Introduction to the Biosystematists

Welcome to the web site for the Biosystematists, a venerable discussion group of organismal biologists, geneticists, paleontologists, and systematists interested in evolution and biodiversity that has been active in the San Francisco Bay area of northern California since the mid 1930s (see History of the Biosystematists). Members and participants have traditionally been faculty and postdoctoral scientists affiliated with local academic institutions, including the California Academy of Sciences in San Francisco (CAS), California State University at Hayward (CSUH), California State University at Sacramento (CSUS), San Francisco State University (SFSU), Sonoma State University in Rohnert Park (SSU), Stanford University in Palo Alto (STAN), University of California at Berkeley (UCB), University of California at Davis (UCD), University of the Pacific in Stockton (UOP), California Department of Food & Agriculture (CDFA) and others, as well as scientists from various government agencies and non-governmental organizations in the northern California area. Scientists associated with the Biosystematists group represent a multitude of disciplines ranging from conservation biology and evolution to systematics of all the major groups of extinct and extant organisms.

The Biosystematists holds regular meetings on the second Tuesday evening of each month during the academic year (September through May) at one of its members' institutions. Our meetings, which focus on a wide range of contemporary issues and topics dealing with organismal evolution, systematics and phylogenetics by members, visitors or invited participants, are informal and discussion-oriented. For our next meeting, see the upcoming meetings page. For a summary of meeting presentation and discussion topics, presenters and their hosts from the past few years, see History of Meetings.

This website is provided as a www resource to serve the community of scientists in the greater San Francisco Bay/northern California area interested and active in research on organismal systematics (in the broadest context), as well as to provide announcements about local activities and seminars of interest to members of this community. For more information about individual members of the Biosystematists, check the Biosystematists Members section which contains a listing of members, their interests, email addresses and web pages. The Links page contains links to members' departments, and institutions, other local organizations, seminar series and activities related to the study of systematics and evolution in the greater Bay Area, as well as a host of professional societies devoted to natural history, evolution and systematics.