Mary Jane West-Eberhard

Mary Jane West-Eberhard
Born1941 (age 82–83)
Alma materUniversity 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
FieldsEusociality; Sexual selection; Phenotypic plasticity
InstitutionsSmithsonian Tropical Research Institute
Academic advisorsRichard 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.

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.

  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. ^ 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. ^ West-Eberhard M-J. (2003). Developmental plasticity and evolution. Oxford University Press, New York. ISBN 978-0-19-512235-0
  6. ^ 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. [1]