This is an article I wrote for the Research Horizons magazine in Cambridge. I thought it might be interesting as a bit of a review of some of the areas of research underway at the moment among members of the consortium.  It was written for a Darwin special issue – hence the quote at the start.
On the wings of a butterfly
Since Darwin’s time, Amazonian butterflies have fascinated evolutionary biologists as examples of evolution in action.
On reading Henry Walter Bates’ 1862 account of his travels in the Amazon, Charles Darwin …

Congratulations to Jim Mallet on winning the Darwin-Wallace medal of the Linnean Society.  The award is only made every 50 years, which means the rest of us need to wait until 2059 if we want a shot at it.  The medal honours those who have made the most significant contributions to evolutionary biology over the last 50 years.  Thirteen medals were awarded, and the other winners this time around included Bryan Clarke, Joseph Felsenstein, Stephen Jay Gould,  Peter Grant and John Maynard Smith.  All very prestigious.
Another of the winners was …

It’s the 200th anniversary of Darwin’s birth, and the 150th of the publication of his “On the Origin of Species…”, and Chris Jiggins wondered what he had to say about Heliconius. I have done a brief search on www.darwin-online.org.uk. Sadly, the great man seems never to have mentioned Heliconius butterflies.
Plate I of Bates' "heliconid" paper. The handwritten notes are by Alfred Russel Wallace, as this was photographed from Wallace's own copy of the paper
However, Darwin (1863) did comment on Henry Walter Bates’ 1862 paper “Contribution to an Insect Fauna …