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Last Schweppe lecture slated
'SOCIAL DOMINANCE, TEMPERATURE AND SEX CHANGE'
Dr. John Godwin will present the last of the Laura Randall Schweppe Endowed Lecture Series in Marine Science tonight, Thursday, March 20. The title of his lecture is "Social Dominance, Temperature and Sex Change: Fish Tales from Coral Reefs and Salt Marshes."
Everyone is invited to attend the free lecture at The UT-Austin Marine Science Institute (MSI) Visitor Center Auditorium on Cotter Avenue near the beach. The doors open at 6:30 p.m., and the lecture starts at 7 p.m.
Godwin, associate professor, Department of Zoology, North Carolina State University, will focus on how animals adapt to their physical and social environments. It will include information on issues in aquaculture and enhancement of important fisheries.
The bluehead wrasse is a tropical species that shows female-to-male behavioral and gonadal sex change in response to changes in their social environment.
Studies by Godwin's group have shown surprising features of this process, including a controlling role for estrogens, and ways in which expression of the genome changes in the brain as females transform into large and aggressive males.
Other studies have explored the control of sex in flounder. This work has shown determination of sex and growth by temperature. This has helped generate promising new lines of flounder for aquaculture as well as beginning to define habitats that may be especially important for sustaining flounder fisheries.
The lecture series is made possible through a donation made in 1998 by Dr. Irving Schweppe Jr. and his daughters, Anne S. Ashmun and Jane S. Scott, in honor and memory of a wife and mother with a lifelong love of the marine environment, especially around Port Aransas.
More details on all of the presentations are available on the MSI Web site, http://www.utmsi.utexas. edu/research/seminars/schweppe. htm.
For more information, contact Jamey Pelfrey at (361) 749-6801 or jamey.pelfrey@mail.utexas.edu or Izhar Khan at (361) 749-6810 or ikhan@mail.utexas.edu.
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