The Dawn of Visible Life

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University of Washington’s Friday Harbor Laboratories is pleased to announce the 17th annual Illg Distinguished Lecturer will be Dr. Stefan Bengtson, Professor emeritus of Palaezoology at the Swedish Museum of Natural History in Stockholm, Sweden.

Dr. Bengston will present a free public lecture to the San Juan Island Community on Thursday evening July 2 at 7:30 pm at the San Juan Community Theatre.  His talk is entitled “The Dawn of Visible Life.”

We are fortunate to have Dr. Bengston as the Illg Distinguished Lecturer in 2015.  His main interests concern the origins and early evolution of multicellular organisms, including animals.  One of the greatest innovations in the history of life has been multicellularity-the ability of cells to stick together to form larger and more complex organisms.  Multicellularity distinguishes microbes from plants and animals, and most life forms visible to the naked eye are multicellular.

Multicellularity has arisen many times during evolution, through different mechanisms and in different lineages.  Of those lineages that survived, only a few have gone on to form advanced mulitcellularity, where cells specialize for diverse functions.  

The fossil record reveals many evolutionary experiments in multicellularity, but it was not until the end of the Proterozoic, about 600 million years ago, that multicellular creatures started to play a major role in the biosphere.  We will look at fossils from about two billion to half a billion years in age to learn how the exclusively microbial biosphere was eventually transformed into the kind that characterizes today’s world.  In particular, we will see new fossil evidence that throws light on one of Darwin’s greatest mysteries: the origin of animals.

This endowed lecture series is presented in honor of Professor Paul L. Illg, who made many important contributions as a scientist, teacher, mentor, and friend.  Paul excelled as a faculty member of the UW Zoology Department from 1952 – 1982.  An expert in the biology of crustaceans, he participated in many summer sessions at Friday Harbor Laboratories.  He invited world-renowned scholars to FHL to join him in teaching invertebrate biology and thus greatly enhanced the quality of the graduate program and research at the Laboratories.  The lectureship endowment was established through memorial gifts by Paul’s family, many friends and colleagues.

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