Theodore Garland Jr. (born 28 November 1956) is a biologist specializing in evolutionary physiology at the University of California, Riverside.
Garland earned his B.S in zoology and M.S. in biology at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, working with William Glen Bradley, a mammalogist, and his Ph.D. in Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at the University of California, Irvine under Albert F. Bennett, a comparative physiologist.
During his Master's degree, he served as President of the Southern Nevada Herpetology Association. During his Ph.D. work, he recorded the maximum speed (34.6 km/h) of what to date remains the world's fastest lizard, Ctenosaura similis . Subsequently, he completed postdoctoral training at the University of Washington with Raymond B. Huey.
He was on the faculty at the University of Wisconsin–Madison for 14 years, served as a program director for the Population Biology and Physiological Ecology Program [1] at the National Science Foundation during 1991–1992, and is Professor of Biology at the University of California, Riverside.
Garland is Editor in Chief of the journal Ecological and Evolutionary Physiology, formerly Physiological and Biochemical Zoology . [2] He is an Associate Editor for Behavior Genetics and on the Editorial Advisory Board of Zoology. [3] Garland is a former Topic Editor for Comprehensive Physiology , [4] and has been on the editorial boards of the Journal of Morphology , [5] The American Naturalist , and Evolution . [6] He is an associate director for the Network for Experimental Research on Evolution, [7] a University of California Multicampus Research Program.
His major scientific contributions have been in the areas of lizard locomotor physiology and ecology, allometry, phylogenetic comparative methods; [8] and the application of artificial selection experiments to understand the correlated evolution of physiology and behavior, as well as the physiological, neurobiological, and genetic bases of voluntary activity levels (physical exercise).
In 1983–84, he was a Visiting Fulbright Scholar at the University of Wollongong, Australia, hosted by Anthony J. Hulbert, and in 1985 he received the Outstanding Graduate Student Scholar Award from U.C., Irvine.
In 1991, he received a Presidential Young Investigator Award [9] from the National Science Foundation.
The University of Nevada, Las Vegas named him College of Sciences Alumnus of the Year [10] in April 2017.
In 2023, he received the Doctoral Dissertation Advisor/Mentoring Award from U.C., Riverside.
Zoology is the scientific study of animals. Its studies include the structure, embryology, classification, habits, and distribution of all animals, both living and extinct, and how they interact with their ecosystems. Zoology is one of the primary branches of biology. The term is derived from Ancient Greek ζῷον, zōion ('animal'), and λόγος, logos.
The modern synthesis was the early 20th-century synthesis of Charles Darwin's theory of evolution and Gregor Mendel's ideas on heredity into a joint mathematical framework. Julian Huxley coined the term in his 1942 book, Evolution: The Modern Synthesis. The synthesis combined the ideas of natural selection, Mendelian genetics, and population genetics. It also related the broad-scale macroevolution seen by palaeontologists to the small-scale microevolution of local populations.
Anolis is a genus of anoles, iguanian lizards in the family Dactyloidae, native to the Americas. With more than 425 species, it represents the world's most species-rich amniote tetrapod genus, although many of these have been proposed to be moved to other genera, in which case only about 45 Anolis species remain. Previously, it was classified under the family Polychrotidae that contained all the anoles, as well as Polychrus, but recent studies place it in the Dactyloidae.
Evolutionary biology is the subfield of biology that studies the evolutionary processes that produced the diversity of life on Earth. It is also defined as the study of the history of life forms on Earth. Evolution holds that all species are related and gradually change over generations. In a population, the genetic variations affect the phenotypes of an organism. These changes in the phenotypes will be an advantage to some organisms, which will then be passed on to their offspring. Some examples of evolution in species over many generations are the peppered moth and flightless birds. In the 1930s, the discipline of evolutionary biology emerged through what Julian Huxley called the modern synthesis of understanding, from previously unrelated fields of biological research, such as genetics and ecology, systematics, and paleontology.
Experimental evolution is the use of laboratory experiments or controlled field manipulations to explore evolutionary dynamics. Evolution may be observed in the laboratory as individuals/populations adapt to new environmental conditions by natural selection.
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.
Raymond Brunson Huey is a biologist specializing in evolutionary physiology. He has taught at the University of Washington (UW), and he earned his Ph.D. in biology at Harvard University under E. E. Williams. He has recently been the chair of the university's biology department, but a retirement celebration was held on 4 Oct. 2013 in Seattle.
Biological constraints are factors which make populations resistant to evolutionary change. One proposed definition of constraint is "A property of a trait that, although possibly adaptive in the environment in which it originally evolved, acts to place limits on the production of new phenotypic variants." Constraint has played an important role in the development of such ideas as homology and body plans.
Comparative physiology is a subdiscipline of physiology that studies and exploits the diversity of functional characteristics of various kinds of organisms. It is closely related to evolutionary physiology and environmental physiology. Many universities offer undergraduate courses that cover comparative aspects of animal physiology. According to Clifford Ladd Prosser, "Comparative Physiology is not so much a defined discipline as a viewpoint, a philosophy."
Evolutionary physiology is the study of the biological evolution of physiological structures and processes; that is, the manner in which the functional characteristics of organisms have responded to natural selection or sexual selection or changed by random genetic drift across multiple generations during the history of a population or species. It is a sub-discipline of both physiology and evolutionary biology. Practitioners in the field come from a variety of backgrounds, including physiology, evolutionary biology, ecology, and genetics.
Phylogenetic comparative methods (PCMs) use information on the historical relationships of lineages (phylogenies) to test evolutionary hypotheses. The comparative method has a long history in evolutionary biology; indeed, Charles Darwin used differences and similarities between species as a major source of evidence in The Origin of Species. However, the fact that closely related lineages share many traits and trait combinations as a result of the process of descent with modification means that lineages are not independent. This realization inspired the development of explicitly phylogenetic comparative methods. Initially, these methods were primarily developed to control for phylogenetic history when testing for adaptation; however, in recent years the use of the term has broadened to include any use of phylogenies in statistical tests. Although most studies that employ PCMs focus on extant organisms, many methods can also be applied to extinct taxa and can incorporate information from the fossil record.
Pere Alberch Vie was a Spanish naturalist, biologist and embryologist. He was a professor at Harvard University from 1980 to 1989, and director of the Museo Nacional de Ciencias Naturales, Madrid. He studied in the United States, earning a bachelor's degree from the University of Kansas (1976) and a PhD from the University of California, Berkeley (1980).
Ecological and Evolutionary Physiology is a peer-reviewed scientific journal published by the University of Chicago Press on behalf of the Society for Integrative and Comparative Biology. The journal publishes original research examining fundamental questions about how the ecological environment and/or evolutionary history interact with physiological function, as well as the ways physiology may constrain behavior. For EEP, physiology denotes the study of function in the broadest sense, across levels of organization from molecules to morphology to organismal performance and on behavior and life history traits.
Herman Spieth was an American zoologist and university administrator. He was the first chancellor of the University of California, Riverside from 1956 to 1964. Originally hired as a professor in the Life Sciences Department, he was responsible for administering UCR's change from a liberal arts college to a major research university. Spieth Hall at UCR is named after him.
Paul H. Harvey is a British evolutionary biologist. He is Professor of Zoology and was head of the zoology department at the University of Oxford from 1998 to 2011 and Secretary of the Zoological Society of London from 2000 to 2011, holding these posts in conjunction with a professorial fellowship at Jesus College, Oxford.
Patricia Adair Gowaty is an American evolutionary biologist. She received her B.A. in biology at Tulane University and her PhD in zoology at Clemson University in 1980. She is currently a Distinguished Professor at the University of California, Los Angeles.
Leslie Jane Rissler is an American biologist best known for her work on amphibian and reptile biogeography, evolutionary ecology, systematics, and conservation, and for her strong advocacy of improving the public’s understanding and appreciation of evolution. She is currently Program Officer in the Evolutionary Processes Cluster of the Division of Environmental Biology and Directorate of Biological Sciences at the National Science Foundation.
Chrysomela aeneicollis is a species of leaf beetle in the family Chrysomelidae. This organism has been used as a model for studies of natural selection in nature. It is currently being investigated to study effects of environmental change on insect populations, and the evolutionary significance of variation at genes affecting metabolism and the response to stress. It has been included as a study species in the California Conservation Genomics Project, due to its presence in multiple California ecoregions and extensive knowledge of genetic variation, evolutionary ecology, and interactions with other species. Information about its range and comparisons with closely related species can be found in a review of the genus Chrysomela published in the Canadian Entomologist.
Albert Farrell Bennett is an American zoologist, physiologist, evolutionary biologist, author, and academic. He is Dean Emeritus of the School of Biological Sciences at University of California, Irvine.
Organismal performance refers to the ability of an organism to conduct a task when maximally motivated. Various aspects of performance are of primary concern in human athletics, horse racing, and dog racing. Performance in swimming tasks has been a subject of fisheries research since the 1960s. In a broader biological context, the term first came to prominence with studies of locomotor abilities in lizards and snakes in the late 1970s and early 1980s.