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Nations Trust Bank - WNPS Monthly Lecture

EVOLUTION: stories our freshwater fishes tell

By Rohan Pethiyagoda & Hiranya Sudasinghe

6pm 18 th September 2025, Jasmine Hall, BMICH



To evolutionary scientists, Sri Lanka is a veritable Garden of Eden. In the September Nations Trust–WNPS lecture, using examples drawn from freshwater fishes, Rohan Pethiyagoda and Hiranya Sudasinghe describe the evolutionary patterns and processes that worked—and continue to work—to produce Sri Lanka’s incredible biodiversity.

Life’s astonishing diversity emerged over billions of years of evolution, shaping species and behaviours alike. Rohan Pethiyagoda and Hiranya Sudasinghe reveal Sri Lanka as a living laboratory with a remarkable freshwater-fish fauna. Discover how sexual selection drives behaviours in fish, peafowl, and humans; how species care for others yet consume their young, echoing farm practices; how fish connect Sri Lanka to Asia and Africa; and how new species form before our eyes. Freshwater fishes, ideal for evolutionary study, offer mysteries and lessons worth celebrating—even as climate change and human greed drive the unfolding Sixth Extinction
WNPS Monthly Lecture
Rohan Pethiyagoda is among Sri Lanka’s best-known biodiversity scientists and most widely published scientific authors. His contributions to zoology and conservation have been honoured by a Linnean Medal and a Rolex Award.

Hiranya Sudasinghe is the discoverer of 7 new species and 3 new genera of freshwater fishes, and author of more than 35 papers in international scientific journals. He is presently in the final year of his PhD program at the University of Bern, Switzerland, working on the genomics of miniaturization in cypriniform fishes.

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