KLI Colloquia are invited research talks of about an hour followed by 30 min discussion. The talks are held in English, open to the public, and offered in hybrid format.
Fall-Winter 2025-2026 KLI Colloquium Series
Join Zoom Meeting
https://us02web.zoom.us/j/5881861923?omn=85945744831
Meeting ID: 588 186 1923
25 Sept 2025 (Thurs) 3-4:30 PM CET
A Dynamic Canvas Model of Butterfly and Moth Color Patterns
Richard Gawne (Nevada State Museum)
14 Oct 2025 (Tues) 3-4:30 PM CET
Vienna, the Laboratory of Modernity
Richard Cockett (The Economist)
23 Oct 2025 (Thurs) 3-4:30 PM CET
How Darwinian is Darwinian Enough? The Case of Evolution and the Origins of Life
Ludo Schoenmakers (KLI)
6 Nov (Thurs) 3-4:30 PM CET
Common Knowledge Considered as Cause and Effect of Behavioral Modernity
Ronald Planer (University of Wollongong)
20 Nov (Thurs) 3-4:30 PM CET
Rates of Evolution, Time Scaling, and the Decoupling of Micro- and Macroevolution
Thomas Hansen (University of Oslo)
4 Dec (Thurs) 3-4:30 PM CET
Chance, Necessity, and the Evolution of Evolvability
Cristina Villegas (KLI)
8 Jan 2026 (Thurs) 3-4:30 PM CET
Embodied Rationality: Normative and Evolutionary Foundations
Enrico Petracca (KLI)
15 Jan 2026 (Thurs) 3-4:30 PM CET
On Experimental Models of Developmental Plasticity and Evolutionary Novelty
Patricia Beldade (Lisbon University)
29 Jan 2026 (Thurs) 3-4:30 PM CET
Jan Baedke (Ruhr University Bochum)
Event Details

Topic description / abstract
Since its publication in February 2021, the Dasgupta review, titled “The Economics of Biodiversity,” has had a strong impact. The report invites us to consider nature as an “asset,” or a form of “capital,” whose value should be measured using controversial indicators and methodologies. The contributions of this capitalized nature to human societies would have then to be referred to as “ecosystem services”—the Dasgupta review devotes a full chapter to them. The literature on “natural capital” and “ecosystem services” has developed since the 1990s, but the concept of “nature’s services” is actually much older: we can find traces of it at least in the work of Alexander von Humboldt at the turn of the 19th century. One episode deserves special attention: the intertwining of economic and ecological expertise between the 1880s and the 1920s in the United States. At that time, some economists, ecologists, biologists and professionals of all kinds worked on the “services of nature,” particularly in forestry and agriculture. The concept of “natural capital” was also coined at that moment. The purpose of this presentation will be, therefore, to review that episode and to draw some lessons on the role of economic words in our understanding of environmental challenges. Economic imperialism, disciplinary hybridization, the role of biology and ecology in economics… these topics will be discussed to show how conceptual history can help answer the question: do economic words harm sustainability?
Biographical note
Antoine Missemer is a CNRS researcher currently working at CIRED - Centre international de recherche sur l'environnement et le développement (Paris, France). He holds a PhD in economics from the University of Lausanne. His interdisciplinary work focuses primarily on the history of environmental, energy, and natural resource economics, i.e. on how the economic discipline and economists have approached energy and ecological transition in the past. He is the author of several books (in French) and articles (in French and English) crossing the history of ideas and sustainability issues. His is currently working, with Marco P. Vianna Franco (KLI), on a history of the relationship between economics and the science of ecology, to be published by Routledge.