Island Lecture Series focuses on biogeography of North Atlantic islands
Dr. David Cairns, scientist emeritus with Fisheries and Oceans Canada, will give a lecture titled “The Biogeography of North Atlantic Islands” on March 26 at 7 pm in the Faculty Lounge, SDU Main Building, UPEI.
Cairns’s lecture is part of the 2024 Island Lecture Series, presented by the Institute of Island Studies at UPEI.
In his presentation, Cairns will explore islands in the northern North Atlantic to see who lives there and how they got there. He will recount the rich biological traditions of island biogeography and show that their insights apply equally well to people.
“Biogeography is the three-way crossroads of history, biology, and geography,” he said. “For most of these islands—the Shetlands, the Faeroes, Iceland, and many others—this history started when bare land emerged from under melting ice about 10,000 years ago, with creatures soon arriving by wing or wind. Humans came too, some by primitive boats that we know almost nothing about. But history can also have recent beginnings, such as the explosive birth of Surtsey Island off Iceland in 1963.”
A native of Prince Edward Island, Cairns is an adjunct professor with the UPEI Department of Biology and an Arctic expedition naturalist with Lindblad Expeditions and Aurora Expeditions.
