Biologist claims top award for evolutionary theory

One of Wairarapa's best minds has garnered high praise by squaring up against one of the leading evolutionary biologists of the 20th century.
Former Wairarapa College student David Winter has become one of only three New Zealanders to win the Ernst Mayr award for systematic biology.
Mr Winter, 29, is completing his PhD in evolutionary genetics at Otago University and was granted the US$1000 ($1360) prize after a peppery presentation he made at the Evolution Meetings in Portland, Oregon, in late June on the Cook Islands land snail.
The talk _ deemed ''outstanding'' and titled Mayr's Hydra Grows Another Head: Could Rarotonga's Lamprocystis radiation have arisen by sympatric speciation? _ explored the controversy within evolutionary biology about how new species arise.
''Most scientists agree most new species come about because a population gets split up by geography. In New Zealand we often use the example of the kea and the kaka, both parrot species isolated from each other by elevation _ since kea live on mountains,'' Mr Winter said.
''But there has always been another idea, that species could arise without isolation thanks to natural selection driving them apart _ it's very controversial, especially because prominent scientists have been sceptical of the idea, including Ernst Mayr, who wrote a brutal critique of it in one of his most famous books.''
Mr Winter presented genetic evidence positing that a group of land snails from the Cook Islands arose without a period of geographical isolation.
The Evolution Meetings are the biggest meeting of evolutionary biologists in the world, attracting 1900 scientists and speakers presenting 1000 talks over 3 days.
''I had one slide in my presentation that was an overview of the history of the ideas I was talking about and I had pictures of famous scientists who where sceptics. I managed to speak to the three of them that were at the meeting _ Jerry Coyne, Doug Futuyma and Joe Felsenstein _ and all of them had encouraging words to say about our work, so they might be won over,'' Mr Winter said.
However, he said the real test will be what happens once the team's theories are published, after intense scrutiny from peer-reviewers looking for ''holes in our argument or gaps in our evidence and then, presuming it's published, it will be assessed by the scientific community as a whole.''
The team are in the process of writing up their findings and received a further boost from Mr Futuyma, who told Mr Winter he'd spoken to Ernst Mayr before he died in 2005, aged 100; ''Mayr told him that he'd softened his stance on this idea a little.''
Mr Winter said the award was an achievement for all New Zealand, as it's only gone out of America a few times. Mr Winter shares the award with mathematician Jeremy Brown of the University of California, Berkeley.