From Darwin to DNA, Studying Evolution in the 21st Century

Tuesday 21st February 2023 from 19:00 for 19:30
Abingdon United Football Club (Northcourt Rd, OX14 1PL, Abingdon)

Please note our move to the third Tuesday of the month for 2023.

When we think of evolution, the first person that springs to mind is Charles Darwin. In The Origin of Species (1859), Darwin presented evidence supporting evolution, proposed the metaphor of an evolutionary ‘tree’, and suggested a mechanism: natural selection acting on variation. But there were still some very big questions, such as the shape of the tree (who is more closely related to whom?) and the nature of the inherited variation (what are variants or mutations?). In this talk, I will explore how animal evolution is studied in the 21st century, with a focus on remarkable new insights we are gaining from molecular biology and genome sequencing. The talk will be accessible to a general audience.

Speaker: Professor Peter Holland

Peter Holland is the Linacre Professor of Zoology at the University of Oxford. After an undergraduate degree in Oxford and PhD in London, he held academic posts in Oxford and Reading before taking up his current post 20 years ago. He has published over 200 scientific papers on genetics and evolution, and an introductory book ‘The Animal Kingdom: A Very Short Introduction’. Peter Holland was elected to Fellowship of the Royal Society in 2003 and has received several awards for his research contributions. These include medals from the Zoological Society, the Genetics Society and the Linnean Society, and most recently the Darwin Medal of the Royal Society.