Mary Jane West-Eberhard

Last updated
Mary Jane West-Eberhard
Alma mater University of Michigan
TitleVice-chair Committee on Human Rights, National Academy of Sciences USA, National Academy of Medicine, National Academy of Engineers (2010-present)
Awards
  • 2003 Sewall Wright Award
  • 2003 Hawkins Award, American Association of Publishers
  • 2012 Quest Award for Lifetime Achievement Animal Behavior Society
  • 2014 Hamilton Award, International Union for the Study of Social Insects
Scientific career
Fields Eusociality; Sexual selection; Phenotypic plasticity
Institutions Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute
Academic advisors Richard D. Alexander
Notes

Mary Jane West-Eberhard (born 1941 [1] ) is an American theoretical biologist noted for arguing that phenotypic and developmental plasticity played a key role in shaping animal evolution and speciation. She is also an entomologist notable for her work on the behavior and evolution of social wasps.

Contents

She is a member both of the United States National Academy of Sciences and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. In 2005 she was elected to be a foreign member of the Italian Accademia dei Lincei. [2] She has been a past president (1991) of the Society for the Study of Evolution. [3] She won the 2003 R.R. Hawkins Award for the Outstanding Professional, Reference or Scholarly Work [4] for her book Developmental Plasticity and Evolution (618 pages). [5] In the same year she was the recipient of the Sewall Wright Award. [6] She has been selected as one of the 21 "Leaders in Animal Behavior". [7]

She is engaged in long-term research projects at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute at the Escuela de Biologia, Universidad de Costa Rica.

Early life and education

West-Eberhard's mother was a primary school teacher, and her father, a small-town businessman, and as parents they encouraged her curiosity. She went to school in Plymouth Community Schools, Plymouth, Michigan. She recalls of her high school that the best scientific training "was an English course on critical reading and writing, taught by the school librarian. Biology class was just a workbook, an enormous disappointment for me." [8]

She did all her degrees at the University of Michigan. She did her bachelor's degree from University of Michigan in zoology in 1963. She earned her master's degree from the same place in zoology in 1964, and then her PhD(zoology) in 1967.  There she was taught by Richard D. Alexander and had part-time employment in its Museum of Zoology. She records that "I also learned the excitement of being a sleuth in the university libraries where even an undergraduate could explore an idea beyond textbooks and could feel like a pioneer". She also corresponded with Edward Wilson on trophic eggs in insects, and spent summers at Woods Hole and Cali in Colombia. [8]

She did postdoctoral work (1967–1969) at Harvard University with Howard Evans. There she met her husband. She then spent the next ten years (1969–1979) as an associate in biology at the University of Valle. In 1973 she began an association with the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute in Costa Rica which became a full-time employment in 1986.

Social insects

West-Eberhard has studied many species of social wasps such as Polistes fuscatus , Polistes canadensis , and Polistes erythrocephalus. [9] Through her studies she has investigated why wasps evolved from being casteless and nestsharing casteless to becoming highly specialized eusocial species using comparative studies of tropical wasps (Hymenoptera). She has argued that origins of nonreproductive females in social wasps involves mutualism rather than only kin selection or parental manipulation. [10]

Her work upon social insects has played an important role in the development of her ideas upon phenotypic plasticity. [11] [12] As she notes "From there I got interested in alternative phenotypes—alternative pathways and decision points during development, and their significance for evolution, especially for higher levels of organization, for speciation, and for macroevolutionary change without speciation." [13]

Phenotypic plasticity

West-Eberhard has written from the mid-1980s upon the role of "alternative phenotypes," such as polymorphisms, polyphenisms, and context sensitive phenotype life history and physiological traits. [14] [15] [16] This resulted in her 2003 book Developmental Plasticity and Evolution. [5]

She argues that such alternative phenotypes are important since they can lead to novel traits, and then to genetic divergence and so speciation. Through alternative phenotypes environmental induction can take the lead in genetic evolution. Her book Developmental Plasticity and Evolution developed in detail how such environmental plasticity plays a key role in understanding the genetic theory of evolution. Her argument is full of examples from butterflies to elephants.

Sexual and social selection

West-Eberhard was among the first scientists [6] to reexamine Charles Darwin's ideas in The Descent of Man, and Selection in Relation to Sex about sexual selection and identify the key importance he gave to the "social competition for mates" as a factor in evolution [17] and speciation. [18] She has noted how sexual selection can trap animals into sexual dimorphisms, to maintain separate sexes in sexual reproduction. [19]

Other work

As a member of the United States National Academy of Sciences, West-Eberhard has served for three terms on its Committee on Human Rights. [3] [20] She has also been noted as "active in promoting the careers of young scientists, particularly those doing work in Latin America". [6]

Since 2013, West-Eberhard has been listed on the Advisory Council of the National Center for Science Education. [21]

Selected bibliography

Social wasps

Phenotypical plasticity

Sexual selection

Other

Honors and awards

Related Research Articles

<i>Polistes</i> Genus of wasps

Polistes is a cosmopolitan genus of paper wasps and the only genus in the tribe Polistini. Vernacular names for the genus include umbrella wasps, coined by Walter Ebeling in 1975 to distinguish it from other types of paper wasp, in reference to the form of their nests, and umbrella paper wasps. Polistes is the single largest genus within the family Vespidae, with over 200 recognized species. Their innate preferences for nest-building sites leads them to commonly build nests on human habitation, where they can be very unwelcome; although generally not aggressive, they can be provoked into defending their nests. All species are predatory, and they may consume large numbers of caterpillars, in which respect they are generally considered beneficial.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Baldwin effect</span> Effect of learned behavior on evolution

In evolutionary biology, the Baldwin effect describes an effect of learned behaviour on evolution. James Mark Baldwin and others suggested that an organism's ability to learn new behaviours will affect its reproductive success and will therefore have an effect on the genetic makeup of its species through natural selection. It posits that subsequent selection might reinforce the originally learned behaviors, if adaptive, into more in-born, instinctive ones. Though this process appears similar to Lamarckism, that view proposes that living things inherited their parents' acquired characteristics. The Baldwin effect only posits that learning ability, which is genetically based, is another variable in / contributor to environmental adaptation. First proposed during the Eclipse of Darwinism in the late 19th century, this effect has been independently proposed several times, and today it is generally recognized as part of the modern synthesis.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Disruptive selection</span> Natural selection for extreme trait values over intermediate ones

In evolutionary biology, disruptive selection, also called diversifying selection, describes changes in population genetics in which extreme values for a trait are favored over intermediate values. In this case, the variance of the trait increases and the population is divided into two distinct groups. In this more individuals acquire peripheral character value at both ends of the distribution curve.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Joan E. Strassmann</span> Evolutionary biologist

Joan E. Strassmann is a North American evolutionary biologist and the Charles Rebstock Professor of Biology at the Washington University in St. Louis. She is known for her work on social evolution and particularly how cooperation prospers in the face of evolutionary conflicts.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Facilitated variation</span>

The theory of facilitated variation demonstrates how seemingly complex biological systems can arise through a limited number of regulatory genetic changes, through the differential re-use of pre-existing developmental components. The theory was presented in 2005 by Marc W. Kirschner and John C. Gerhart.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Phenotypic plasticity</span> Trait change of an organism in response to environmental variation

Phenotypic plasticity refers to some of the changes in an organism's behavior, morphology and physiology in response to a unique environment. Fundamental to the way in which organisms cope with environmental variation, phenotypic plasticity encompasses all types of environmentally induced changes that may or may not be permanent throughout an individual's lifespan.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Canalisation (genetics)</span> Measure of the ability of a population to produce the same phenotype

Canalisation is a measure of the ability of a population to produce the same phenotype regardless of variability of its environment or genotype. It is a form of evolutionary robustness. The term was coined in 1942 by C. H. Waddington to capture the fact that "developmental reactions, as they occur in organisms submitted to natural selection...are adjusted so as to bring about one definite end-result regardless of minor variations in conditions during the course of the reaction". He used this word rather than robustness to consider that biological systems are not robust in quite the same way as, for example, engineered systems.

Evolutionary developmental psychology (EDP) is a research paradigm that applies the basic principles of evolution by natural selection, to understand the development of human behavior and cognition. It involves the study of both the genetic and environmental mechanisms that underlie the development of social and cognitive competencies, as well as the epigenetic processes that adapt these competencies to local conditions.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">European paper wasp</span> Species of wasp

The European paper wasp is one of the most common and well-known species of social wasps in the genus Polistes. Its diet is more diverse than those of most Polistes species—many genera of insects versus mainly caterpillars in other Polistes—giving it superior survivability compared to other wasp species during a shortage of resources.

Marion Julia Lamb was Senior Lecturer at Birkbeck, University of London, before her retirement. She studied the effect of environmental conditions such as heat, radiation and pollution on metabolic activity and genetic mutability in the fruit fly Drosophila. From the late 1980s, Lamb collaborated with Eva Jablonka, researching and writing on the inheritance of epigenetic variations, and in 2005 they co-authored the book Evolution in Four Dimensions, considered by some to be in the vanguard of an ongoing revolution within evolutionary biology.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Eusociality</span> Highest level of animal sociality a species can attain

Eusociality is the highest level of organization of sociality. It is defined by the following characteristics: cooperative brood care, overlapping generations within a colony of adults, and a division of labor into reproductive and non-reproductive groups. The division of labor creates specialized behavioral groups within an animal society which are sometimes referred to as 'castes'. Eusociality is distinguished from all other social systems because individuals of at least one caste usually lose the ability to perform behaviors characteristic of individuals in another caste. Eusocial colonies can be viewed as superorganisms.

Russell Scott Lande is an American evolutionary biologist and ecologist, and an International Chair Professor at Centre for Biodiversity Dynamics at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU). He is a fellow of the Royal Society and a member of the United States National Academy of Sciences.

<i>Polistes fuscatus</i> Species of insect

Polistes fuscatus, whose common name is the dark or northern paper wasp, is widely found in eastern North America, from southern Canada through the southern United States. It often nests around human development. However, it greatly prefers areas in which wood is readily available for use as nest material, therefore they are also found near and in woodlands and savannas. P. fuscatus is a social wasp that is part of a complex society based around a single dominant foundress along with other cofoundresses and a dominance hierarchy.

<i>Polistes canadensis</i> Species of wasp

Polistes canadensis is a species of red paper wasp found in the Neotropical realm. It is a primitively eusocial wasp as a member of the subfamily Polistinae. A largely predatory species, it hunts for caterpillar meat to supply its colony, often supplementing its developing larvae with nectar. The most widely distributed American species of the genus Polistes, it colonizes multiple combs, which it rears year-round.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Outline of evolution</span> Overview of and topical guide to change in the heritable characteristics of organisms

The following outline is provided as an overview of and topical guide to evolution:

The Extended Evolutionary Synthesis (EES) consists of a set of theoretical concepts argued to be more comprehensive than the earlier modern synthesis of evolutionary biology that took place between 1918 and 1942. The extended evolutionary synthesis was called for in the 1950s by C. H. Waddington, argued for on the basis of punctuated equilibrium by Stephen Jay Gould and Niles Eldredge in the 1980s, and was reconceptualized in 2007 by Massimo Pigliucci and Gerd B. Müller.

Behavioral plasticity refers to a change in an organism's behavior that results from exposure to stimuli, such as changing environmental conditions. Behavior can change more rapidly in response to changes in internal or external stimuli than is the case for most morphological traits and many physiological traits. As a result, when organisms are confronted by new conditions, behavioral changes often occur in advance of physiological or morphological changes. For instance, larval amphibians changed their antipredator behavior within an hour after a change in cues from predators, but morphological changes in body and tail shape in response to the same cues required a week to complete.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Social selection</span> Term used in biology

Social selection is a term used with varying meanings in biology.

In biology, reciprocal causation arises when developing organisms are both products of evolution as well as causes of evolution. Formally, reciprocal causation exists when process A is a cause of process B and, subsequently, process B is a cause of process A, with this feedback potentially repeated. Some researchers, particularly advocates of the extended evolutionary synthesis, promote the view that causation in biological systems is inherently reciprocal.

In biology, constructive development refers to the hypothesis that organisms shape their own developmental trajectory by constantly responding to, and causing, changes in both their internal state and their external environment. Constructive development can be contrasted with programmed development, the hypothesis that organisms develop according to a genetic program or blueprint. The constructivist perspective is found in philosophy, most notably developmental systems theory, and in the biological and social sciences, including developmental psychobiology and key themes of the extended evolutionary synthesis. Constructive development may be important to evolution because it enables organisms to produce functional phenotypes in response to genetic or environmental perturbation, and thereby contributes to adaptation and diversification.

References

  1. ↑ Wellenreuther, Maren; Otto, Sarah (2016). "Women in evolution–highlighting the changing face of evolutionary biology". Evolutionary Applications. 9 (1): 3–16. doi:10.1111/eva.12343. PMC   4780375 . PMID   27087836. For my generation–growing up in the 1950s (I was born in 1941)
  2. ↑ "West-Eberhard elected to the Italian Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei". Archived from the original on 2011-07-25. Retrieved 2009-06-12.
  3. 1 2 Mary Jane West-Eberhard, CHR Vice Chair Archived 2009-03-30 at the Wayback Machine
  4. ↑ R.R. Hawkins Award for the Outstanding Professional, Reference or Scholarly Work Press release.
  5. 1 2 West-Eberhard M-J. (2003). Developmental plasticity and evolution. Oxford University Press, New York. ISBN   978-0-19-512235-0
  6. 1 2 3 Marlene Zuk (2004), "2003 Sewall Wright Award: Mary Jane West‐Eberhard", American Naturalist, 163 (1): i–ii, doi:10.1086/381946, S2CID   82908880
  7. ↑ Drickamer L. Dewsbury S. (Dec 2009) Leaders in Animal Behaviour: The Second Generation. Cambridge University Press.
  8. 1 2 West-Eberhard, MJ (2009). "BIO". Evol. Dev. 11 (1): 8–10. doi:10.1111/j.1525-142X.2008.00297.x. PMID   19196328. S2CID   221678771.[ verification needed ]
  9. ↑ "Nesting habits and nest symbionts of Polistes erythrocephalus Latreille (Hymenoptera V'espidae) in Costa Rica" (PDF). Biology. bio-nica.info. Retrieved 2014-10-14.
  10. ↑ West-Eberhard, MJ (1978). "Temporary queens in metapolybia wasps: nonreproductive helpers without altruism?". Science. 200 (4340): 441–443. Bibcode:1978Sci...200..441W. doi:10.1126/science.200.4340.441. PMID   17757302. S2CID   44353493.
  11. ↑ West-Eberhard MJ. (1975). The evolution of social behavior by kin selection [ permanent dead link ]. Quart. Rev. Biol. 50(1):1-33.
  12. ↑ West-Eberhard MJ. (1987). Flexible strategy and social evolution [ permanent dead link ]. , pp. 35-51 In Animal societies: Theories and facts, Y. Ito, J. L. Brown, and J. Kikkawa, eds., Japan Scientific Societies Press, Ltd., Tokyo. ISBN   978-4-7622-0514-9
  13. ↑ West-Eberhard, MJ (2009). "BIO". Evol. Dev. 11 (1): 8–10. doi:10.1111/j.1525-142X.2008.00297.x. PMID   19196328. S2CID   221678771.
  14. ↑ West-Eberhard, MJ (1986). "Alternative adaptations, speciation, and phylogeny". Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 83 (5): 1388–1392. doi: 10.1073/pnas.83.5.1388 . PMC   323081 . PMID   16578790.
  15. ↑ West-Eberhard, MJ (1989). "Phenotypic plasticity and the origins of diversity" (PDF). Annu. Rev. Ecol. Syst. 20: 249–278. doi:10.1146/annurev.es.20.110189.001341.[ permanent dead link ]
  16. ↑ West-Eberhard, MJ (July 1998). "Evolution in the light of developmental and cell biology, and vice versa". Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A. 95 (15): 8417–9. Bibcode:1998PNAS...95.8417W. doi: 10.1073/pnas.95.15.8417 . PMC   33870 . PMID   9671691.
  17. ↑ West-Eberhard MJ. (1979). Sexual selection, social competition, and evolution [ permanent dead link ]. Proc. Amer. Phil. Soc. 51(4):222-234.
  18. ↑ West-Eberhard MJ. (1983). Sexual selection, social competition, and speciation [ permanent dead link ]. Quart. Rev. Biol. 58(2):155-183.
  19. ↑ West-Eberhard, MJ (2005). "The maintenance of sex as a developmental trap due to sexual selection" (PDF). Quarterly Review of Biology. 80 (1): 47–53. doi:10.1086/431024. PMID   15884735. S2CID   7121799.[ permanent dead link ]
  20. ↑ National Academy of Sciences Committee on Human Rights and Institute of Medicine Committee on Health and Human Rights. (1992). Scientists and Human Rights in Guatemala: Report of a Delegation. National Academy Press Washington, D.C. National Academy Press Washington, D.C.
  21. ↑ "Advisory Council". ncse.com. National Center for Science Education. 2008-07-15. Archived from the original on 2013-08-10. Retrieved 2018-10-30.
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