Travel Diary 5

So, here I am in Oxford, about to go and explore. The conference in Göttingen was absolutely marvellous. I met many interesting people (below the fold I tell you about a few). My only objection was that there was too much data! I’m a philosopher, Jim, not a scientist.

Actually, a comment by Mike Arnold, one of many interesting and really nice people that he felt humble as a botanist before the data the primatologists had on hybridisation gave me the introduction to my talk. I was the final speaker, and I think they wanted something that would not tax minds all that much. So I got up, repeated Mike’s comment and then said that by extension, I should be most humble of all. I had no data of any kind.

Nevertheless my talk was received well (judging by the unsought compliments at dinner), and I think even the curmudgeons among them (hard to identify as they were) thought that I had said something worthwhile.

A random sampling of the folk I met:

Jenny Tung, one of those young and incredibly talented people who give us collectively hope for the future while at the same time making us individually really envious. Jenny is a grad student at Duke who works on baboons (which seem to be the major problem group for hybrids if the conference is anything to go by). She is a student of Susan Alberts, who did not attend. I think that by the end of the conference I had her convinced there was no information in genes, but she deferred to a friend who is a mathematician, so I’ll no doubt hear back on that.

David Weisrock, from the University of Kentucky. David works in lemurs and salamanders, two very charismatic fauna. His work on the Madagascan fauna and biogeography was amazing; he works with Anne Yoder, a well known primatologist at Duke, who was also there.

Tom Struhsaker, who apparently was one of the first people to identify hybridism among primates over 40 years ago. I gather he spends more time in East Africa than in Duke even now. He works on the Colobus monkeys, who, you guessed, hybridise.

Kevin Omland, from UMBC (The University of Maryland, Baltimore County). Kevin works on ducks and ravens and bird hybridisation in general. His talk was really interesting, on polyphyly in trees and whether it is informative of hybridisation and introgression, or merely incomplete lineage sorting.

Dorit Liebers-Helbig of the Deutsches Meermuseum demolished an icon of partial hybridisation – the Herring Gull complex. So far from being a ring species, her work and that of her collaborators shows that they are in fact good species, with some derived and possible hybrids within the group.

And I should mention that Mike’s opening lecture was also very interesting, although I disagreed with him about the tree of life being now inutile, a point for another post.

Off to do some real work now. Thanks to Dietmar Zinner and colleagues for the symposium. It was definitely one of the best I have attended, a view shared by several others I spoke to.