At 6:03 pm President Barbara Saunders called the meeting of the Society to order. Vice-President Lydia Thomas introduced Rick Cech, whose talk entitled “Understanding New World Butterflies via New Taxonomy” described recent advances in ordering butterfly families and their evolutionary relationships. There are approximately 18,000 species of butterfly, many of which are extremely difficult to tell apart by visual inspection, as for example within the skipper and blue families. Even with the advent of DNA sequence analysis, such relationships have been difficult to determine owing to the limited and patchy amount of sequence data available. However, more recently, an international consortium has gathered and analyzed DNA sequences from 207 species representing 98% of the butterfly tribes and using data from 352 genetic loci. This data set gives a much more comprehensive picture of the relationships and evolutionary origins of the various families and has made the taxonomy much clearer and coherent. Rick presented the results of this analysis as an evolutionary wheel rather than a simple tree and pointed out where the families diverged from one another in geological time. While the first lepidopteran fossils date back some 190 million years, before the origin of angiosperms and before the time of the mass extinction at the Jurassic Cretaceous boundary 65 million years ago, the DNA analysis suggests that butterflies evolved about 119 million years ago. Furthermore, there was considerable evolutionary radiation after the extinction event, with some lineages radiating much more than others. Turning to the drivers of evolutionary speciation, Rick emphasized the role of co-evolution of the plant species upon which butterflies depend, and the important role of plant toxins in this genetic arms race. He gave as an example the relationship between the passionflower vine and the heliconians that feed upon it. The caterpillars are immune to the toxin, and in fact use it as a defense against predators, but the plant in turn has developed egg mimicry to ward off females from laying eggs on a plant that already appears to have eggs on it. That toxins may drive evolution is supported by the fact that within the pierid family, the whites, which feed on mustards and are thus exposed to plant toxins, show much more speciation than the sulfurs, which feed largely on peas and other legumes, which lack them. Turning to other drivers of evolution, Rick pointed out the roles of mimicry and camouflage, both of which are prominent features in several butterfly lineages. He also described efforts to discern the role of secondary sexual signals in sympatric speciation, that is speciation occurring among individuals in the same geographic location as opposed to allopatric speciation where individuals are evolving in separate locations. Data suggest that in sympatric speciation, secondary sexual characteristics, such as the presence of eye-spots, are more likely to arise than in populations undergoing allopatric speciation. He ended his talk with a selection of images of the colorful diversity present in butterflies of the neotropics.
At 7:33 pm President Saunders reconvened the meeting. Recording Secretary Hamish Young read the minutes of the October 9th, 2018 meeting. They were approved as read. Council Member Marie-Claire Cunningham announced four new candidates for membership, Kaz Watanabe and Jane Chelius, both sponsored by Marie-Claire Cunningham, and John and Annie DiGennaro, both sponsored by Hamish Young. The nominations were approved unanimously. President Saunders then reminded the members that the Society needed to appoint new Field Trips organizers for the 2019-2020 season, and that the December 11th meeting will be held at the Liederkranz Club, 6 E. 87th St. She also reminded the members to pay their dues to Treasurer Ruth Hart and that donations for the Archival Cabinets would be gratefully received. Upcoming field trips are to Jamaica Bay Wildlife Refuge and to Rye Playland.
After the business section of the meeting, President Saunders introduced Carl Safina, author, broadcaster and a MacArthur Genius awardee, whose talk was entitled “Beyond Words: What Animals Think and Feel.” Carl pointed out that although professionals studying animal behavior are warned against anthropomorphism, the idea that animals have consciousness and feel emotions similar to those in humans is gaining ground. We share the basic biology, from coelenterates to primates, of neuronal transmission, the brain has similar architecture in all mammals, and behavioral studies in mammals show instances of play, teaching, fear, and empathy. More recent studies using MRI show that the same brain areas to those in human subjects are active during similar behavioral activities – for example dogs and rats dream and the same areas of the brain are involved as in humans. Carl presented many instances of behaviors in such diverse species as killer whales, elephants, and dolphins in which the only rational explanation is that the animal concerned has a clear consciousness of what it is doing and feeling. Perhaps the most striking was a family group of elephants surrounding a relative that had been killed and behaving in a manner that could only be described as grieving. He noted that killer whales have been known to lead researchers to their home port during a dense fog, suggesting that not only do they feel empathy but also that they have compassion, the ability to feel someone else’s discomfort and to act upon this feeling and give help. Carl pointed out that while animal-human interactions are generally benign, human-animal interactions are too often harmful and destructive. Unchecked, our population numbers and activities are contributing to the precipitous reduction in animal populations worldwide.
The meeting was adjourned at 8:39 pm.
Respectfully submitted by
Hamish Young, Recording Secretary