Bennett Research Seminar: Impacts of Climate Warming on Hybrid Zone Dynamics

This is part of our 2011 Summer Lecture Series. It is free and open to the public.

The ecology and evolutionary biology of insect–plant associations has realized extensive attention, especially during the past 60 years. The classifications of continuous variation in biodiversity, ranging from global patterns to localized insect–plant associations remain academically contentious. Semantic and taxonomical disagreements sometimes detract from more important ecological and evolutionary processes that drive diversification, the dynamics of gene flow and local extinctions. The Papilionidae (swallowtail butterflies) have provided a model for enhanced understanding of ecological patterns and evolutionary processes, including host-associated genetic divergence, genomic mosaics, genetic hitchhiking and sex-linked speciation genes. Mark Scriber will discuss how apparent homoploid hybrid speciation in Papilio appears to have been catalyzed by climate warming-induced interspecific introgression of some, but not all, species diagnostic traits. J. Mark Scriber is a Professor Emeritus in the Department of Entomology at Michigan State University and a Research Associate at the McGuire Center for Butterflies & Biodiversity at the University of Florida. His research deals with the ecology and evolution of butterflies.