Entomologist to Present on Work of Early Evolutionist in UA Lecture Series

TUSCALOOSA, Ala. — Dr. James Costa, professor of biology at Western Carolina University, will present a lecture as part of the ALLLELE lecture series at The University of Alabama March 13.

The lecture will be at 7:30 p.m. in room 127 of the Biology Building on the UA campus. It is free and open to the public.

His lecture, “Alfred Russel Wallace’s ‘Species Notebook’ of 1855-1859,” will focus on the naturalist Alfred Wallace and his progress on theories pertaining to the natural world, specifically Wallace’s work that essentially paralleled Charles Darwin’s, as a contemporary of Darwin’s.

This year marks the eighth year of the ALLELE series, which is an interdisciplinary lecture series organized by UA’s Evolution Working Group.

Costa is the executive director of the Highlands Biological Station and professor of biology at Western Carolina University. He has studied insect social behavior from the Appalachians to Latin America to Europe. Costa is also a longtime research associate in entomology at Harvard’s Museum of Comparative Zoology and, in 2004-2005, was the Jeanne Rosselet Fellow at Harvard’s Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study.

Costa is the author of “The Other Insect Societies,” published by Harvard University Press in 2006, and “The Annotated Origin,” also published, in 2009, by Harvard. It is an annotated edition of “On the Origin of Species” designed to help readers better understand the historical context, structure and content of Darwin’s masterwork.

The ALLELE series is supported by UA’s College of Arts and Sciences and the departments of anthropology, biological sciences, chemistry, communicative disorders, geological sciences, philosophy, physics and religious studies.

The College of Arts and Sciences is the University’s largest division and the largest liberal arts college in the state. Students from the College have won numerous national awards including Rhodes Scholarships, Goldwater Scholarships and memberships on the USA Today Academic All American Team.­