Bessey Lecture - Species, Speciation, and Macroevolution

Loren Rieseberg is Professor of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at Indiana University and recipient of the The David Starr Jordan Prize for Innovative Contributions to the Study of Evolution, Ecology, Population or Organismal Biology, an international award recognizing innovative contributions of young scientists to these fields. His research is at the cutting edge of integrative efforts uniting experimental, phylogenetic, and molecular approaches to attack one of the most challenging questions concerning the origins of biodiversity, the molecular basis of adaptive evolution and reproductive isolating mechanisms underlying the speciation process. His work has been reported in the journals Science and Nature and is establishing sunflower as a pre-imminent model system for the molecular study of speciation in plants.