Kirk J. Fitzhugh | |
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Born | 1957 Dallas, Texas |
Nationality | English, American |
Alma mater | George Washington University |
Known for | Systematics and evolutionary biology of polychaetes known as fan worms and the philosophical foundations of phylogenetic systematics. |
Awards | Thorne research fellow |
Scientific career | |
Fields | Evolution |
Institutions | Curator Museum of Natural History, Los Angeles County |
Doctoral advisor | V. A. Funk |
Kirk J. Fitzhugh is the curator at the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County, a position he has held since 1990. His research focuses on the systematics of polychaetes and on the philosophical foundations of evolutionary theory. [1] Fitzhugh is a critic of DNA barcoding methods as a technical substitute for systematics. [2] He attends Willi Hennig Society meetings where he has argued that "synapomorphy as evidence does not meet the scientific standard of independence...a particularly serious challenge to phylogenetic systematics, because it denies that the most severely tested and least disconfirmed cladogram can also maximize explanatory power." [3] : 429 His graduate supervisor was V. A. Funk, from the U.S. National Herbarium, National Museum of Natural History, Smithsonian Institution MRC. He completed his doctoral thesis on Systematics and phylogeny of Sabellid polychaetes in 1988 while he was a research scientist at the LA County museum [4] He married a lawyer named Nancy E. Gold in 1989. [5]