Abstract:

Pheromones are evolved signal molecules produced, for example, by all female moths in a species. Aquatic animals like fish and lobsters also use pheromones. Pheromones offer remarkable opportunities to study the evolution of signals and changes in signal and receiver during speciation, from enzyme pathways to receptors and neurons, at every level from genes to populations. But do humans have pheromones?

Speaker Bio:

Tristram Wyatt is a senior researcher at the Department of Zoology, University of Oxford. He was an undergraduate and postgraduate in Zoology at the University of Cambridge. Before coming to Oxford’s Department for Continuing Education as a lecturer (Associate Professor) in 1989, he was based at the University of Leeds, UC Berkeley, and the University of Wales. Tristram has been a fellow of Kellogg College, Oxford since its foundation in 1990.

The second edition of his single-author book Pheromones and Animal Behavior (Cambridge University Press) won the Royal Society of Biology’s prize for the Best Postgraduate Textbook in 2014.