Director of the darwin manuscript project at the American Museum of Natural History and he will be joining as soon. A special welcome to the other Staff Members and research from the American Museum of Natural History. We are very pleased you were here. Thank you, thank you. And also to the students and researchers from fordham university. Its a pleasure to have you here. This morning our focus of course is darwin. All of you have a special relationship with this man, and today will focus on his backyard experiments. And doctor james costa will guide us through the story. He is an aspiring scientist and esteemed author of the new book darwins backyard and youve already seen that youre actually able to purchase it here after the presentation and have doctor costa, or jim as we will call him, but a special personal message for you. While people are standing in line to buy that book, we have a first edition, a very rare sample of the darwin materials the library is so lucky to have. And for you also do know that you can come back and research are special collections in that field. We also are very happy that the publicist, senior publicist kyle, and editor of the book are here to join us. There have been as you may have noticed most excellent book reviews out about jims book, and the New York Times mention it specific is most inventive and entertaining. So there you go. Whatever you say, they all agree that the key argument is in this book that advanced technologies are not really necessary to develop sophisticated knowledge of biology and ecology. And its good for us all to hear. All it takes to probe nature secret is a bit of creativity and resourcefulness, is what jim writes in the book. And to prove this he has added some of darwins quirky doityourself household experiments. And the readers i invited to try those out in their own backyards, or in our case, our windowsills in new york city. The book is therefore really an invaluable tool to also students, and Young Students, and here at the new York Botanical gardens were looking for to welcoming many of the new naturalists who have read this book, and are inspired to become botanists themselves its my great pleasure and privilege to introduce dr. James costa now. Jim is an executive director of the highlands biological station and a professor of biology at western carolina university. Where he teaches courses on biogeography, evolution and, of course, darwin. Hes a long time associate in entomology at Harvard Museum of zoology and a former fellow of the Radcliffe Institute for advanced study, as well as in berlin. Jim lectures widely in u. S. And abroad, destroy serving as the distinguished lecturer amnesty of the Charles Darwin trust. Hes the author three major books already, on the organic law of change, and the annotated origin. Jim lives in the blue Ridge Mountains of North Carolina but has ventured out to come and visit us in the big city and tell us more about darwin. Please help me welcome him. [applause] wow. Its great to be here. I cant really expect to come in from the provinces. Great to be back in my home state. Wonderful to see family here, old friends and colleagues and darwin enthusiasts. Some things are in order. Im deeply grateful of course to vanessa and her team here at the new York Botanical garden for hosting me and my friend and colleague david, for cosponsoring this event. It was such a special privilege and pleasure. And, of course, i want to thank Wonderful Team at norton, colin was mentioned and amy cherry, my editor. Really they have been wonderful to work with and i am very, very grateful for them as well. And, of course, i would be remiss if i didnt acknowledge my wife leslie who unfortunately is not here with me today who did many of the illustrations for this book. So many thanks and thanks to all of you for being here. Did i just lose sound . Is it okay . Is all right . There we go. This is a special privilege. What i hope to do is really share with you maybe a perspective on Charles Darwin that is new to you. We think about Charles Darwin, the image that comes to mind might be characterized by this portrait, or maybe some of these other images. You consider these photographs and portraits of darwin and you cant help but think this is a melancholy guy, i got bummed out much of the time. Maybe hes tormented, sad. He is usually late in life but is always very serious. I came to realize over the years of studying darwin at his time that these give us a rather inaccurate portrait of darwin. I think they see more about victoria portrait, maybe limitations of photograph technology than they do about the person. The darwin on fluid is, the darwin unfairly with is a dad, husband, a friend, a a correspondent. Its a darwin who has a sense of humor. Hes a real jokester, who can be selfreplicating. Theres a whole other aspect to darwin that i find endlessly fascinating. There is nothing that tells the story of the real Charles Darwin than his pension for endless quirky and curious experiments penchant. The ways in which that engaged his family, his friends, his correspondent from around the world. This is a quote from darwin that i love. I love little experiment. Thats suffocating selfreplicating kinds of ways. He sort of makes fun of himself turkey makes fun of the experiment and they are quirky, curious, but they are all an interesting point. Theres an interesting scientific point behind them and thats worth exploring. Many of you will know i think darwin and young man in his 20s traveled around the world on hms beagle. Interesting that became quite the somebody at returning home. Aside from some limited travel, scotland and family holidays to the this eccentric he never left home again. He married in 1839. Here are the wedding portraits. And over the years they had ten children. Only seven of whom survived to adulthood. So certainly like many families of that time there were tragedies. So yes, certainly there were times when darwin has a melancholy aspect, but i think more times than not, the darwin that comes through in his correspondent, his interaction with his friends and family is more the english darwin and thats the darwin i would like to introduce you to. Impish. By involving the kids says a lot about darwin and his work. The all sorts of little glimpses of the way which his kids were involved or very much aware of his work. For example, there was about an eight year period when darwin studied barnacles of all things. Barnacles particles particles. Some of the young ones, all they knew was barnacles. Dad did particles. This one stories were one of the kids is visiting friends and looked around puzzled. Where does dad did was barnacles . Like for all he knew every kids dad does barnacles. Thats understandable. There was an interesting episode of the mystery of the buzzing places where they were very curious about these buzzing bumblebees zoom into the garden. We understand this to be in terms of trap lining behavior, marking different waypoints. They didnt know that. The ceremony of communication was a known so soccer trying to figure it out at an characteristic fashion Charles Darwin rallies the troops. He gets all the kids out there running around trying to mark the bees with loud to make it more visible zooming around trying to track them and understand what youre doing. Years later later darwin had remembered his dad at that time in that study he was like a boy amongst other boys. He was just out there running around in the garden with the little ones calling around in the hedgerows and so on. Theres one other episode a little glimpse here to share with you that says something about Charles Darwin in his relationship with his kids. This is a little note in a publication that you can imagine was maybe not the most widely read, the entomologist weekly intelligence service. Everybody subscribed. [laughing] heres a note about some rare beatles found near the house. This is side Francis Leonard and horse darwin, the young collectors. Here clearly is the proud dad pinning this note to this periodical just practice can be. He was happy to collect himself turkey loved beatles and here his kids are out collecting beetles. This is maybe in some ways a more telling publication from 1859, the same year that saw the origin of species published which is pretty interesting. Darwins experiments, his weird wild wonderful endless series of experiments all took place almost literally in his backyard. In his greenhouse but also in the woodlands, in the meadows, in his lawn. I have long been struck by how fundies can be for a modern audience certainly. Sometimes very quirky, kind of odd but the fact they are always interesting and theres always an interesting point. 2 then provides an interesting book for engaging todays Young Students perhaps. These are as vanessa minchin eminently accessible. Experiments have contacted onthefly literally in the yard, no sophisticated equipment, no precision special consideration for experimental design, analytical procedures, all of that. Whats interesting to me as onee interested in history of ecology and evolution is how often foundational principles in these fields have their origin in these literally backyard experiments, done almost onthefly. So this makes, this makes these experiments easily duplicated. And, of course, adaptable to any age group that can be scaled up or down. You can run these with kindergartners, with college age students. Something for anyone, any grade or age. So what was the experiment icing all about . One word that surely comes to mind is curiosity. Thats what drives really any kind of investigation, natural phenomena, patterns, processes and drove a lot of this, but after a while darwin came to fascinating evolutionary understanding of the world press at a time when no one else did. And answer part of this experimt icing became an effort to gather evidence, new way of understanding the nature and origin of species, often using the local case studies in seeing universal principles in his yard. I find that fasting. So many of you have may be vend into on the origin of species will remember that in that book, darwin refers to the origin as one long argument. What does he mean by that . This covers disparate subjects, domestication so on and so forth and get it all hangs together as a cohesive argument. But what you may not notice is how often many of those arguments are based upon or they are buttressed by the necessity backyard experiments. The book behind the book is really this book to me. In a sense of darwin experiment book. One of those works in which he recorded various kinds of experiments and the result, fascinating book that now reside in Cambridge University library. So much could be said about what darwin did and how we did it. For starters im just going to give you a taste of one subject and has to do with dispersal. The geographical dispersion, how do species become distribute as we see the on earth. Im not going to go through all of these experience but this is a sample of, often rather odd and quick investigations, seasoned salt water, hitchhiker experience with ducks duck feet which i say something, collecting bird droppings to dissect out the seeds, so a supporter of gdp examples of his various experiments aimed at trying to understand dispersal. So for example, think that remote oceanic islands, the Galapagos Islands landlord with think about Charles Darwin but really any remote oceanic islands is of interest to him because you have volcanic islands never in contact with a mainland, a continental mainland. There are many plants and animals. How did they get the . Its easy not to see how a flying animal might be blown off course by storms or something but a lot of these critters dont fly. How do they get there . Hes thinking about this and he figures floating, rafting, sometimes scary but often just loading. The question becomes could they float . Courtesies of species float and somehow make it to some speck of land in the middle of the ocean somewhere . His good friend Joseph Hooker the botanist didnt think so. He thought this is nonsense. Darwin, he realized wheres the evidence . And to demonstrate that . Ocker couldnt so of course darwin decides it himself. He doesnt do things by halves he throws himself into this project where he has jar after jar of saltwater and he just feels the seller. The house is practically full of this jars, species after species of floating cities, taking samples, will the germinate after week . What about two weeks, a month, three months . Success, they do seem to survive exposure to saltwater oftentimes, not always. The kids were really rooting for their dad. They knew that Joseph Hooker was dubious about enterprise, darwin and fire to hooker in a letter that the children were at first tremendously eager and as it often what i should be doctor hooker, prove them wrong. And, indeed, he was triumphant. Species after species proved to be viable after exposure to saltwater, except then poker point something out that was inconvenient. He said yes, but a lot of those sea species given testing, they sink. This is a problem because thats a moot point whether they can survive if they will never float out to one of these islands. In another letter to hooker, the rather the music darwin says its, ive been taking all this trouble for nothing. Those letters, they are a window into a personality, a window a person. I find that fascinating. Its emblematic of darwin, undaunted. What does he do . Lets try drawing the seeds, lets try seeds and dried fruit still adhering to foliage. Page after page of the book dedicated to floating. Poker sent him species. Specimens from all over the place. To the satisfaction he could show significant number of these can float for extended periods. They remain viable for extended periods. If you look at and alice of ocean currents you can calculate how far they could be carried in principle thousands of miles. Hooker was duly chastened, came to agree. As was mentioned i think an experiment like this that is eminently accessible and fun for a modern audience young and old. For example, any chapter of this book i have a doityourself section where people can replicate experiments. For example, you can experiment ties allah darwin getting around pick you can look at seeds in a pickle and you can test for the viability over periods of time. Great fun. Or a related topic, that was remote oceanic islands. What about ponds and lakes, island on the land . How do aquatic organisms get carried around . Darwin thinks docs have something to do with this. Ducks surely. He is envisioning that ducks when theyre youre sleeping og their feet in the water and hitchhikers will and partly perhaps climb on board and the ducks wake up and off they go and the fly hundreds of miles and they carry these hapless hitchhikers with them. Darwin is fascinated by this. This is a doityourself version of his experiment that his version of issues actual duck these two severed of course but he probably ate the ducks. They were dinner. He would dangle the ducks eat in his snail great to see if the snails would climb on board and then he would pull them out when they did, and they did and youd see how long this about outside of water . An hour, 24 hours, 48 hours . Prepa, how far could a duck fly in 28 hours . They could be carried hundreds and hundreds of miles. I want to entice kids to kind of test this motive of dispersal but dont want them to be chopping the legs off of ducks, as you might understand. And so i give instructions for building your own models. Jewish is a bobber or a pingpong ball and it wouldnt out and a little fabric duck foot and attach it to online as you see one of my younger son doing here. You can go fishing for aquatic hitchhikers ala darwin which is great fun. Ive done this with educators and students, my own kids. Its remarkable how many think you do catch with your duck feet. Darwin once again was kind of indicated. Dispersal, he wasnt content with just doing his backyard experiments and looking at dispersal. Here we also see, this is one area where darwin becomes the crowd source or your here for example, are for letters are published in the gardners chronicle in 1855. What are these about . These are about asking readers, has anyone ever tried this . Does anyone know if seeds will float in saltwater . Will they survive saltwater . I would appreciate it if people would try this instantly the results. Letter after letter and, of course, he is famous by then that readers were very happy to do this and send in the results, send them to him, send them to the magazine. Some of this correspondence became cited in the origin of species. These are reported in the origins of species. I consider darwin to be the original crowdsourcing. Whenever he would need a Bigger Picture sense of will this work, he would publish an open letter and try to get people to send in the results. I think thats really fun. Theres one other interesting aspect to this whole enterprise, and this is darwins openness to the oddest experiment. Were on the subject of dispersal. I call this frank is experiment. Little Francis Darwin was known as frankie would use give it when he was eight he came up with his experiment and darwin described in a letter to Joseph Hooker, and he says i must tell you another of my profound experiments, you can see he is tongueincheek, very profound, frankie said to be why shouldnt the birthday killed by hawk or lightning or something with seeds and its craw. A bird flying along made over the ocean and lightning strikes it or hail strikes it or something and poor bird down it goes and its floating in the sea and it gets washed up on some foreign sure and its got builtin fertilizer. In the form of the rotting carcass. This is frankie is idea. What does this thats a quick he says to hooker, no sooner said than done. No problem. A poor pigeon is that a bunch of seeds and ends up sadly floating in saltwater for a month he says in his notebook come in this letter he reports and also in his notebook, though seeds they have grown splendidly. Another box checked. Another interesting for