Schweppe Lecture Series

Dr. John Godwin
North Carolina State University

Thursday, March 20, 2008, 7:00 PM
Visitors Center Auditorium

"Social dominance, temperature and sex change: Fish tales from coral reefs and salt marshes"

Fishes show enormous diversity in their reproductive patterns and behavior. Recent research is providing insights into these patterns and this has implications for basic questions such as "How do animals adapt to their physical and social environments?" as well as more applied questions related to issues in aquaculture and enhancement of important fisheries. Dr. Godwin and his colleagues work in both of these areas. The bluehead wrasse is a tropical species that shows female-to-male behavioral and gonadal sex change in response to changes in their social environment. Studies by Dr. Godwin's group have shown surprising features of this process, including a controlling role for estrogens and ways in which expression of the genome changes in the brain as females transform into large and aggressive males. Other studies have explored the control of sex in flounder. This work has shown determination of sex and growth by temperature. This has helped generate promising new lines of flounder for aquaculture as well as begins to define habitats that may be especially important for sustaining flounder fisheries.

Dr. Godwin is an Associate Professor at the Department of Zoology and W.M. Keck Center for Behavioral Biology, NC State University. His research interests are in the areas of molecular endocrinology, neurobiology and behavior with a primary focus on the mechanisms and evolution of animal behavior and sexuality. He is particularly interested in applying neurobiological and genomic approaches to problems in behavioral biology and behavioral evolution. His primary models have been fishes with some work on lizards and mammals.

The free lecture will be held at 7:00 p.m. in the Visitors Center of The University of Texas Marine Science Institute in Port Aransas, and the public is invited to attend. Dr. Godwin's visit to the Marine Science Institute is part of the Laura Randall Schweppe Endowed Lecture Series in Marine Science.