Mary Jane West-Eberhard

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Mary Jane West-Eberhard (born August 20, 1941 in Pontiac , Michigan ) is an American entomologist and evolutionary biologist. She is considered an important representative of evolutionary developmental biology and one of the main representatives of extended synthesis in the theory of evolution .

Life

West-Eberhard studied at the University of Michigan zoology with a bachelor's degree in 1963, a master's degree in 1964 and a doctorate with Richard D. Alexander in 1967. As a post-doctoral student , she was at Harvard University with Howard Ensign Evans . From 1969 to 1979 she did research at the Universidad del Valle in Cali in Colombia . Since 1973 she was also associated with the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute in Panama , where she had been a permanent employee since 1975. It is also in collaboration with the University of Costa Rica .

Her research focuses on social wasps in the tropics and studied the mechanisms of evolution. For example, she emphasized the role of sexual selection (social competition among men) for speciation and the role of alternative phenotypes ( polymorphism , polyphenism ) as the basis for natural selection in evolutionary theory, for which she coined the term phenotypic plasticity and wrote a monograph. Phenotypic plasticity is an innate ability of individuals to change their external appearance (phenotype) during development to the adult stage ( ontogenesis ) and to adapt to changed environmental conditions (adaptation of the phenotype, developmental recombination , without genetic change). According to her, this is the primary starting point of natural selection, the adoption in the genetic blueprint then takes place successively through random mutations, whereby individuals in whom the changed phenotype is already genetically anchored have selective advantages ( genetic accommodation ).

Advocating the expansion of synthesis in evolutionary theory

In your main work with 800 pages, to which about 100 biologists contributed and which contains numerous empirical studies, West-Eberhard provides a comprehensive criticism of the Darwin-based synthetic theory of evolution and calls for a new framework for a unified theory of evolution, development, environment and Takes up plasticity as causative factors of evolution.

Awards and memberships

In 2003 West-Eberhard received the Sewall Wright Award from the American Society of Naturalists . In 1992 she was President of the Society for the Study of Evolution . West-Eberhard is a member of the National Academy of Sciences (and was on its committee for human rights), the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (1996) and an external member of the Accademia dei Lincei (2005).

Fonts

  • The Social Biology of Polistine Wasps. Misc. Publ. Univ. Me. Mus. Zool. 140, 1969, pp. 1-101.
  • with Howard E. Evans: Wasps, University of Michigan Press, Ann Arbor 1970
  • The evolution of social behavior by kin selection, Quart. Rev. Biol., 50, 1975, pp. 1-33.
  • Sexual selection, social competition, and speciation, Quart. Rev. Biol., Vol. 58, 1983, pp. 155-183.
  • Flexible strategy and social evolution, in: Y. Ito, JL Brown, J. Kikkawa (editors), Animal societies: Theories and facts, Japan Scientific Societies Press, Tokyo 1987, pp. 35–51.
  • Phenotypic plasticity and the origins of diversity, Ann. Rev. Ecol. Syst., Vol. 20, 1989, pp. 249-278.
  • Developmental plasticity and the origin of species differences Proceedings National Academy of Sciences USA 102, 2005, Suppl. 1, pp. 6543-6549, PDF
  • Wasp societies as microcosms for the study of development and evolution, in: M.-J. West-Eberhard, S. Turilazzi (Editor), Natural history and evolution of paper wasps, Oxford University Press, 1996, pp. 290-317.
  • Developmental Plasticity and Evolution, Oxford University Press 2003
  • The maintenance of sex as a developmental trap due to sexual selection, Quarterly Review of Biology, Volume 80, 2005, pp. 47-53.
  • Phenotypic Accommodation: Adaptive Innovation Due to Developmental Plasticity, Journal of Experimental Zoology, Part B: Molecular and Developmental Evolution, Volume 304, 2005, pp. 610-618.
  • Toward a Modern Revival of Darwin's Theory of Evolutionary Novelty, Philosophy of Science, Volume 75, 2008, pp. 899-908.

See also

Web links

References and comments

  1. ↑ Life and career data according to American Men and Women of Science , Thomson Gale 2004
  2. ↑ See, for example, her article Developmental plasticity and the origin of species differences , Proc. Nat. Acad. 2005, see literature
  3. ^ Mary Jane West-Eberhard. Developmental Plasticity and Evolution. Oxford University Press. 2003
personal data
SURNAME West-Eberhard, Mary Jane
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American entomologist and evolutionary biologist
DATE OF BIRTH August 20, 1941
PLACE OF BIRTH Pontiac , Michigan