William Durham: Surprising Implications of Evolution

Stanford Emeriti/ae Council Autobiographical Reflections

On April 20, with an introduction by Professor Emeritus David Abernethy, Professor Emeritus William Durham presented a lively Abernethy Autobiographical Reflections lecture to Emeriti/ae at the Stanford Faculty Club. Durham’s lecture highlighted three widely distinct aspects of evolution from the biological, to the cultural, to the personal.

First, stemming from the blue-footed booby photo of Professor Emeritus Lubert Stryer’s recent Abernethy lecture, Durham considered the origin of the iconic Blue-footed Boobies of Galapagos. Here opportunistic mating and the elevated importance of blue feet evolved to an essential reproductive strategy in both female and male blue-footed boobies. The seasonal shift in blue-footed booby foot color to aqua is dependent on dietary carotenoids from sardines (in turn from phytoplankton) and correlates with their ocular spectral sensitivity range and with cold mineral-rich marine upwellings nearby. The foot-color shift to “sardine blue” points to a Galapagos origin for the species, counter to orthodoxy in the field.

In the second, surprising example, Durham discussed a classic cultural anthropological study of the Thongpa, a group of tax-paying serfs in traditional Tibet and Tibetan-speaking Nepal. Cultural inheritance in this society resulted in an exceptional diversity of marriage practices tightly managed by parents with the long-term goal of uniting all legal heirs of each generation into a single marriage with inheritance, thus to hold on to the essential land. This cultural practice was maintained in the context of extreme climate, low primary production in the steep agricultural valleys, and financial tolls exacted by the local manorial landlords. Thongpa emigrants to India do not continue those diverse marriage practices. There were clear adaptive advantages to the practice in the homeland, yet it’s a product of cultural evolution – an important correction, says Durham, to the claims of sociobiology.

In keeping with the theme of Autobiographical Reflections, in his final example Durham credited his childhood interest in finding fossils, from brachiopods to trilobites, during limestone treasure hunts near his home in Northern Ohio. In his personal “evolution,” the enduring question remains: what are the origins of the diversity of life?