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Memórias do Instituto Oswaldo Cruz
Fundação Oswaldo Cruz, Fiocruz
ISSN: 1678-8060 EISSN: 1678-8060
Vol. 92, Num. 4, 1997, pp. 575-576
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Mem Inst Oswaldo Cruz, Rio de Janeiro, Vol. 92(4),
July/August 1997, pp. 575-576
The 50th Anniversary Meeting of the Society for the Study of Evolution
and the Annual Meeting of the Society for the Study of Evolution and the
Society of Systematic Biologists
Saint Louis, Missouri, USA
June 19-23, 1996
Jeffrey Jon Shaw
Departamento de Parasitologia, Instituto de CiEncia Biomedicas,
Universidade de Sao Paulo, Av. Prof. Lineu Prestes 1374, 05508-900 Sao
Paulo, SP, Brasil
Code Number: OC97105
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MEETING REPORT
A total of 648 contributions were divided between posters, symposia and
oral presentations at this conjoint meeting of the two societies which
covered a very large number of fields from population genetics to the
relationship of evolution to present day conservation problems. The oral
presentations were divided into 76 sessions whose titles ranged from
Molecular Evolution to Geographic Variation and Hybrid Zones. The interest
in Molecular Systematics was emphasized by the fact that 16 different
sessions were devoted to this subject. Unlike many meetings only the title
of the papers/posters are given in the program and there are no
accompanying abstracts. This is perhaps a good thing as they cannot be
quoted in any publication, as is often the case with abstracts of other
meetings, and contributors are thus encouraged to publish their
presentations as papers if they want them to be cited by other workers. The
subject matter of the sessions was also extremely broad and there were
papers on very many different groups of both animals and plants. In one
session on Molecular Systematics, for example, there were contributions on
annelid worms and growth hormone introns in Salmonid fish. This emphasized
how similar technology is being used today for many taxonomically different
animal and plant groups.
A highlight of the meeting was the lecture commemorating the 50th
Anniversary of the Society for the Study of Evolution (SSE) which was given
by one of its founder members, the world famous systematists and
evolutionary biologist, Prof. Ernest Mayer. The title of his lecture was
"Evolutionary Biology as a Discrete Biological Discipline" and Professor
Myer must have broken many records in this lecture especially since he is
now over 90 years old and is extremely lucid, as was evident by his replies
to the questions.
In general it was possible to divide most of the contributions into
those that dealt with the analytical methods used to determine the
phylogeny and the relationships of organisms and those related to the
evolution and classification of fossil and living organisms. Within these
areas there was much discussion of the use of morphological and molecular
characters. It was emphasized by many speakers that morphological
characters would continue to be the prime method for identification for
most groups since it is physically impossible to apply molecular techniques
to all living matter. Thus morphology will continue to be the backbone of
identification for the very large numbers of specimens that are collected
and identified in the majority of the ecological studies presently being
performed around the world. Participants presented both morphological and
molecular studies on many different living organisms and numerous speakers
drew attention to the danger of producing phylogenetic trees using
molecular characters which may represent only a very small part of the
whole genome or an insufficient number of the taxa.
Questions on taxonomic methodology were addressed by many speakers
including Joe Felsenstein (University of Washington) who discussed
comparative methods allowing for individual error. An important
contribution was made by Gavin Naylor (Harvard University) which emphasized
that a good classification based on molecular data does not necessarily
depend on analyzing a vast number of base pairs but on choosing sequences
whose function is known. He gave examples of this using actual sequence
data and showed that in fact using very large numbers of base pairs
distorted the correct classification. For example cytochrome sequence data
is useful for determining differences at the species or subspecies level
but does not produce reliable phylogenetic classifications because of its
high mutation rate. This principle applies equally to morphological and
molecular characters.
There were few papers on viruses and parasites and they were presented
as part of two separate mini-symposia devoted to Virus Evolution and the
Phylogeny and Evolution of Disease Agents and their Vectors. There were
eight half hour papers in the latter symposium and only one, by N.J.
Besansky on the Anopheles gambiae complex, dealt with vector
evolution and speciation. The other presentations in this session were on
immuno-defficiency viruses, arboviruses, Leishmania and
malarial parasites.
The SSE 50th Anniversary Awards and American Genetics Association
Wilhelmine Key Lecture entitled "Sexual Selection: A Driver of Genetic
Change in Hawaiian Drosophila" was given by Hampton Carson who based his
talk on his own extensive studies. It highlighted how geographical
isolation and ecological pressures over different time scales relate to the
number of species.
The meeting was closed by Alan Templeton who gave the presidential
address of the SSE entitled "Genetic Architecture: Getting to the Heart of
the Matter".
The general direction of the meeting emphasized that workers in very
many groups are now converging within the work area of systematics and
evolution. In some cases specialists in taxonomic methodology are using raw
data to test theoretical assumptions while in others specialists in
different groups are using more accepted methods to resolve problems of
relationships between different taxa and the effect of ecological barriers.
It is quite amazing that specialists from so many different fields are now
being linked by phylogeny and taxonomy.
Copyright 1997 Fundacao Oswaldo Cruz
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