UA Evolution Lectureship Series Continues with Paleontologist Patricia Kelley

TUSCALOOSA, Ala. – The third in a series of public lectures on evolution will continue at The University of Alabama with paleontologist Dr. Patricia Kelley. Kelley will speak on “Evolution and creation: conflicting or compatible?” on Jan.19 at 7:30 p.m. in 127 Biology Building Auditorium on the UA campus.

Kelley, professor of earth sciences at the University of North Carolina at Wilmington, will speak about the differences and commonalities between theories of evolution and creation. She specializes in the study of mollusk fossils and is interested in the evolutionary process and the factors that control it.

She has conducted research to test the theory of punctuated equilibrium put forward by scientists Niles Eldredge and Stephen Jay Gould. It proposes that instead of a slow, continuous movement, evolution is characterized by long periods of standstill punctuated by episodes of fast development of new life forms.

Her current interest is in the field of evolutionary paleoecology, particularly the evolution of molluscan predator-prey systems. She is examining the hypothesis of escalation, which proposes that biological hazards such as predation have increased over the course of the Phanerozoic and that adaptation to those hazards has also increased.

Kelley and her collaborators have traced the history of predator-prey interactions with a database of 150,000 mollusk specimens collected from the Gulf and Atlantic Coastal Plain Cretaceous through Pleistocene geological periods. She has also worked with middle school teachers and students nationwide on mollusk predation in modern coastal environments to test ideas about spatial variation in certain types of predation and provide a modern baseline for comparison to the fossil record.

Kelley has served as President of the Paleontological Society and President of the Paleontological Research Institution.

The Alabama Lectures on Life’s Evolution (ALLELE) is a two-year series of lectures and will continue with the following lectures.

• Feb. 23, Dr. Richard Lenski, Hannah Professor of Microbial Ecology at Michigan State University, will speak on experimental evolution.
• March 28, Dr. Kenneth Miller, biology professor at Brown University, will discuss the problems with intelligent design.
• April 13, Dr. Jeffrey Schwartz, professor of anthropology at the University of Pittsburgh and a research associate at the American Museum of Natural History, will speak on his recent writings in evolutionary biology.

The ALLELE series is funded through a grant from the National Science Foundation, and UA’s College of Artsand Sciences and College of Education. The lectures are designed for non-technical audiences and are free and open to the public.