ABOUT US
SIBE aims to strengthen the scientific exchanges among Italian evolutionary biologists active worldwide and to promote the dissemination of knowledge on biological evolution at all levels. The society is open not only to scientists but to all interested parties (foundations, museums and public aquaria, schools, etc.). Special attention is devoted to the world of education, where the teaching of evolution has been severely downgraded in textbooks and curricula.
Council
President:
Lino Ometto - University of Pavia
Vice-president:
Andrea Luchetti - University of Bologna
Secretary - Treasurer:
Lisa Locatello - Stazione Zoologica Anton Dohrn
Councillors:
Giobbe Forni - University of Bologna
Marco Gerdol - University of Trieste
Donato Grasso - University of Parma
Alessio Iannucci - University of Florence
Valentina Peona - Swedish Natural History Museum
Francesca Raffini - Stazione Zoologica Anton Dohrn
Sofia Rizzi - University of Greifswald
President of the Board of Arbitrators:
​Silvia Ghirotto - University of Ferrara
Board of Arbitrators:
Maria Vittoria Modica - Stazione Zoologica Anton Dohrn
Ivan Scotti - INRA-Avignon
The SIBE Council remains in office for two years and is elected by the Members' Assembly
Statute
Download the statute (in ITA):
History of SIBE
For many years, people interested in evolution met every two years at informal meetings held from time to time in a different location in Italy. During one of these meetings, it was decided to transform the spontaneous group into a more formal institution, and the First Congress of Italian Evolutionary Biologists was convened. The congress, held at the University of Ferrara from the 24th to 26th August 2005, brought together almost two hundred researchers from different countries and at its end a constituent assembly founded SIBE, the Italian Society of Evolutionary Biology.
The constituent assembly then approved the society's statute and elected its first Council, which remained in office for one year. The society was legally established by notarial deed on 15th of September 2005. The success of and the large number of participants at the conferences attest to the fact that various sectors of evolutionary disciplines remain at world-class levels in Italy, despite the lack of investments that has led, among many other negative consequences, to a worrying brain drain towards richer and more organised institutions abroad.
In 2006, SIBE translated and distributed the document 'Evolution, Science and Society' edited by the major American scientific societies.
In 2007, SIBE signed a memorandum of understanding with ANMS (the National Scientific Museums Association) and Pikaia (Evolution Portal) for the dissemination of evolutionary biology.
In 2011, some SIBE members got together to write the first Italian text on Evolutionary Biology: 'Evolution. Models and Processes', edited by Marco Ferraguti and Carla Castellacci.
SIBE regularly participates in the organisation of seminars, conferences and workshops in various Italian cities (e.g. Darwin Days, school workshops, etc.).
SIBE is a member of FISV (Italian Federation of Life Sciences) and regularly participates in its congresses.
HONORARY MEMBERS
LUIGI LUCA CAVALLI-SFORZA
Luca Cavalli-Sforza was born in Genoa in 1922, and graduated in medicine in Pavia in 1944. He worked at the Universities of Cambridge, Parma, Pavia, and Stanford, where he collaborated with, among others, Adriano Buzzati-Traverso, Ronald A. Fisher, and Joshua Lederberg. He is Professor Emeritus of Genetics at Stanford University. His work includes studies in bacterial genetics, but it is to human population genetics that Luca Cavalli-Sforza has mainly devoted the last forty years of his career. In his career he has published several hundred scientific papers and several books, including, in collaboration with Paolo Menozzi and Alberto Piazza, 'History and Geography of Human Genes'. Starting in 1991, he directed the Human Genome Diversity Project and was awarded the Balzan Prize in 1999. Luca Cavalli-Sforza died in 2018. In his memory, SIBE established the 'Luigi Luca Cavalli Sforza' Prize, which in its first edition was awarded to Professor Montgomery Slatkin of the University of California Berkeley (SIBE Congress 2019).
PIETRO OMODEO
Pietro Omodeo was born in Cefalù in 1919 and graduated in Natural Sciences at the University of Pisa in 1940. He was assistant to Emanuele Padoa from 1950 to 1955. He was Professor of General Biology and then Zoology at the University of Siena, and from 1965 at the University of Padua, where he also taught History of Scientific Thinking. In 1983 he moved to the University of Rome Tor Vergata. He has published articles and monographs in cariology, systematics and biogeography of Oligochaetes. He has written articles on important scientific figures as well as on the main concepts of biology. He has supervised the publication of works by Lamarck and Darwin. He has published a treatise on Biology (1977) and many other volumes including 'Creationism and Evolutionism' (1988) and 'At the Origins of Natural Sciences (1492-1632)' (2001). He received the Gold Medal for Merit in School, Culture and Art from President Sandro Pertini.