  He has written more than 200 scientific articles in technical journals, including 15 in Nature, and Science, as well as fifty books, including technical volumes, textbooks, and popular books.  He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, and was an Edward P. Bass Distinguished Visiting Scholar at Yale  University in 2009.  Among current projects, he is working on the end-Permian mass extinction in the red beds of Russia, exceptional preservation of feathers in the Jehol Group (with colleagues from IVPP, Beijing), and diversity and disparity in evolutionary radiations of various groups of vertebrates.