Unit 2
Scientists in The Field
Nicole King
An American biologist and faculty member at the University of California, Berkeley in molecular and cell biology and integrative biology. She was awarded a MacArthur Fellowship in 2005. She has been an investigator with the Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI) since 2013.
King studies the evolution of multicellularity and choanoflagellates. The goal of her work is to reconstruct how multicellular animals evolved from single-cell organisms.
David Reznick
One of David Reznick’s early goals as a scientist was to test predictions of evolutionary theory with experiments performed on natural populations. He wanted to work in nature to test the consequences of natural phenomena and understand how evolution happens in the real world, rather than in the laboratory, where all prior experimental studies of evolution had taken place. A common response to the proposed experimental study in nature was that it was a good idea, but people wondered if he would live long enough to see results. The popular perception of evolution was that it, in Charles Darwin’s words, was a process so slow that “we see nothing of these slow changes in progress, until the hand of time has marked the long lapses of ages”. Reznick succeeded in testing the predictions of theory and, at the same time, proved that evolution is a rapid process, observable and quantifiable in real time. Such results have changed our perception of evolution. Where we once thought that evolution could only be studied as a historical process that leaves an imprint on living organisms, we now think of evolution as a contemporary process that can actively shape organisms and how they interact with one another. Reznick is now studying the consequences of evolution as a contemporary process.
Joan Roughgarden
Joan Roughgarden is an evolutionary biologist who is best known for being a vocal critic of the portion of Darwin’s theory of natural selection that focuses on sexual selection. Roughgarden argues that all animals do not follow the typical mating rituals in which the male of the species must impress the female with some act in order to win the right to mate with her. Instead, she argues that social selection may better explain animal mate selection because it accounts for longer interactions between animals prior to mate selection.
Career: Evolutionary Biologist
Evolutionary biologists study how life has changed over time. They study adaptations, natural selection, species diversity, and how living things have evolved throughout history.
George Washington Carver
George Washington Carver is one of the most famous agricultural scientists in American history. Carver studied botany and discovered that rotating crops would prevent the soil from being ruined. For example, prior to his work, farmers would typically grow cotton year after year on the same soil. Eventually, this would destroy the soil so much that nothing could grow on it. Carver advocated for rotating in other crops, such as peanuts or sweet potatoes, to allow the soil a chance to replenish itself along with giving farmers food for their own families. This method of crop rotation is still a regular practice for farmers and ranchers.
Career: Botanist
Botanists study all forms of plant life and try to better understand them. They seek to understand how plant life evolves and interacts with the environment as well as help develop better crops and medicines.
Professor Rebecca Kilner FRS
Professor of Evolutionary Biology Director, University Museum of Zoology
Research in my group focuses on the relationship between social behaviour and evolution. With experiments in the field and the laboratory, we have derived novel general insights into the evolution of social behaviour and demonstrated how social behaviour can, in turn, affect evolution.
Our work on birds and insects has revealed hidden adaptations within the family that balance evolutionary cooperation against evolutionary conflict. We have shown how adults cooperate to provision offspring yet remain vulnerable to manipulation by a lazy partner; how siblings are rivals for resources yet can cooperate to obtain more food; and how offspring reliably advertise their need to provisioning parents yet can seek more food than is optimal for parents to supply.
Whereas our initial work showed how social behaviour is the outcome of adaptive evolution, our most recent research has demonstrated how social behaviour contributes to further evolutionary change: by acting as a ‘hidden’ agent of natural selection, by changing the pace at which traits change in response to selection, and providing diverse mechanisms for the non-genetic inheritance of key fitness-related traits.
Charles Robert Darwin
Charles Robert Darwin was a British naturalist and biologist known for his theory of evolution and his understanding of the process of natural selection. In 1831, he embarked on a five-year voyage around the world on the HMS Beagle, during which time his studies of various plants and an led him to formulate his theories. In 1859, he published his landmark book, On the Origin of Species.
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