Rosenblatt Lecture: Dr. David Jablonski The community is invited to attend the 13th Richard H. and Glenda G. Rosenblatt Lectureship in Evolutionary Biology Nov. 4. David Jablonski, the William R. Kenan Jr. Distinguished Service Professor in the Department of Geophysical Sciences at the University of Chicago, will discuss what happened during mass extinctions throughout history and how evolution changed during these episodes. In “Mass Extinctions and Evolution: What We Know Now,” Jablonski will consider the evidence for a new understanding of extinction, and its implications for present-day biodiversity. The talk is intended for a lay audience. The talk takes place at 3 p.m. at Sumner Auditorium on the Scripps Oceanography campus (8625 Kennel Way, La Jolla, CA 92037) with a reception to follow. The event is free and the public is invited. Street parking is available for visitors. On Nov. 5, Jablonski will deliver a technical lecture “Dynamics of the latitudinal diversity gradient: Integrating fossil and present‐day data.” In it, he will discuss how integration of paleobiologic and biogeographic data in marine bivalves shows that two supposedly opposing models for the shaping of the latitudinal diversity gradient, as shaped primarily either by latitudinal trends in local environmental factors or by the spatial dynamics of lineages, actually operate simultaneously. The different currencies of biodiversity – taxonomic, functional, and morphological – show distinct behaviors along the gradient, arguing for a multi-level approach to the most pervasive biotic patterns on Earth. The talk begins at 12:45 p.m. in Room 227 of the Eckart Building, 8755 Biological Grade, La Jolla, CA 92037. In his research, Jablonski combines data on living and fossil marine organisms to ask large-scale evolutionary questions about origins, extinctions, and spatial dynamics of life on Earth. He is an elected member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the National Academy of Sciences, a recipient of the Medal of the Paleontological Society, and has published more than 170 scientific papers and book chapters on topics ranging from mass extinctions to the role of multilevel processes in evolution. The lectureship is named after Richard Rosenblatt, the renowned ichthyologist and curator emeritus of the Scripps Marine Vertebrate Collection who passed away in October 2014, and his wife Glenda, who died in April 2014.