"Charles Darwin's 1837 sketch, his first diagram of an evolutionary tree from his First Notebook on Transmutation of Species (1837)". Image: Wikimedia Commons
The Evolution Lecture is a student-hosted talk. The speaker is selected by the students based on the criteria of an inspiring evolutionary biologist with groundbreaking ideas. This lecture series recognizes the cross-cutting nature of research in evolutionary biology, from theoretical foundations to the origins of biodiversity. Launched in 1998, we have hosted many luminaries in the field of evolution over the past three decades.
| Year | Speaker | Affiliation | Title |
| Mar 2025 | Mark Kirkpatrick | U. of Texas | Sex antagonistic selection and the evolution of sexual dimorphism |
| Feb 2024 | Noah Whiteman | UC Berkeley | A tale of two toxins: the acquisition of defensive toxins by animals through horizontal gene transfer |
| Dec 2022 | Anne Yoder | Duke U. | Cryptic patterns of speciation in cryptic primates: mouse lemurs, Madagascar, and the multispecies coalescent |
| Oct 2022 | Lacey Knowles | U. of Michigan | What’s missing from the speciation continuum and why it matters |
| Mar 2021 | Trevor Price | U. of Chicago | The distribution of biodiversity across the Himalaya |
| Feb 2020 | Nancy Emery | U. of Colorado Boulder | The evolution of dispersal in heterogeneous environments |
| Nov 2018 | Leonie Moyle | Indiana U. | Mechanisms of rapid trait evolution in a recent radiation (...speculations from a quintet of studies...) |
| Apr 2018 | Jonathon Losos | Washington U | Experimental studies in evolution: research on lizard adaptation in the Bahamas |
| Mar 2017 | Pleuni Pennings | UCSF | On the evolution of HIV evolution: a story about Freddy Mercury, Charlie Sheen and selective sweeps |
| Feb 2016 | Seth Bordenstein | Vanderbilt | Animal-microbe symbioses and The Origin of Species |
| Jan 2015 | Sharon Strauss | UC Davis | Integrating molecular phylogenies with ecological data expands our ability to address classic ecological questions |
| 2013 | David Reznick | UC Riverside | |
| 2012 | Marcus Kronforst | U. of Chicago | |
| Feb 2011 | Maria Servedio | U. of North Carolina, Chapel Hill | The roles of sexual selection in speciation |
| Sep 2009 | Jonathan Losos | Washington U., St. Louis | Lizards in an evolutionary tree: ecology and adaptive radiation of Anoles |
| Oct 2008 | Trevor Price | U. of Chicago | Speciation into and out of the Himalayas |
| Jan 2008 | David Reznick | UC Riverside | The evolution of placentas in the fish family Poeciliidae: an empirical study of macroevolution |
| Mar 2007 | Stuart West | U. of Oxford | |
| Apr 2006 | Paul Brakefield | U. of Leiden | Butterfly evo-devo and what determines occupancy of morphospace |
| Mar 2005 | Brian Charlesworth | U. of Edinburgh | The importance of being closely linked |
| Mar 2004 | Sara Via | U. of Maryland | Genetic mechanisms of acological speciation in an insect herbivore |
| Apr 2003 | Jerry Coyne | U. of Chicago | The problem of speciation |
| Mar 2002 | Doug Schemske | Michigan State U. | |
| Apr 2000 | Deborah Charlesworth | U. of Edinburgh | The evolution of X- and Y-chromosomal gene sequences in a plant sex chromosome system |
| Apr 1999 | Allen Orr | U. of Rochester | The genetics of speciation in Drosophila: recent progress |
| Jan 1998 | Jim Crow | U. of Wisconsin–Madison | Inaugural lecture: The high spontaneous mutation rate. Is it a health hazard? |