Editors for Evolutionary Biology

We aim to publish studies that present major new insights into patterns and processes in any field of evolutionary biology. This includes comparative genomics, population genetics, ecology, behavior, morphology, evolution of developmental processes, palaeontology, experimental evolution and evolutionary theory. We welcome also papers that revisit long established evolutionary paradigms in the light of new evidence. Read the latest research in this subject area.

Type

All sections

Senior editors

Ian Baldwin

Max Planck Institute for Chemical Ecology, Germany

Ian Baldwin studied biology and chemistry at Dartmouth College in Hanover, New Hampshire and graduated 1981 with an AB. In 1989, he received a PhD in Chemical Ecology from Cornell University, in the Section of Neurobiology and Behavior. He was an Assistant (1989), Associate (1993) and Full Professor (1996) in the Department of Biology at SUNY Buffalo. In 1996 he became the Founding Director of the Max Planck Institute for Chemical Ecology, where he now heads of the Department of Molecular Ecology. In 1999 he was appointed Honorary Professor at Friedrich Schiller University in Jena, Germany. In 2002 he founded the International Max Planck Research School at the Max Planck Institute in Jena. Baldwin's scientific work is devoted to understanding the traits that allow plants to survive in the real world. To achieve this, he has developed a molecular toolbox for the native tobacco, Nicotiana attenuata (coyote tobacco) and a graduate program that trains “genome-enabled field biologists” to combine genomic and molecular genetic tools with field work to understand the genes that matter for plant-herbivore, -pollinator, -plant, -microbial interactions under real-world conditions. He has also been a driver behind the open-access publication efforts of the Max Planck Society.

Expertise
Ecology
Evolutionary Biology
Plant Biology

Research focus
evolutionary biology
plant biology
evolution and ecology
secondary metabolism
organismic level gene function

Competing interests statement
Ian Baldwin has received funding from the Max Planck Society, the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft, the US National Science Foundation, the AW Mellon Foundation, the European Research Council, and the Human Frontiers Science Program Organization. He currently serves on the editorial board of The Journal of Integrated Plant Biology; and previously, Oecologia, Ecological Studies Series, Chemoecology, and The Plant Journal. He serves on the advisory boards of the Copenhagen Plant Science Centre, Lytle Preserve, Brigham Young University, and more MPG programs than can be listed; and previously, the Institute of the Chemistry and Dynamics of the Geosphere, Jülich, the Minerva Center for Arid Ecosystems Research, Hebrew University, the Wissenschaftskolleg, Berlin, the Swiss NSF Priority Program "Plant Survival in Natural and Agricultural Ecosystems”, and the DFG Priority Programs "Biological radiations" and "Trophic interactions and dynamics of communities".
Diethard Tautz

Max-Planck Institute for Evolutionary Biology, Germany

Diethard Tautz is since 2006 Director of the Department for Evolutionary Genetics at the Max-Planck Institute for Evolutionary Biology in Plön, Germany. He did his PhD at the EMBL in Heidelberg, followed by postdoc phases on molecular evolution in Cambridge (UK) and on the molecular analysis of developmental processes in Drosophila at the MPI for Developmental Biology in Tübingen, where he joined the group of Herbert Jäckle. In 1991 he became Professor in the Department of Zoology in Munich and in 1998 he moved to a chair in "Evolutionary Genetics" at the Department of Genetics of the University of Cologne. In his research, he combined his interests in molecular evolution and developmental biology, and was one of the founders of the emerging Evo-Devo field. In parallel, he worked on questions of behavioral ecology and speciation mechanisms, based on his discovery of microsatellite-based DNA fingerprinting. His current interests center around studying the genetics of adaptations, using wild populations of the house mouse as a model system. He is also continuing his work on molecular evolution, with a special emphasis on the de novo evolution of genes. He has served as Editor-in-Chief for Development, Genes and Evolution, and was a co-founder of the open-access journal Frontiers in Zoology.

Expertise
Evolutionary Biology
Genetics and Genomics

Research focus
evolutionary genetics
population genomics
molecular evolution
evolution of development
comparative genomics
adaptation
behavioral ecology
speciation

Experimental organism
mouse

Competing interests statement
Diethard Tautz is funded by the Max-Planck Society and the European Research Council. He currently serves as Senior Editor for Molecular Ecology and on the editorial board of Frontiers in Zoology, Development Genes and Evolution, and Briefings in Functional Genomics and Proteomics. He served on a number of Max-Planck committees and on the evaluation committees for academic institutions.
Detlef Weigel

Max Planck Institute for Developmental Biology, Germany

Detlef Weigel received his PhD in 1988 from the Max Planck Institute for Developmental Biology. After postdoctoral work at the California Institute of Technology, he joined the faculty of the Salk Institute in 1993. Since 2002, he has been director of the Department of Molecular Biology at the Max Planck Institute for Developmental Biology. His current research interests focus on natural genetic variation and evolutionary genomics of plants. Examples of recent important projects are the 1001 Genomes project for Arabidopsis thaliana, and the systematic dissection of deleterious epistasis between Arabidopsis strains due to autoimmunity. Among the awards he has received are the Young Investigator Award of the National Science Foundation, the Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz Award of the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft, and the Otto Bayer Award. He is a member of the US National Academy of Sciences, the German National Academy of Sciences Leopoldina and the Royal Society.

Expertise
Plant Biology
Genetics and Genomics
Evolutionary Biology

Research focus
natural variation
epigenetics
evolutionary genomics
plant biology
genomics
evolutionary biology
immunity

Experimental organism
Arabidopsis

Competing interests statement
Detlef Weigel has received funding from the Max Planck Society, the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft, the Foundation of the State of Baden-Württemberg, the German Ministry for Education and Research, the European Commission, the Human Frontiers Science Program Organization, and several US Federal agencies. He serves on the Editorial Boards of Annual Review of Cell and Developmental Biology and Genome Biology. He is Chair of EMBO Council, and is serving or has recently served on the Advisory Boards of the Epigenomics of Plants International Consortium, Bayer Crop Science, The Arabidopsis Information Resource, Flanders Institute of Biotechnology, Temasek Life Sciences Laboratory, and the Sainsbury Laboratory. He is a co-founder of Computomics and CeMet.
Patricia Wittkopp

University of Michigan, United States

Patricia Wittkopp received a BS from the University of Michigan, a PhD from the University of Wisconsin, and did postdoctoral work at Cornell University. In 2005, she began a faculty position at the University of Michigan, where she is now an Arthur F Thurnau Professor in the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Department of Molecular, Cellular, and Developmental Biology, Center for Computational Medicine and Bioinformatics, and LSA Honors Program. Her research investigates the genetic basis of phenotypic evolution, with an emphasis on the evolution of gene expression. Molecular and developmental biology, population and quantitative genetics, genomics and bioinformatics are integrated in this work. She was a Damon Runyon Cancer Research Fellow, an Alfred P Sloan Research Fellow, and a recipient of a March of Dimes Starter Scholar Award.

Expertise
Computational and Systems Biology
Ecology
Genetics and Genomics
Evolutionary Biology

Research focus
evolutionary genetics
evolution and development
gene expression
regulatory networks
allele-specific expression

Experimental organism
D. melanogaster
S. cerevisiae

Competing interests statement
Patricia Wittkopp has received research support from the National Institutes of Health, National Science Foundation, March of Dimes, and the Alfred P Sloan Foundation. She is currently an Associate Editor of Molecular Biology and Evolution and Genome Biology and Evolution, and also serves on the Advisory Editorial Board of Trends in Genetics.

Reviewing editors

Iain D Couzin

Max Planck Institute for Ornithology, Germany

Expertise
Ecology
Evolutionary Biology

Research focus
bird flocks
fish schools
insect swarms
consensus decision-making
collective behavior
evolution of migration
Michael Doebeli

University of British Columbia, Canada

Expertise
Computational and Systems Biology
Ecology
Evolutionary Biology

Research focus
mathematical modelling
evolution of diversity
social insects
ecology and evolution of microbial communities
Erich D Jarvis

Rockefeller University, United States

Expertise
Neuroscience
Evolutionary Biology
Genetics and Genomics

Research focus
neural and genetic mechanisms of speech production
Laurent Keller

University of Lausanne, Switzerland

Expertise
Ecology
Evolutionary Biology

Research focus
ecology
evolutionary genetics
social insects
Christian R Landry

Universite Laval, Canada

Expertise
Computational and Systems Biology
Evolutionary Biology

Research focus
evolutionary genetics
evolution
bioinformatics
cell and systems biology
yeast genetics

Experimental organism
S. cerevisiae
David Lentink

Stanford University, United States

Expertise
Ecology
Evolutionary Biology

Research focus
comparative biomechanics of flight
evolutionary biology
bio-fluid dynamics
bio-inspired design

Experimental organism
birds
insects
bats
plant seeds (previously also fish)
John A Long

Flinders University, Australia

Expertise
Evolutionary Biology

Research focus
paleontology
fossil
Pisces
Devonian
Placodermi
Tetrapodomorpha
Chondrichthyes
Actinopterygii
Sarcopterygii
Palaeozoic
phylogeny
Australia
Gondwana
Richard A Neher

University of Basel, Switzerland

Expertise
Computational and Systems Biology
Physics of Living Systems
Evolutionary Biology

Research focus
population genetics
evolution of RNA viruses
bioinformatics
Magnus Nordborg

Gregor Mendel Institute of Molecular Plant Biology, Austrian Academy of Sciences, Austria

Expertise
Genetics and Genomics
Plant Biology
Evolutionary Biology

Research focus
adaptation
population genetics
statistical genetics
molecular genetics
George H Perry

Pennsylvania State University, United States

Expertise
Ecology
Evolutionary Biology

Research focus
human evolution
primates
paleogenomics
evolutionary and ecological genomics
Molly Przeworski

Columbia University, United States

Expertise
Computational and Systems Biology
Evolutionary Biology
Genetics and Genomics

Research focus
population genetics
evolutionary biology
recombination

Experimental organism
primates
Paul Rainey

Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Biology, Germany

Expertise
Ecology
Evolutionary Biology
Microbiology and Infectious Disease
Plant Biology

Research focus
adaptive radiation
evolution of individuality
evolutionary genetics
ecological genetics
emergence of infectious diseases
forecasting evolution
Antonis Rokas

Vanderbilt University, United States

Expertise
Evolutionary Biology
Microbiology and Infectious Disease

Research focus
phylogenomics
genome evolution in fungi and animals
evolution of fungal secondary/specialized metabolic pathways
evolution of mammalian pregnancy

Experimental organism
fungi
Karen Sears

University of California, Los Angeles, United States

Expertise
Evolutionary Biology

Research focus
mammalian evolutionary developmental biology
Wenying Shou

Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, United States

Expertise
Computational and Systems Biology
Ecology
Evolutionary Biology

Research focus
evolution of cooperation and multi-level selection
microbial ecology and evolution
quantitative experimental biology
theoretical biology

Experimental organism
S. cerevisiae
Jessica Thompson

Yale University, United States

Expertise
Ecology
Evolutionary Biology

Research focus
Zooarchaeology
human evolution
African archaeology
taphonomy

Experimental organism
human
Kevin Verstrepen

VIB-KU Leuven Center for Microbiology, Belgium

Expertise
Evolutionary Biology
Genetics and Genomics
Microbiology and Infectious Disease

Research focus
genomics
systems biology
yeast genetics

Experimental organism
S. cerevisiae
Min Zhu

Chinese Academy of Sciences, China

Expertise
Ecology
Evolutionary Biology

Research focus
paleontology
vertebrate evolution
vertebrate morphology
evolutionary-developmental biology
ichthyology