Mark Siddall

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Mark E. Siddall is a Canadian biologist and former curator [1] at the American Museum of Natural History. Siddall has studied the evolution and systematics of blood parasites and leeches, and systematic theory [2] .[ citation needed ] Siddall was hired as an assistant curator at the American Museum of Natural History in July, 1999 [3] and worked there as a curator until September, 2020, when he was terminated for allegedly having violated the museum's policy prohibiting sexual relationships between staff and mentees. Siddall denied the claim. [1]

Contents

Education

Siddall completed a Masters [4] and PhD [5] under the supervision of Sherwin S. Desser at the University of Toronto in 1991 and 1994, respectively. [6]

Career

After completing his PhD, Siddall completed a postdoc at the Virginia Institute of Marine Science. [7] Subsequently, he was a fellow in the Michigan Society of Fellows from 1996-1999. [8] He also acted as treasurer of the Willi Hennig Society, publisher of the journal Cladistics . [9]

Siddall has worked and published on parasitic and other animals, including leeches, [10] jellyfish, [11] guinea worms, [12] and bed bugs. [13] [14]

He is author of the science book Poison: Sinister Species with Deadly Consequences. [15]

In 2016, Siddall, Jonathan Eisen, and others were involved in the Twitter controversy #ParsimonyGate. [9]

The American Museum of Natural History fired Siddall in September 2020 for alleged sexual harassment, citing museum policy that prohibits sexual relationships between staff and mentees under their academic supervision. [1] An outside law firm representing the museum's interests found that Siddall had "engaged in verbal, written, and physical conduct of a sexual nature that had the effect of unreasonably interfering with your academic performance." [1] Siddall denied that any sexual encounter ever took place, and claimed he was fired because "he had found a serious error" in a paper. [1]

Research

Siddall studies phylogenetics and evolution. [10] Siddall has been described as "a staunch supporter of parsimony and a harsh critic of maximum likelihood approaches”, although "having mellowed a bit on that". [7]

Related Research Articles

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Cnidaria is a phylum under kingdom Animalia containing over 11,000 species of aquatic animals found both in freshwater and marine environments, predominantly the latter.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Willi Hennig</span> German biologist and zoologist (1913–1976)

Emil Hans Willi Hennig was a German biologist and zoologist who is considered the founder of phylogenetic systematics, otherwise known as cladistics. In 1945 as a prisoner of war, Hennig began work on his theory of cladistics, which he published in German in 1950, with a substantially revised English translation published in 1966. With his works on evolution and systematics he revolutionised the view of the natural order of beings. As a taxonomist, he specialised in dipterans.

Occam's razor, Ockham's razor, or Ocham's razor in philosophy is the problem-solving principle that recommends searching for explanations constructed with the smallest possible set of elements. It is also known as the principle of parsimony or the law of parsimony. Attributed to William of Ockham, a 14th-century English philosopher and theologian, it is frequently cited as Entia non sunt multiplicanda praeter necessitatem, which translates as "Entities must not be multiplied beyond necessity", although Occam never used these exact words. Popularly, the principle is sometimes paraphrased incorrectly as "The simplest explanation is usually the best one."

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Mesozoa</span> Subkingdom of worm-like parasites of marine invertebrates

The Mesozoa are minuscule, worm-like parasites of marine invertebrates. Generally, these tiny, elusive creatures consist of a somatoderm of ciliated cells surrounding one or more reproductive cells.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Hydrozoa</span> Class of cnidarians

Hydrozoa are a taxonomic class of individually very small, predatory animals, some solitary and some colonial, most of which inhabit saline water. The colonies of the colonial species can be large, and in some cases the specialized individual animals cannot survive outside the colony. A few genera within this class live in freshwater habitats. Hydrozoans are related to jellyfish and corals and belong to the phylum Cnidaria.

Invertebrate zoology is the subdiscipline of zoology that consists of the study of invertebrates, animals without a backbone.

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">Finetooth shark</span> Species of shark

The finetooth shark is a species of requiem shark, in the family Carcharhinidae, found in the western Atlantic Ocean, from North Carolina to Brazil. It forms large schools in shallow, coastal waters, and migrates seasonally following warm water. A relatively small, slender-bodied shark, the finetooth shark can be identified by its needle-like teeth, dark blue-gray dorsal coloration, and long gill slits. It attains a maximum length of 1.9 m (6.2 ft). The diet of this species consists primarily of small bony fishes, in particular menhaden. Like other members of its family, it is viviparous with females giving birth to two to six pups in estuarine nursery areas every other year.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Red stingray</span> Species of cartilaginous fish

The red stingray is a species of stingray in the family Dasyatidae, found in the northwestern Pacific Ocean off Japan, Korea, and China, and possibly elsewhere. It primarily inhabits shallow, sandy habitats close to shore, and has been known to enter brackish water. The red stingray has a diamond-shaped pectoral fin disc and gains its common name from its bright orange-red underside; there may also be patches of orange at various spots on its upper surface. Most individuals are no more than 1 m (3.3 ft) long.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Arhynchobdellida</span> Order of leeches

Arhynchobdellida, the proboscisless leeches, are a monophyletic order of leeches. They are defined by the lack of the protrusible proboscis that defines their sister taxon, the Rhynchobdellida. Arhynchobdellida is a diverse order, comprimising both aquatic and terrestrial, besides sanguivorous and predatory, leeches. The order is divided into two suborders, Erpobdelliformes and Hirudiniformes.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Leech</span> Parasitic or predatory annelid worms

Leeches are segmented parasitic or predatory worms that comprise the subclass Hirudinea within the phylum Annelida. They are closely related to the oligochaetes, which include the earthworm, and like them have soft, muscular segmented bodies that can lengthen and contract. Both groups are hermaphrodites and have a clitellum, but leeches typically differ from the oligochaetes in having suckers at both ends and in having ring markings that do not correspond with their internal segmentation. The body is muscular and relatively solid, and the coelom, the spacious body cavity found in other annelids, is reduced to small channels.

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. Fitzhugh is a critic of DNA barcoding methods as a technical substitute for systematics. 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." 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 He married a lawyer named Nancy E. Gold in 1989.

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References

  1. 1 2 3 4 5 Jacobs, Julia (October 2, 2020). "Museum Fires Curator Who It Says Sexually Harassed Student Researcher". New york Times.
  2. ↑ Siddall, Mark; Kluge, Arnold (December 1997). "Probabilism and phylogenetic inference". Cladistics. 13 (4): 313–336. doi:10.1006/clad.1997.0046. hdl: 2027.42/71951 .
  3. ↑ "INTRODUCTION OF PRESIDENT MARK E. SIDDALL". ProQuest.
  4. ↑ "U of T Magazine | Winter 2014". Issuu.
  5. ↑ "Mark Siddall". World Science Festival. Retrieved 2021-03-12.
  6. ↑ Siddall, Mark E. (2016). "Presidential Address: Reinvention and Resolve". The Journal of Parasitology. 102 (6): 566–571. doi:10.1645/16-113. JSTOR   44810235. PMID   27626125. S2CID   11802614.
  7. 1 2 Burreson, Eugene M.; Siddall, Mark E.; Connors, Vincent A. (2002). "Society Business". The Journal of Parasitology. 88 (6): 1053–1070. doi:10.1645/0022-3395(2002)088[1053:IOMESA]2.0.CO;2. JSTOR   3285473.
  8. ↑ "All Events | U-M LSA University of Michigan Herbarium". lsa.umich.edu.
  9. 1 2 "Twitter Nerd-Fight Reveals a Long, Bizarre Scientific Feud". Wired. ISSN   1059-1028 . Retrieved 2021-06-26.
  10. 1 2 Zimmer, Carl (2006-02-07). "His Subject: Highly Evolved and Exquisitely Thirsty". The New York Times. ISSN   0362-4331 . Retrieved 2021-04-13.
  11. ↑ Yong, Ed (2016-08-22). "A Tiny Jellyfish Relative Just Shut Down Yellowstone River". The Atlantic. Retrieved 2021-04-13.
  12. ↑ Palmer, Brian (2015-03-10). "We're on the Verge of the Greatest Public Health Triumph of the 21st Century". Slate Magazine. Retrieved 2021-04-13.
  13. ↑ Borel, Brooke (2016-02-02). "Bed bug genome shows how gnarly these creatures really are". The Verge. Retrieved 2021-04-13.
  14. ↑ Kolbert, Elizabeth. "Old Bugs". The New Yorker. Retrieved 2021-04-13.
  15. ↑ Mark Siddall (2014). Poison: Sinister Species with Deadly Consequences. Sterling Publishing Company, Incorporated. ISBN   978-1-4549-0764-0.
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