Darwin Celebrated in Moon Library

02/27/2013

"Hey Babe, I Like Your Genes" isn't a cheap pickup line heard over the weekend on Marshall Street, it's the title of a mini-poster currently on display in Moon Library.

Students in EFB 311 Evolutions created mini-posters highlighting the latest in evolutionary biology and commemorating the birth of Charles Darwin.

"The motivation behind the project was to not only acknowledge Darwin — the driving force behind one of humanity's most important scientific breakthroughs — but also to get students engaged with the notion that evolutionary biology is not static," said Rebecca Rundell, assistant professor in the Department of Environmental and Forest Biology.

Said Rundell, "By finding, reading and interpreting evolutionary research from the past year, students are not only learning a sub-discipline of evolution a little more deeply, but exposing others to it in a fun and easy to understand way."

The project also helped the students relate to Darwin and evolution.

"After all, Charles Darwin wasn't much older than the average college student when he jumped aboard the H.M.S. Beagle and made some of the key observations that eventually led him to write On the Origin of Species," said Rundell.

The students put a great deal of creativity into their posters and made the seemingly abstract and difficult field of evolutionary biology easy to understand with titles such as Fun Guys and Orchids; Hey Babe, I Like Your Genes; School Got You Worried? Blame Your Intelligence; Always Bring a Knife to a Fist Fight; Bed Bugs Are Biting Back;

Don't Be a Loser, Cheat,; and Solar Powered Salamanders.

The poster display made its debut in Moon Library on Darwin Day, Feb. 12, Darwin's birthday. Darwin Day is a worldwide celebration of the scientist who was the first to describe biological evolution via natural selection in a scientifically rigorous way. Librarian Jessica Clemons helped coordinate the poster display.