The Evolutionary Morphology Seminar Series brings together students, faculty, post-docs, and the broader evolutionary biology community, for presentations on interesting and novel topics that are relevant to research focused on evolution, ecology, morphology, geophysical sciences, theoretical evolutionary models, anatomy, and more.
The 2024-2025 EvMorph series winds down with a diverse and wide-ranging lineup of speakers presenting in Spring Quarter:
| Date / Time | Speaker | Affiliation | Seminar title |
| April 3, 5pm | Linta Reji | UChicago GeoSci |
From gradients to shocks: How microbial communities adapt and respond
|
| April 17, 5pm | Sewall Wright Lecture: Martha Muñoz | Yale University | Discovering the motors and brakes of evolution |
| May 1, 5pm | Megan Whitney | Loyola University Chicago | The not-so-simple origins of mammalian dental complexity |
| May 15, 5pm | Tauana Cunha | Loyola University Chicago |
tbd |
| May 22, 5pm | David Blackburn | Florida Museum of Natural History | tbd |
The annual Sewall Wright Lecture honors Dr. Sewall Wright (Dec. 21, 1889–March 3, 1988), who was a pioneer in evolutionary biology and a co-founder of population genetics. For three decades of his career, Professor Wright worked and taught at the University of Chicago.
Each year, students in the Darwinian Sciences cluster come together to nominate and vote for their chosen Sewall Wright speaker; the selected speaker has the honor of delivering a special seminar as part of the Spring Quarter Evolutionary Morphology Seminar Series.
Students, if you missed an EvMorph: just click on the seminar title to access the Zoom recording
Winter 2025
- Jan. 16, Arjan Mann, Field Museum Geology, The Late Carboniferous radiation of tetrapods and the origins of terrestrial ecosystems: New insights from the Midwest!
- Jan. 30, Ava Ghezelayagh, UChicago GeoSci, Space, time and trees: Understanding diversification in the oceans
- Feb. 13, Phil Anderson, UIUC, Living on the Point: A decade of puncture research from Crossbows to Fish Pendula
- Feb. 20, Admissions EvMorph: John Bates & Shannon Hackett, Field Museum Birds, The bioeconomy through the lens of birds and biodiversity
Autumn 2024
- Sept. 24, Adam Welz, nature conservationist & writer, Ameliorating climate change and the challenge of biological conservation (email evbio@uchicago for link to seminar)
- Oct. 10, Lauren Carley, UChicago E&E, Causes and consequences of intraspecific variation in plants
- Oct. 17, Anjali Goswami, Natural History Museum, London, The Shape of Life: A deep time perspective
- Oct. 24, Dakota (Cody) McCoy, UChicago E&E, Solar-powered coral reef symbioses, colorful birds, and primate pregnancy
- Nov. 7, Tyler Karp, UChicago GeoSci, Herbivore-fire interactions across spatial and temporal scales
- Nov. 21, Julia Kreiner, UChicago E&E, The tempo and mode of plant adaptation to contemporary agricultural environments