Evolution of Colors in Nudibranchs
Thanks very much, Sam. Of course the only reason that I now work in tropical waters is that there are far more intriguing research questions. It's has nothing to do with the climate or the fact that I've gotten any wiser. One of the things that I think has captures people's imagination when studying the diversity of life is the myriad of colors and variety of shapes and patterns that exist in nature.
One of the things I wanted to talk to you about today was to explore some of those things and what we know about the adaptive significance of color in general. Most of what we know has really stemmed from the terrestrial environment, and I'll talk a little bit about the marine environment as well since the same general principals apply. I also want to explore how modern systematic techniques, how having a hypothesis of a relationship, or phylogeny, can inform one's understanding of how different colored patterns came into being, how many times they evolved. We'll also consider what is manifested in the color patterns in terms of what part of a color pattern is inherited from the common ancestor of an organism in different lineages and what is due to convergent evolution which is independent evolution of those characteristics. So those are the fundamental things I really want to explore with you in the next 45 or 50 minutes. I guess Sam is going to get to stand up and regulate me and tell me when my time is up and kick me off the stage. If I could have the lights down, please.
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