[HELICONIUS] Symposium proposal--Mechanisms of speciation in butterflies at the 5th International Conference on the Biology of Butterflies Rome 2007

[Durrell D. Kapan]

****For the Heliconius mailing list, this was sent yesterday****

Professor Valerio Sbordoni
Department of Biology
University of Rome "Tor Vergata"
Roma, Italy

Dear Dr.Sbordoni,

Enclosed (below) please find a symposium proposal titled "Mechanisms of 
speciation in butterflies."  This symposium is jointly proposed by myself, 
Dr. Marcus Kronforst (Rice University Texas), Dr. Jesus Mavarez 
(Smithsonian Institution) & Dr. Chris Jiggins (University of Edinburgh).

We have four firm commitments plus invitations out to several research 
groups who have produced recent interesting
research in this area:

For some recent work we have done in this area see:

Marcus R. Kronforst, Laura G. Young, Durrell D. Kapan, Camille McNeely, 
Rachel J. O'Neill, and Lawrence E. Gilbert
Linkage of butterfly mate preference and wing color preference cue at the 
genomic location of wingless
PNAS 2006 103: 6575-6580.

and

Jesu´s Mava´rez, Camilo A. Salazar, Eldredge Bermingham, Christian Salcedo, 
Chris D. Jiggins & Mauricio Linares . Speciation by hybridization in 
Heliconius butterflies. Nature. 2006. 441: 868-871.

and others who have been invited see:

Reinforcement of pre-zygotic isolation and karyotype evolution in 
Agrodiaetus butterflies

Vladimir A. Lukhtanov, Nikolai P. Kandul, Joshua B. Plotkin, Alexander V. 
Dantchenko, David Haig and Naomi E. Pierce

see:

http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v436/n7049/abs/nature03704.html

and a recent talk given at the 2006 Evolution meetings attended by Dr. 
Kronforst:

Gompert, Z, JA Fordyce, CC Nice. Hybrid speciation in animals driven by 
adaptation to a novel habitat.

This would place us at approximately 6 talk slots or enough for two 
hours.  With additional interest we could accommodate another 4 talks and 
go to 3.5 hours.

Note that there is some potential overlap with a symposium on evolution in 
Heliconius and related butterflies proposed by Dr. James Mallet at UCL and 
I have discussed this with him.

If you thought both symposia were good proposals you could place the 
speciation symposium right after Jim's symposium.  If you had to choose one 
symposium I would defer to Dr. Mallet and suggest going with the Heliconius 
etc. proposal as several of the talks proposed here are readily 
accommodated under that umbrella.

Thank you for organizing  the 5th International Conference on the Biology 
of Butterflies Rome 2007.

Sincerely,

Durrell

Durrell D. Kapan, PhD.
Assistant Research Professor
Center for Conservation and Research Training
3050 Maile Way, Gilmore 408
Pacific Biosciences Research Center
University of Hawaii at Manoa
Honolulu, HI 96822, USA.


****proposal****


Symposia proposal: Mechanisms of speciation in butterflies

- Name(s) of the Symposium convenor(s),

Durrell D. Kapan, Marcus Kronforst, Chris Jiggins and Jesus Mavarez

- Title of the Symposium,

Mechanisms of speciation in butterflies

- Names of invited speakers,

Zach Gompert (Texas State University), James Fordyce (University of 
Tennessee), Chris Nice (Texas State University) tentative--invited

Chris Jiggins (University of Edinburgh)

Durrell Kapan (University of Hawaii) “Speciation

Marcus Kronforst (Rice University) & Larry Gilbert (University of Texas)

Vladimir Lukhtanov (St Petersburg State University), Nikolai Kandul 
(Harvard University), Naomi Pierce (Harvard University) tentative­invited

Jesus Mavarez (Smithsonian Institution)

- Time span:

Time span 2 hours (could grow if interest in topic increases)

- A brief description (300 words) of the Symposium topic,

           Speciation research has seen a resurgence since the 
mid-1990’s.  The rise of genomics coupled with more sophisticated models 
for sympatric and ecological speciation have led to a renewed ability to 
study the mechanisms and results of speciation at the ecological and 
genomic level including reinforcement, homoploid hybrid speciation and 
speciation due to mimicry.  Butterflies have long been a model system for 
studying many aspects of evolution and ecology.  As diurnal insects they 
are exceptional models for studying the linkage between signalling (by 
color, pheremones and behavior), mate attraction, sexual selection and 
speciation.  We propose a symposium that features investigations on the 
links between the diverse signalling systems, their phenotypic fitness 
consequences, genetics and their implications for speciation in butterflies.

- Complete contact information for the organizers.

Dr. Durrell D. Kapan
Center for Conservation and Research Training
Pacific Biosciences Research Center
University of Hawaii
Manoa, HI 96822
USA
durrell at hawaii.edu
1-(808)779-5438

Dr. Marcus Kronforst
Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology
Rice University
Houston, TX 77005
USA
mkronforst at mail.utexas.edu

Dr. Chris Jiggins
Institute of Evolutionary Biology
School of Biological Sciences
University of Edinburgh
West Mains Road
Edinburgh EH9 3JT,
UK
chris.jiggins at ed.ac.uk

Dr. Jesus Mavarez
Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute
Apartado postal 0843-03092
Panamá
República de Panama
mavarezj at si.edu

*************************

Durrell D. Kapan, PhD.
Center for Conservation and Research Training
3050 Maile Way, Gilmore 408
Pacific Biosciences Research Center
University of Hawaii at Manoa
Honolulu, HI 96822, USA.