In the summer of 1992 a group of molecular, population and evolutionary geneticists assembled on the campus of the University of Georgia in Athens, USA, to discuss the relevance of their research to the role played by transposable elements (TEs) in evolution. The meeting consisted of a series of informal discussions of issues brought up in papers written by the participants and distributed among them prior to the meeting. These papers and the transcripts of the ensuing discussions are presented in this volume.