Event Description Nathaniel Shoobs, BEES PhD Student
“Why Study the Systematics and Evolution of Insular Land Snails? Exploring Evolutionary Pattern and Process in the Galápagos Endemic Land Snail Genus Naesiotus”
The existence of endemic land snails on the majority of the world’s oceanic islands has fascinated and perplexed naturalists for centuries. How can animals with such poor dispersal abilities consistently find their way across thousands of miles of ocean to the most remote islands on the planet? Furthermore, how (and why) does the incredible specific and morphological diversity observed in insular land snails come to be? Starting with Darwin, naturalists and zoogeographers have grappled with the ‘paradoxical’ facts of land snail distribution—and the peculiar biological traits that generate these distributions—in the light of evolution.
What can spatiotemporal patterns of diversity and distribution of insular land snails show us about the processes of (non)adaptive evolution, speciation, and extinction?
In this talk, I answer these questions through a discussion of the genesis and scope of my research program in the collection-based revisionary systematics and evolutionary ecology of Neotropical land snails. Particular attention is paid to my recent museum- and field-research* on the poorly known land snail genus Naesiotus on Galápagos, the most spectacular example of evolutionary radiation in the archipelago.
*feat. WWII air raids, bitter scientific feuds, snail burglary & volcanic eruptions
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