A Cornell University scholar is studying how racist housing policies from decades ago in America has influenced the genetics of common American house ants today, a line of research recently touted at a major evolutionary biology conference.
Sylvana Ross, a grad student at Cornell, presented her talk July 30 regarding her ongoing doctoral research examining in part how past racial segregation in housing, or redlining, has altered house ants’ genetics across urban and rural neighborhoods.
The talk was titled “Evolution in the City: Racism’s Influence on Urban Wildlife Adaptations.”
Ross’ research illustrates a growing trend within evolutionary biology highlighted at a recent conference that focused considerable attention on diversity, equity and inclusion, with scholars arguing more needs to be done to infuse “justice” and “belonging” into the field and presenting research to that end.
Ross’ research was presented at the Joint Congress on Evolutionary Biology in late July, which brought together the American Society of Naturalists, European Society for Evolutionary Biology, Society of Systematic Biologists, and Society for the Study of Evolution.
It’s described as “one of the premiere international opportunities for sharing research on evolutionary biology.”
In addition to standard workshops on scientific publishing and grant writing and presentations on topics such as adaptive epigenetics, bioinformatics, speciation, and molecular evolution, the third annual conference played host to much DEI fare, highlighting the embrace within STEM of widespread diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives. […]
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