SFU professor Rolf Mathewes and researcher Bruce Archibald, among others, have gained critical insights into climate change while investigating 50 million-year old palm beetle fossils.

In establishing the existence of palm beetles during this period, the team was able to hypothesize as to the existence of palm plants — the beetles’ food source — even without fossil evidence of the palm plants themselves. Mathewes summarized, “Finding [the beetles] basically proved that there had to be palms, even though we did not have the fossils.”

Furthermore, their existence proves that during a period of global warming in the geological past, there were mild, frost-free winters in North America.

Mathewes explained, “To give you some background, palms are very important climate indicators. We are particularly interested in the climate of this period called the greenhouse earth, which was the warmest period since the extinction of the dinosaurs in the last 65 million years. This was around 50 to 53 million years ago.”

He continued, “In the Eocene greenhouse world, the whole world was very warm and almost tropical everywhere, except for some of the upland areas.” Because the palms cannot survive in regions with significant frost days, the existence of palm beetles in North America indicates moderate temperatures.

The team investigated fossils from a number of sites in central British Columbia, in an area called the Okanagan Highlands. In the Okanagan Highlands, fossil lake deposits formed during a period of mountain building and volcanism that preserved plants, flowers, and insects, among other things. “The fossil record is wonderful,” Mathewes said.

Mathewes has been making fossil collections for over 30 years. Archibald discovered beetles called bruchines in these collections; it was in these collections that he found a set of beetles of a certain family called palm beetles, which feed only on the seeds of palm trees.

Archibald researched and found one specimen at first, and thought there must be more. He “found three sites, possibly a fourth, that have these palm bruchine, which span about over a 1,000 kilometres of latitude from northern Washington to Smithers in the center of BC, and everywhere in between,” Mathewes said.

Looking at climate change clues in the distant past, the team hopes to provide greater insight into the future as the world increasingly experiences the effects of global warming.

Coming off of its first big win of the season, SFU’s pipe band looks forward to representing the university at world competitions.

Earlier this month, the team swept the competition at the Victoria Highland Games, placing first in all four of its events. The team even beat out the L.A. Scotts — the top pipe band in the US.

Individual awards were seized by Coquitlam piper Alastair Lee, who won first place in the professional piping category, and Grant Maxwell and Gavin MacRae, who tied for first in professional side drumming.

According to SFU student and pipeband member, Kevin McLean, the season is just getting started. After the competition last week in Victoria, the team is getting ready to travel to Bellingham on June 7, and then to the Coquitlam highland games on June 21. After that, the team will play in Seattle at the end of July.

On an international scale, the team is also preparing for the World Championships, to be held in Glasgow, Scotland, in mid-August. “We play two events there: the [March, Strathspey & Reel event] (MSR) and we also play a medley event, which is more contemporary. You could say [it’s] more exciting, musical, and creative,” said McLean.

The team has finished top two in the world in 15 of its 28 years competing at the championship; however the band will have to adjust this year as its leadership has shifted. “Terry Lee was the pipe major for over 30 years. Terry retired,” McLean said.

Taking his place is Alan Bevan, who has been a member of the Simon Fraser University pipeband since 1995. In addition to winning awards such as overall winner at the Masters’ Invitational (2009), Bevan has won the World Championship with the band on several occasions.

“I’m quite well-versed in what the band’s expectation is and what the direction is, and I don’t see really changing that in any radical way,” Bevan said in a video on PipesDrums.

“We have a very strong young core in the band,” Lee said in the same video. “It’s there to be made a new era.”

McLean described the unique contribution of the pipe band to SFU: “The pipe band in general is a unique trademark of the university. Not many universities have a pipe band.  No other university in the world has a pipe band as high a quality as ours. We bring the university to the world stage: Sydney Opera House, Carnegie Hall, Mormon Tabernacle choir, and the Lincoln Center in New York.”

As the team continues to prepare for the world stage, students are invited to hear them performing on Sunday mornings on Burnaby Mountain across from the library in the contemporary theatre.

In researching the walking stick insect, SFU biology professor Bernard Crespi is able to analyze how new species evolve in new environments and become genetically diverse from their original species. This type of evolution is called speciation.

According to Crespi, “[Speciation] is the origin of new species, when you go from one species to two species. It is the evolution of new biological diversity. People may not have an appreciation for what a species is, except maybe an intuitive one.”

He continued, “A species is a group of organisms that only breed amongst themselves. They don’t breed with other groups. What is evolving is a new breed or group of species that is isolated reproductively, that means it can evolve independently on its own.”

The main finding of the work has to do with natural selection in facilitating speciation, explained Crespi.

It is important to understand, as Crespi explained, that “natural selection is special because it is the only process that specifically gives rise to adaptation to a fit between organisms and their environments [. . .] Natural selection is only one of the mechanisms of evolution,” he continued, “There is a variety of mechanisms including mutation, migration, and genetic drift.”

Crespi’s research is unique in that he used 160 whole genomes, fully sequenced, whereas previous research has dealt with incomplete sequences. He explained the significance of this: “This is the first study to use whole genomes in combination with experimental analysis to understand the causes of speciation.”

The research involved an experiment that placed walking stick insects into different environments, each with its own host plant. Crespi elaborated, “This work showed a role for natural selection in speciation in these walking sticks in terms of their adaptation to different host plant environments.” Insects with certain characteristics will thrive in their respective environments, this is how natural selection plays a role in organisms genetically diverging through reproductive isolation.

In other words, “Natural selection, in terms of the host plant, pulls them apart genetically and phenotypically,” said Crespi.