SCIENCE INDEX 2000 2001 2002 Biology

Evolution Film Festival featured at joint scientific meetings

Jim Barlow, Life Sciences Editor
(217) 333-5802; b-james3@uiuc.edu

6/11/02

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. — An evening Evolution Film Festival and talk by a world-renowned marine biologist will be free to the public when more than 1,000 scientists come to the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign June 28-July 2 for the joint annual meetings of the Society for the Study of Evolution and the Society for Systematic Biology.

While the professional sessions of the "Evolution 2002" conference are open only to registered scientists, the public is encouraged to attend the public-oriented events, said co-organizer May Berenbaum, the head of the department of entomology.

Stephen R. Palumbi, a professor of evolutionary biology at Harvard University, will speak publicly at 6 p.m. June 29 (Saturday) in Foellinger Auditorium, located at the south end of the campus Quad. He will speak on "The Importance of Rapid Evolution in Health, Agriculture and Biotechnology."

Palumbi is best known for his work on marine mammal conservation. He was the first scientist to determine, using DNA analysis, that protected whale and dolphin species were being used in food products in retail markets around the world. His DNA-testing technique also has been used to document illegal whaling activities. As a scientist, he uses molecular tools in his study of the origins of diversity in marine life.

The Evolution Film Festival will be hosted by Berenbaum, founder of the popular Insect Fear Film Festival, and Richard Leskosky, a professor of cinema studies and former president of the Society for Animation Studies. The festival will run from 7 p.m. to 8:30 p.m., July 1 (Monday), also in Foellinger Auditorium.

Award-winning animated shorts revolving around the theme of evolutionary change will be shown. Among them will be the "A World is Born" segment from Walt Disney’s "Fantasia," and the Italian-made "Allegro Non Troppo" that satirizes "Fantasia."

Among other shorts to be shown will be "How Dinosaurs Learned to Fly," "Evolution," and "64,000,000 Years Ago," all from the National Film Board of Canada.

Scientists will attend council meetings on Friday and professional symposia at various locations on campus Saturday through Tuesday. The participating scientists study evolution from all branches of biology. Sessions will range from molecular evolution and genomics to phylogenetics and systematics to geographic variation, speciation and conservation. Conference headquarters will be the Illini Union.

A local biological challenge – the western corn rootworm – will serve as the symbol for the conference. The beetle that spawns the rootworm has adapted to survive the agricultural practice of crop rotation. For more than 20 years, eggs laid in cornfields in late summer would starve to death as grubs when they hatched in the following spring in soybean fields. Now farmers must consider the use of pesticides in first-year corn to counter the rootworms.

Campus sponsors of the joint meetings of the two professional societies are the School of Integrative Biology, the Office of the Vice Chancellor for Research, and the Taylor & Francis Group, an international academic publishing company that produces more than 700 journals and 1,800 new books annually.

(MEDIA ADVISORY: Members of the news media are welcome to cover any of the professional symposia, as well as the public talk by Stephen Palumbi and the Evolution Film Festival. A detailed program listing times and locations of the academic meetings can be downloaded directly via the Web (http://www.conted.uiuc.edu/ci/Evolution_program.pdf).