Emeritus Professor Jim Hone ‘In the footsteps of Alfred Russel Wallace’

You are here

Thursday, 15 November 2018 - 12:30pm

The British naturalist, Alfred Russel Wallace, lived and worked for eight years during the 1850s and 1860s in what is now Indonesia.  He collected a vast number of animals for shipment back to Britain, while experiencing poor health caused by many diseases.  In 1858 he wrote a paper on the tendency of varieties to depart from their origins, which became a joint paper with Charles Darwin.  We now call that work the theory of evolution by natural selection.  Wallace also did major work on biogeography, represented now by Wallace’s Line and Wallacea, separating the plants and wildlife of Asia and Australia. He has many animals named after him.  This talk will review aspects of Wallace’s life and work in Indonesia, based on my travels from Sumatra in the west to New Guinea in the east.

Biography

Jim is Emeritus Professor in the Institute of Applied Ecology at the University of Canberra.  He has extensive research experience in wildlife ecology and management, especially of birds and mammals.