Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
Figure 3
Lantern fl ies of the genus
Phocia
, at Lambir in Sarawak, Borneo, one of the forest
plots that we are studying in order to investigate the evolution of the immense biodiversity of
tropical ecosystems.
trips have been in conjunction with the rainforest project and other research
projects. I must admit that some have simply been for fun. But regardless of
where or why I traveled to the world's wild and inaccessible places, I tried to
view them through evolutionary eyes.
Every biologist knows there is much more going on in the living world
than we can possibly duplicate in the simplifi ed, sterile confi nes of the labo-
ratory. Over the past two decades I have tried to share my excitement about
this larger biological world in a series of topics about evolutionary subjects.
Those topics explored how and why genes can sometimes become faster at
evolving, how we can use data from the Human Genome Project to examine
our own evolution, how we have evolved as a species and may continue to
evolve in the future, and how life itself might have begun. All these themes
contribute to this topic, but the primary lesson that emerges from these
