Evening Meeting and Book Launch

This lecture launches Barnacles, number 57 in the new series of the Synopses of the British Fauna, by Alan Southward. Immediately after completing the book, Alan Southward very sadly passed away on October 27 2007, aged 79. The lecture is a tribute to Alan and is an introduction to the biology of barnacles.

In addition to being a world expert on barnacles, Alan was a marine biologist of wide interests and vision. He established long term coastal monitoring programmes showing links between climatic variation and geographical distributions of animals and plants, and he played a key role in understanding the ecological effects of oil spills and of dispersants after the Torrey Canyon grounding in 1967. Pioneering work with his wife Eve helped us to understand the biology of chemosynthetic bacteria in gutless pogonophoran worms, a symbiotic relationship subsequently appreciated to be of wide ecological significance, well exemplified in newly discovered hydrothermal vents.

The lecture concentrates on the biology of barnacles. These fascinating atypical crustaceans play a key role in the ecology of rocky shores and cost the shipping industry millions of pounds yearly as principal fouling organisms interrupting water flow over ships’ bottoms. What are they, how do they get there and what do they do?

Registration required:

No

Free:

Yes