Biologists discuss works on adaptive radiation in Punjabi University

Patiala, February 17

Evolutionary biologists at Princeton University, fellows of Royal Society and Pulitzer Prize winners known for their work with Darwin’s finches on Daphne Major, Prof Peter Grant and Prof Rosemary Grant, discussed their work on adaptive radiation in Darwin’s finches on the second day of international conference on insect systematics and evolutionary biology today.

It was the second day of the three-day event at Punjabi University. The duo talked about their lifelong work on the adaptive radiation in Darwin’s finches while Professor Madeleine Beekman, University of Sydney, known for her work on evolution of the dance language in honeybees, conflict and co-operation in a colony and evolution of cognition discussed honeybees and why these insects are important in answering different questions of evolution.

Prof Tracy Chapman, an evolutionary geneticist from University of East Anglia presented her work on evolution of reproductive traits in fruit flies and how such findings could be used to develop new genetic methods for pest control.

Prof Fernando Gonzales, University of Valencia, discussed the molecular evolutionary epidemiology of different pathogens, RNA viruses such as hepatitis C virus and human immunodeficiency virus (HIV). Dr Anand Krishnan, IISER, Bhopal, Dr Bodhisatta Nandy, IISER Behrampur were also a part of the event.—