Jonathan Losos

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Jonathan B. Losos (born December 7, 1961 in St. Louis , Missouri ) is an American evolutionary biologist and herpetologist .

Life

Losos graduated from Harvard University with a bachelor's degree in biology in 1984 and received his PhD in zoology ( Ecomorphological Adaptation in the Genus Anolis ) from the University of California, Berkeley , in 1989 . From 1987 he was teaching assistant at Berkeley and from 1990 as a post-doctoral student at the University of California, Davis . In 1992 he became Assistant Professor , 1997 Associate Professor and 2001 Professor at Washington University , where he headed the Tyson Research Center from 2000 to 2004 and headed the Environmental Studies Program from 2003 to 2005. From 2006 he was Professor at Harvard, where he is Monique and Philip Lehner Professor for the Study of Latin America and Professor of Organismic and Evolutionary Biology and Curator of Herpetology at the Museum of Comparative Zoology.

Losos is known for researching the mechanisms of evolution (in connection with ecology , behavioral research ) on the basis of the lizards of the approximately 400 species anole in the Caribbean. Among other things, he was able to study good examples of evolutionary convergence . He also undertook field experiments on evolution with the lizards: A species released on a small island, in which only scrub with small branches was present, developed on average smaller legs after several generations.

He is a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and of both the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (2012) and the National Academy of Sciences (2018). From 1994 to 1999 he was a Packard Fellow and in 2005 a Guggenheim Fellow . In 1991 he received the Theodosius Dobzhansky Prize of the Society for the Study of Evolution, in 1998 the David Starr Jordan Prize, in 2009 the Edward Osborne Wilson Naturalist Award of the American Society of Naturalists and in 2012 the Daniel Giraud Elliot Medal of the National Academy of Sciences. In 2016 he became a Distinguished Herpetologist of The Herpetologists' League. For 2019 he was awarded the Sewall Wright Award .

He is a member of the National Geographic Society's Research and Exploration Committee and has written about his work in a series in the New York Times .

Fonts

  • Improbable Destinies - Fate, Chance and the Future of Evolution, Riverhead Books 2017
  • Published in: The Princeton Guide to Evolution, Princeton UP 2013
  • with Robert E. Ricklefs (Ed.): The theory of island biogeography revisited, Princeton UP 2010
  • Editor: In the light of evolution: Essays from the laboratory and field. Roberts 2016
  • Lizards in an evolutionary tree: Ecology and adaptive radiation of Anoles, University of California Press 2011
  • with Kenneth A. Mason, Susan R. Singer, Shelley Jansky, Tod Duncan: Biology, McGraw Hill Education 2016
  • with Simon Levin a. a .: The Princeton Guide to Ecology, Princeton UP 2009

literature

  • Von Another Star , Interview with Losos, Der Spiegel, No. 50, 2017, pp. 124–126

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Losos, Jonathan
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Losos, Jonathan B.
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American evolutionary biologist
DATE OF BIRTH 7th December 1961
PLACE OF BIRTH St. Louis