Marking the 200th anniversary of the birth of Charles Darwin, the Science Library is hosting it's first exhibition, Evolution in Action : Charles Darwin and Western Australia’s Biodiversity Hotspot.

Professor Lyn Beazley, Chief Scientist of WA and UWA staff member, officially opened the exhibition on the 27th of July, with around 80 people attending. Professor Beazley shared a personal story of how she was first inspired to study biology after a visit to Darwin's Down House in Kent, England.

 As it was the first offical function to be held in the Science Library, University Librarian, John Arfield presented the vision behind incorporating exhibitions into a library space.

"This Library is a place of engagement and of communicating science," Mr Arfield said. "Even in the few hours that the exhibition has been up it is clear that our students are interested. This is a place where visitors to the University can come to to see science, and to learn about it."

Once the idea of the exhibition was mooted, Science Library staff started collaborating with scientists at UWA, the WA Museum, and the Botanic Gardens.
 
"They were delighted to find that so many of them were keen to contribute and provide material," Mr Arfield said. "We were keen that the exhibition should not just be a matter of historical interest but should connect with the present to show how the work being done at UWA now builds on the work of the past to create new knowledge."

On display there are Australian Ringneck parrots (also known as "28s"), coral specimens, beetles, stromatolites, banksia cone casts, and DVD footage of honey possums, wasps and orchids. Charles Darwin’s books and written work are also incorporated into the displays. The exhibition runs until the 4th of September.

There is a programme of exhibitions lined up for the rest of the year, including marine science, astronomy and motorsport engineering. 

Library staff Julianne Filardi, Jodi Neindorf, Felicity Renner, and Gina Sjepcevich (pictured above) were responsible for putting the Darwin exhibition together. They wrote the following explanatory text to accompany the displays:

In 1831 at the age of 22 Charles Darwin began his voyage on the survey ship the HMS Beagle with a crew of 73 men. The purpose of the Beagle’s voyage was to survey and charter coasts. Sydney, Hobart and King George’s Sound were important international reference points for the recording of longitude observations. The Beagle visited these three areas of Australia where Darwin, as Captain Fitzroy’s naturalist companion, was able to collect local plants, animals and geological specimens. With the assistance of his cabin boy, Syms Coverington, Darwin meticulously recorded his observations as well as the date and place of each item.

On 6th March 1836 the Beagle arrived in King George’s Sound where they remained for eight days. Darwin explored the area and discovered a previously unknown species of native Australian rodent Ruttus fuscipes.  However, his thoughts about Albany were not positive:"Since leaving England I do not think we have visited any one place so very dull & uninteresting as K. George’s Sound." (Charles Darwin, 14th March 1836).

By 1836 Darwin had been away from home for 5 years.  He was homesick and anxious to begin the work on his specimens that would eventually lead to the publication in 1859 of his great work On the Origin of Species by Natural Selection.

As Darwin sailed from King George’s Sound he couldn’t have imagined that the south-west of Western Australia would become recognized as one of the world’s 34 biodiversity hotspots. 

In 1988 in order to identify conservation priorities and to therefore preserve biodiversity worldwide, Norman Myers, a British ecologist, first introduced the concept of biodiversity hotspots – areas rich in biodiversity and with a high number of endemic species.  Species endemic to the 34 biodiversity hotspots around the world represent 50% of the world’s plant species and 42% of all terrestrial vertebrate species.

The Southwest Australia Hotspot is one of five Mediterranean-type ecosystems in the world and has a particularly high number of endemic species as a result of the isolation imposed by Australia’s central deserts.

For more information please see the Biodiversity Hotspots web page on South West WA.

Issue 124 August 2009

ISN 1444-8157 (print)

1325-6459 (online)

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