Marker Lectures in Evolutionary Biology set for Oct. 8, 9
Joan Strassmann, Charles Rebstock Professor of Biology in the College of Arts and Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis, will present the Russell E. Marker Lectures in Evolutionary Biology on Oct. 8 and 9 in Foster Auditorium, Paterno Library, on the Penn State University Park campus. The free public lectures are sponsored by the Penn State Eberly College of Science.
The series includes a lecture intended for a general audience, titled “Family Life and the Importance of Cooperation from Animals to Microbes,” at 3 p.m. on Tuesday, Oct. 8, as well as a more-specialized lecture, titled “Why Symbioses Are So Common: The Amoebae–Bacteria Case,” at 3 p.m. on Wednesday, Oct. 9.
“Family Life and the Importance of Cooperation from Animals to Microbes”
Among the most interesting kinds of interactions are social ones where one individual makes a sacrifice for another. Understanding how such interactions evolve and are maintained is one of the great questions of biology. Examples come from all kingdoms of life. A bird plunges its beak into the gaping mouth of another, relinquishing a choice morsel of food. A mated wasp queen joins another and takes on the worker role, bringing caterpillars to the young. A formerly independent amoeba merges with thousands, ultimately dying to create part of a stalk that lifts living spores above the soil. What these interactions have in common is sacrifice by one for another. Such sacrifices are most common within families where cooperation can overcome selfish individual interests. But exactly how cooperation evolves and what selfish interests remain is complex. This presentation will begin with cooperation in general, present examples from birds and wasps, and ultimately focus on social amoebas, where cooperation and its mechanisms can be dissected right down to the genetic level.
“Why Symbioses Are So Common: The Amoebae–Bacteria Case”
A surprise in biology is how often one organism recruits others for significant work. Perhaps the most obvious is the way many plants outsource key steps in reproduction to more-mobile intermediaries. Other examples are legion and include gut microbiomes in all animals and sugar-digesting aphid and cicada endosymbionts. How natural selection operates on mutualisms and symbioses can be hard to tease apart since the fates of multiple parties are intertwined and yet separate. The social amoeba Dictyostelium discoideum has diverse symbionts from the obligate Amoebophilis and Neochlamydiato three facultative species of Paraburkholderia. In this talk, Strassmann will apply the tools of geographic surveys, microscopy, fitness assays, genomics, experimental evolution, and more to understand the costs and benefits of symbiosis to interacting parties.
About the speaker
Joan E. Strassmann is Charles Rebstock Professor of Biology at Washington University in St. Louis. She earned a bachelor of science degree in zoology from the University of Michigan, with distinction and honors in zoology, in 1974 (and a Hopwood Award for undergraduate fiction) and a doctorate in zoology from the University of Texas at Austin in 1979. Her dissertation research explored theories of social behavior and evolution using individually marked social wasps in wild colonies. In 1980, when she was 27, she joined the faculty at Rice University, eventually becoming department chair and Harry C. and Olga K. Wiess Professor in the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology. In 2011, Strassmann and her husband and collaborator, Spencer T. Olin Professor David C. Queller, joined the Department of Biology at Washington University in St. Louis.
Strassmann and Queller collaborated on many studies of social insects at field sites in Venezuela, Brazil, and Italy. In particular, they explored the tension between conflict and cooperation in families. They pioneered molecular methods to understand specifics of genetic structure underlying the complex social systems of social insects. In 2000, they switched to a new system, the social amoeba Dictyostelium discoideum, which has both family-level altruism and symbioses with bacteria. Their current research involves this system and a theory that challenges our understanding of what it means to be an organism. They explore life cycles, kin recognition, and organismality at genetic, behavioral, and evolutionary levels. Dictyostelium interactions with symbiotic bacteria have much to reveal about the origins of obligate symbiosis. They are also interested in the interplay between philosophy and biology on concepts like the veil of ignorance, privatization, synthetic organisms, and altruism.
Strassmann has published over 200 articles. She is a member of the National Academy of Sciences (2013). She has received a John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Fellowship (2004), been elected a fellow of the Animal Behavior Society (2002), the American Association for the Advancement of Science (2004), and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (2008), and served as president of the Animal Behavior Society (2012). She writes a popular blog on the intricacies of academia and is an award-winning teacher who has her students write for Wikipedia. She has written a book titled “Slow Birding,” extolling birding within 20 miles of home and revealing the nefarious lives of our favorite animals.
Strassmann and Queller have three grown children: Anna, Daniel, and Philip.
About the Marker Lectures
The Marker Lectures were established in 1984 through a gift from the late Russell Earl Marker, professor emeritus of organic chemistry at Penn State, whose pioneering synthetic methods revolutionized the steroid hormone industry and opened the door to the current era of hormone therapies, including the birth control pill.
The Marker endowment allows the Penn State Eberly College of Science to present annual Marker Lectures in astronomy and astrophysics, the chemical sciences, evolutionary biology, genetic engineering, the mathematical sciences, and the physical sciences.