Nature’s Toxic Defenses: Why Don’t Poison Frogs Poison Themselves?

While we might be most familiar with rattlesnakes, black widows, and poison frogs (oh my!), toxins are produced or acquired by organisms in nearly every major group of life. This means that animals must avoid toxins or adapt to them. In this talk, Dr. Rebecca (Becca) Tarvin of UC Berkeley’s Department of Integrative Biology and Museum of Vertebrate Zoology will discuss why and how animals evolve to be both toxic and toxin resistant, including her research on how some poison frogs avoid poisoning themselves. In addition, she will discuss how studying toxins in organisms under pressure to survive their natural enemies also sheds light in fields across human biology, including the genetics of diseases, drug resistance, drug development, coevolution, and protein evolution.

Registration required at weblink

Speaker: Rebecca Tarvin, UC Berkeley