At the invitation of their respective Society Presidents, representatives from the American Society of Naturalists, the Society for the Study of Evolution, the Society for Molecular Biology and Evolution, the Ecological Society of America, the Society of Systematic Biologists, the Genetics Society of America, the Animal Behavior Society), and the Paleontological Society met in Indianapolis on April 22-23, 1995, to discuss the need for preparation of a "White Paper" defining the challenges and opportunities facing the study of evolution. At that workshop, co-chairs D. Futuyma (editorial) and T. Meagher (organizing) were elected to seek funding to support workshops to develop the White Paper as well as an associated Executive Summary and to coordinate and oversee their writing and publication. A Working Group representing major disciplines in evolutionary biology was convened to draft these documents with support from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation and NSF. Announcements of the existence of this Working Group and its charges were made in The American Naturalist, Ecology, Evolution, Genetics, Molecular Biology and Evolution, and Science.

The final documents are addressed to decision-makers responsible for guiding basic and applied scientific research and for developing educational curricula. They are also addressed to anyone interested in understanding the current and potential accomplishments of evolutionary biology. Requests for hard copies of these documents should be addressed to:

The major goals of these documents are:

to describe our present understanding of evolution and the major intellectual accomplishments of evolutionary biology;

to identify major questions and challenges in which progress in evolutionary science can be expected in the near future;

to describe past and expected contributions of evolutionary biology both to other sciences and to social needs in areas such as health science, agriculture, and environmental science; and

to suggest ways in which progress can be facilitated in basic research, in applications of evolutionary biology to social needs, and in biological science education.

Text only versions of the documents can be viewed or downloaded directly from the web. The Executive Summary [html format][pdf format], is targeted to a broad audience, including policymakers at government agencies, private foundations, college and university administrations, corporations, scientific and educational societies, and the scientific community itself. The full document [html format][pdf format], is intended to serve as background material targeted to a more dedicated, implementation oriented readership whose interest has been captured by the Executive Summary.