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0:00
Hi everyone my name
is Luke Harmon
from the University of Idaho
and I'm going to
talk to you today
about trends in macro evolution.
0:09
Just as a general overview
of my presentation today,
I'm going to talk
about two main topics.
One is about the pace
of macro evolution.
That is how fast or
how slow macro evolution
is and can be,
and then second, we'll talk
about the paradox of stasis,
which is a big idea in macro
evolution that relates
to rates of evolution and
how they explain the
diversity of life on earth.
Let's begin by
talking a little bit
about the pace of
macro evolution.
What I want to say
before I start
here is that I think people
often have the wrong idea
when they think about the
pace of macro evolution.
0:45
Part of that idea, I think,
comes from the reputation of
macro evolution as the
study of paleontology.
We can think about macro
evolution as the study of
evolution over long times
or deep timescales.
Paleontologists study
macro evolution
by digging up fossils,
and here's a picture of
some paleontologists
digging up fossils.
1:07
But what we've learned from
macro evolution outside
of paleontology,
and even some paleontology
studies themselves,
is that evolution can
sometimes be incredibly rapid.
This idea of macro evolution
crawling along at
a tortoises pace
is misleading
compared to what we
know from studying contemporary
evolutionary patterns.
1:31
To illustrate this idea that
macro evolution can be rapid,
I want to tell a story about
the time that a tanager
became a vampire.
