Professor to oversee IU's role in evolutionary biology study

BLOOMINGTON, Ind. (AP) - An Indiana University biologist has been tapped to oversee IU's role in an international project that will plumb the mysteries of evolutionary biology.

IU professor Armin Moczek (Moh-check) and his IU colleagues won a $1.25 million grant from the John Templeton Foundation to lead three research projects. Their work will be part of what's billed as the world's largest coordinated study of the biological processes through which plants and animals change over time.

The full project involves nearly 50 scientists at eight institutions in the United States, Great Britain and Sweden.

The IU grant was inspired by two articles Moczek co-authored about several increasingly accepted mechanisms that contribute to evolutionary changes. Those articles also urged that the theory of evolutionary biology expand to more fully recognize and integrate those processes.