Most scientific meetings kick off with news of breakthrough advances and novel discoveries. Rare is the occasion when meeting organizers and peers recognize a fellow scientist. But that is what will happen this summer during the fifth
International Conference on the Biology of Butterflies.
The meeting, to be held July 2-7 in Rome, Italy, will open with a symposium honoring renowned butterfly biologist, Lincoln Brower. Brower is a research biologist at Sweet Briar College.
“His work has been tireless in championing conservation and he has been extremely important in nurturing people,” said Karen Oberhauser, one of the event’s organizers and assistant professor of ecology and evolution/behavior at the University of Minnesota.
Oberhauser, along with Michael Boppré of the Albert-Ludwigs-Universität Freiburg in Freiburg, Germany, and Dick Vane-Wright of the Natural History Museum in London, proposed the idea to honor Brower’s more than 50 years of research on milkweed butterflies and his 75th birthday.
“Conference organizers loved the idea,” Oberhauser said. “He’s doing more than people half his age have energy to do.”
In making their case, Oberhauser, Boppré and Vane-Wright wrote, “He has taken up the cause of conservation with much passion, as he tries to lobby both the U.S. and Mexican governments and other organizations to intercede on behalf of the insects. In so doing, he has become instrumental in reforestation and organic farming projects in Mexico, and a voice of caution regarding the impacts of agribusiness on all of our lives.”
Oberhauser believes Brower has influenced many of the scientists likely to attend the conference.
“Lincoln has always been someone who leads by helping,” she said. “A lot of people with his status aren’t open to mentoring, but he is so genuine. I’ve seen him sit down with undergrads and encourage them. He’s not competitive about sharing what he knows.”
Oberhauser and her colleagues came up with the symposium idea while traveling in Mexico with Brower.
“We just needed to go down there and learn from him. We needed to understand everything in his head because the work he does is so important,” she said.
Through Brower’s work, milkweed butterflies have become a model for the study of a wide range of evolutionary phenomena.
The seminar will focus on three major themes that have informed and inspired his research: chemical ecology, migration and conservation. Rather than a historical look back at Brower’s work, Oberhauser said the agenda looks forward, with various scientists presenting new and emerging information in these areas.
“Brower has stimulated a huge amount of work on the ecology of these butterflies, with the result that the monarch is now the best documented and most celebrated examples of insect migration known.”
However, one of talks will look back with a biographical presentation on Brower. It will be delivered by his wife, Linda Fink, and son, Andrew Van Zandt Brower, who also is a lepidopterist. Fink, a professor of biology at Sweet Briar College, has collaborated with Brower on monarch research since 1979.
The international conference is held every four to five years. About 200 hundred scientists are expected to attend.
