THE 2023 SERVENTY MEMORIAL LECTURE

The Serventy Memorial Lecture is the main source of funding for the WA Naturalists' Club to sponsor students from WA’s four public universities. The four Serventy Memorial Prizes are awarded annually from the Serventy Memorial Fund, a memorial to the contribution by the Serventy family to the Western Australian Naturalists’ Club Inc. with the aim of assisting and encouraging young people in the study of natural history. This 2023 lecture theme is Sex, Evolution and the Origins of Biodiversity.

Western Australia is famed for its biodiversity, but why are there so many different species, and why do they look and behave so differently? The answer lies in an endless battle to reproduce...…..

Prof. Leigh Simmons is an evolutionary biologist at the University of Western Australia, where he leads the Centre for Evolutionary Biology. As an English born and bred naturalist, coming to Australia and experiencing WA’s biodiversity was life changing and Leigh moved permanently to WA in 1995 to pursue his research into the evolutionary biology of reproduction, focusing on the rich diversity of WAs native species. Through his work at UWA Leigh has contributed to our understanding of how sexual selection drives the evolution of animal form and function, from sperm to exaggerated secondary sexual traits.

In his presentation, Leigh will share some of his fascinating tales of sex and evolution in the Western Australian bush.