Splash Biography

Outside of icy Antarctica, less than a quarter of land remains wilderness untouched by human activity. Living in Chicago, we have a front-row seat to how some plants and animals have succeeded in and adapted to life in the big city, a type of human-constructed or “anthropogenic” habitat that just 200 years ago did not exist. With the aid of some hands-on specimens, we will talk about how human activity has been removing or reshaping entire habitats and ecosystems on land and in the ocean since the Ice Age, and the surprising diversity of species of living things that have taken up residence in these new anthropogenic biomes such as cities or croplands. We will also talk about why understanding how nature is affected by manmade environments is important to conservation and public health.

95% of known animal species have no backbone or spine, and yet these invertebrate animals aren’t nearly as popular or well-known as vertebrates like frogs, fish and humans. In this class, we’ll walk through the unique, almost alien anatomy and physiology of different invertebrate animal groups (did you know octopuses have three hearts and blue blood?) and talk about how invertebrates ranging from cockroaches to coral first evolved. We’ll talk about how research on nematode worms and fruit flies has helped us better understand genetics, development, and disease in our own bodies. And we’ll talk about the importance of invertebrate animals to industry and the economy (from bees that pollinate crops to the “shellfish” that millions eat each day), and how studying invertebrates (including the fossil record of long-dead invertebrates) can help us protect them and the ecosystems they are a part of from of global warming and other environmental change.

95% of known animal species have no backbone or spine, and yet these invertebrate animals aren’t nearly as popular or well-known as vertebrates like frogs, fish and humans. In this class, we’ll walk through the unique, almost alien anatomy and physiology of different invertebrate animal groups (did you know octopuses have three hearts and blue blood?) and talk about how invertebrates ranging from cockroaches to coral first evolved. We’ll talk about how research on nematode worms and fruit flies has helped us better understand genetics, development, and disease in our own bodies. And we’ll talk about the importance of invertebrate animals to industry and the economy (from bees that pollinate crops to the “shellfish” that millions eat each day), and how studying invertebrates (including the fossil record of long-dead invertebrates) can help us protect them and the ecosystems they are a part of from of global warming and other environmental change.

What is a genome? How and why did the information in our DNA change over time and over the course of evolution? How can modern technology allow us to analyze and interpret differences in the information carried in cells by DNA, and why is understanding these differences so important in understanding everything from how our bodies fight disease, to how our perception of the world around us differs from that of a mouse or an octopus, to how we can protect animal species on the brink of extinction? And could we ever use DNA from an extinct species to bring it back to life, Jurassic Park-style? In this class we’ll answer these questions and more, through lecture, discussion, and some hands-on demonstrations and activities.

Scientists estimate that between 1 and 5 billion species, or different kinds of living things, have lived on and disappeared from Earth since life first evolved on our planet about 3.8 billion years ago. Thousands of new species have been discovered in the last year alone. But what exactly is a species? Why are all domestic dog breeds generally considered to be the same species, while giraffes are now thought to be split up into five different species? What is it about plants and animals’ DNA, bodies, and behavior that distinguishes some organisms from others? And how, where, and why do unique and unusual species, like platypuses in Australia or fluorescently-colored mantis shrimp on coral reefs, evolve? In this class, we’ll talk about the process of speciation (the evolution of a new species), the roles that rare and unique species play within larger ecosystems, and the value of biodiversity–the variety we see in genes, species and ecosystems around the world–to human health and society.