SPEAKERS

Roy Caldwell is a Professor in the Department of Integrative Biology and Director of the University of California Museum of Paleontology. For more than 40 years, he has prowled coral reefs from Bermuda and Panama to Australia and Indonesia. While most of his research has been on the behavior and ecology of stomatopods (mantis shrimp) and octopus, he and his students also have worked on coral reef conservation and restoration and even participated in the discovery of a new species of living coelacanth from Indonesia.

Robert Dudley is a Professor of Integrative Biology at UC Berkeley. His work on the biomechanics and evolution of animal flight involves both laboratory and fieldwork, the latter most recently including sites in southwest China and Amazonian Peru. Most of this work involves the study of hummingbirds and flying insects, although gliding lizards from Southeast Asia and flying squirrels have also been the subjects of recent study.

Leslea Hlusko is an Assistant Professor of Integrative Biology at UC Berkeley. Her research combines paleontology and genetics to study the evolution of the mammalian skeleton, with a focus on primates. The genetics research is primarily done in collaboration with the Southwest Foundation for Biomedical Research in Texas. She has conducted paleontological field research in Kenya and Ethiopia and is currently the co-director of a project in Tanzania.

Eugenie Scott holds a Ph.D. in physical anthropology from the University of Missouri. A human biologist, her research has been in medical anthropology and skeletal biology. For several years, she has served as Executive Director of NCSE, a pro-evolution nonprofit science education organization with members in every state.

John Thompson is Professor of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology and Director of the STEPS Institute for Innovation in Environmental Research at UC Santa Cruz. His research uses approaches from ecology, biogeography, and molecular biology to study how coevolution organizes the Earth's biodiversity. His studies have included organisms as different as insects, birds, plants, fungi, bacteria, and phages. He has studied coevolved interactions on multiple continents and in environments ranging from true wildernesses to laboratory microcosms.

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