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Dr. Gina D. Wesley-Hunt Speaks at Rockville SEM Exchange on Feb. 28
Published at Feb 26 2008 12:00AM
Category: MC Events
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 <b>Rockville Campus Instructional Dean of Science, Engineering, and Math (SEM) Dr. Sanjay Rai invites you to the next SEM Exchange on Thursday, February 28 at 2:30 p.m. in Science West 122, presenting Dr. Gina Wesley-Hunt, assistant professor in the Biology Department.</b>
Dr. Wesley-Hunt earned three degrees in evolutionary biology: a B.A. from Northwestern University; and both an M.S. and a Ph.D. from The University of Chicago. Prior to her recent appointment at Montgomery College, Dr. Hunt taught historical geology at George Washington University, geology at the Field Museum of Chicago,and mammalian evolution at The University of Chicago. She completed post-doctoral research at the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History, and at the Swedish Museum of Natural History in Stockholm.
Dr. Wesley-Hunt has given public and guest lectures at the University of Maryland, the American Women's Club (Sweden) and the Earth Sciences Club of Northern Illinois. She has worked as a scientific aide with the California Department of Fish and Game, and volunteered with the Peregrine Falcon Research Program in Dinosaur National Monument (Colorado). She received research grants from the Swedish Research Council, the Geological Sciences of America, the Society of Vertebrate Paleontology, Sigma Xi, the Paleobiological Fund and the Hinds Fund of Chicago.
Dr. Hunt will give a talk on the diversification of Carnivorans in North America and the impact of environment on community structure, describing how morphological disparity, in conjunction with taxonomic diversity, provides a powerful tool to interpret the evolutionary processes underlying the patterns of biodiversity. It has been proposed that the diversification of carnivoramorphans was suppressed by the incumbent creodonts early in their history (Carnivoramorpha is operationally defined as Carnivora and the fossil taxa within "Miacoidea").
The taxonomic decline of Creodonta at the end of the Eocene coincided with the beginning of the radiation of Carnivora, which rapidly generated most modern families. It is not known if creodonts were actively displaced by competitive interaction with carnivoramorphans or if the pattern of increasing carnivoramorphan taxonomic diversity was the result of passive replacement. Dr. Wesley-Hunt's presentation explores the hypothesis that morphological diversification was limited, relative to taxonomic diversification, early in the evolutionary history of the clade Carnivoramorpha. Dental morphology (effective indicator of diet and ecology) was used as a proxy for diversity. Knowledge of how modern carnivoran diversity is organized in different environments allows for a better understanding of the structure of fossil carnivoran diversity and the diversification of carnivorans into new environments and ecological roles. |
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