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Naomi E. Pierce (born 1954) is an American entomologist and evolutionary biologist who studies plant-herbivore coevolution and is a world authority on butterflies. [1] She is the Hessel Professor of Biology [2] and Curator of Lepidoptera in the Department of Organismic and Evolutionary Biology at Harvard University. [3]
Pierce earned her B.S. in Biology at Yale (1972–76) and her Ph.D. in Biology at Harvard (1977–83). Pierce was a Fulbright Scholar in Zoology from Harvard University to Griffith University in 1983 [4] and a MacArthur Fellow in 1988 with Ecology and Evolutionary/Environmental Biology as area of focus. [5]
From 1984–86, Pierce was Research Lecturer at Christ Church, Oxford and a NATO Research Fellow at Oxford's Department of Zoology. In 1986 she moved to Princeton University as Assistant (1986–89) and Associate (1989–90) Professor of Biology. In 1991 Pierce was appointed Hessel Professor and Curator of Lepidoptera at Harvard University. [6]
The Pierce Lab studies topics including the evolution of symbioses, phylogeny, biogeography, systematics, plant-insect-microbe interactions, and biodiversity and life history evolution of insects. [7] Pierce is known for her research on the relationship between lycaenid butterfly larvae and ants, as well as the genetic trends within the species, in order to understand the process of evolution. [7] Pierce and collaborators Corrie Moreau and Charles D. Bell were the first to establish the origin of ants at 140 to 168 million years ago using molecular sequence data, 40 million years older than previous estimates. [8]
In 2018, the entomopathogenic fungus Ophiocordyceps naomipierceae was named in Pierce's honor. [9]
Edward Osborne WilsonForMemRS was an American biologist, naturalist, ecologist, and entomologist known for developing the field of sociobiology.
Lycaenidae is the second-largest family of butterflies, with over 6,000 species worldwide, whose members are also called gossamer-winged butterflies. They constitute about 30% of the known butterfly species.
Geerat J. Vermeij is a Dutch-born paleoecologist and evolutionary biologist in the Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences at the University of California, Davis. He studies marine molluscs, both as fossils and as living creatures, as well as influence creatures have on each other's evolutionary fates, alongside having worked on plants, crabs, extinction, biological invasions, and biogeography. He received a MacArthur Fellowship in 1992, and in 2000, was awarded the Daniel Giraud Elliot Medal from the National Academy of Sciences. He was also a fellow of the California Academy of Sciences in 1992 and was awarded the Fellows Medal from the California Academy of Sciences in 2017.
Simon Asher Levin is an American ecologist and the James S. McDonnell Distinguished University Professor in Ecology and Evolutionary Biology and the director of the Center for BioComplexity at Princeton University. He specializes in using mathematical modeling and empirical studies in the understanding of macroscopic patterns of ecosystems and biological diversities.
Nicole King is 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.
Myrmecophily is the term applied to positive interspecies associations between ants and a variety of other organisms, such as plants, other arthropods, and fungi. Myrmecophily refers to mutualistic associations with ants, though in its more general use, the term may also refer to commensal or even parasitic interactions.
Philip James DeVries is a tropical biologist whose research focuses on insect ecology and evolution, especially butterflies. His best-known work includes symbioses between caterpillars, ants and plants, and community level biodiversity of rainforest butterflies.
Jalmenus evagoras, the imperial hairstreak, imperial blue, or common imperial blue, is a small, metallic blue butterfly of the family Lycaenidae. It is commonly found in eastern coastal regions of Australia. This species is notable for its unique mutualism with ants of the genus Iridomyrmex. The ants provide protection for juveniles and cues for adult mating behavior. They are compensated with food secreted from J. evagoras larvae. The ants greatly enhance the survival and reproductive success of the butterflies. J. evagoras lives and feeds on Acacia plants, so butterfly populations are localized to areas with preferred species of both host plants and ants.
Lakshminarayanan Mahadevan is an Indian-American scientist. He is currently the Lola England de Valpine Professor of Applied Mathematics, Organismic and Evolutionary Biology and Physics at Harvard University. His work centers around understanding the organization of matter in space and time. Mahadevan is a 2009 MacArthur Fellow.
Lawrence William Levine was an American historian. He was born in Manhattan and died in Berkeley, California. He was noted for promoting multiculturalism and the perspectives of ordinary people in the study of history.
Richard O. Prum is an evolutionary biologist and ornithologist. He is the William Robertson Coe Professor of Ornithology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at Yale University, as well as the head curator of vertebrate zoology at the university's Peabody Museum of Natural History. His 2017 book The Evolution of Beauty: How Darwin’s Forgotten Theory of Mate Choice Shapes the Animal World—and Us was named one of the 10 Best Books of 2017 by The New York Times and was a finalist for the 2018 Pulitzer Prize in General Nonfiction.
Sarah Perin "Sally" Otto is a theoretical biologist, Canada Research Chair in Theoretical and Experimental Evolution, and is currently a Killam Professor at the University of British Columbia. From 2008-2016, she was the director of the Biodiversity Research Centre at the University of British Columbia. Otto was named a 2011 MacArthur Fellow. In 2015 the American Society of Naturalists gave her the Sewall Wright Award for fundamental contributions to the unification of biology. In 2021, she was awarded the Darwin-Wallace Medal for contributing major advances to the mathematical theory of evolution.
Corrie S. Moreau is an evolutionary biologist and entomologist with a specialty in myrmecology, the study of ants. She is currently a professor and curator at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York. Moreau studies the evolution, ecology, biogeography, systematics, and diversification of insects and their microbial gut-symbionts using molecular and genomic tools. She has also been an advocate for increasing women and diversity in the sciences.
Anurag Agrawal is an American professor of ecology, evolutionary biology, and entomology who has written over a 150 peer-reviewed articles, which earned him an h-index of 92. He is the author of a popular science book, Monarchs and Milkweeds from Princeton University Press, and is currently the James Alfred Perkins Professor of Environmental Studies at Cornell University.
Singing caterpillars is a term coined by Philip James DeVries, referring to the fact that the larvae of ant-associated butterfly species of the families Riodinidae and Lycaenidae produce substrate borne sounds that attract ants. The study of these symbiotic associations was pioneered by Phil DeVries in Central America, and Naomi Pierce in Australia. Recently, Lucas Kaminski and collaborators are expanding the studies of riodinid-ant symbioses in Brazil.
Akito Y. Kawahara is an American and Japanese entomologist, scientist, and advocate of nature education, and the son of the modern conceptual artist On Kawara.
Adriana Darielle Mejía Briscoe is an American evolutionary biologist and Professor of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at the School of Biological Sciences at the University of California, Irvine. She specializes in research questions at the intersection of sensory physiology, color vision, coloration, animal behavior, molecular evolution, and genomics.
Zoe G. Cardon is an American ecosystems ecologist focused on observing and understanding ecosystem interactions in the rhizosphere. She has also played an integral role in developing systems to better study the rhizosphere without digging it up and interfering with the ecosystems using stable isotopes and mathematical modeling. Cardon is currently a senior scientist at the Marine Biology Laboratory at the Ecosystems Center and an adjunct professor of ecology and evolutionary biology at Brown University. She is credited with helping to establish the National Microbiome Initiative at the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy in Washington, D.C.
Jenny Tung is an evolutionary anthropologist and geneticist. She is an Associate Professor of Biology and a researcher at Duke University. In 2019, she was awarded a MacArthur Fellowship.
Megan Frederickson is a Canadian evolutionary biologist who is a professor of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at the University of Toronto. Her research considers the evolution of cooperation and the ecological genetics of mutualism.
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