Jonathan B. Losos

Dr. Jonathan Losos is the Monique and Philip Lehner Professor for the Study of Latin America at Harvard University; Professor of Organismic and Evolutionary Biology at Harvard University; and Curator of Herpetology, Museum of Comparative Zoology. Losos synthesizes present-day studies of ecological process with historical studies of evolutionary outcome to understand evolutionary diversification in Anolis lizards. He is a proponent of the experimental approach to studying evolutionary phenomena in nature, as exemplified by his 1997 Nature paper, which has been cited as one of only two truly complete field-experimental studies of evolutionary diversification. Losos advocates a detailed understanding of organisms and their environmental interactions. Dr. Losos was one of the first scientists to adopt rigorous statistical approaches that incorporate phylogenetic information, to understand patterns of convergence in community structure in a phylogenetic context, to synthesize historical and contemporary approaches to the study of adaptation, to determine evolution's contribution to species-area relationships, and to show what phylogenies reveal about the geography of speciation. He was the lead author and driving force behind the white paper that successfully proposed the genome sequencing of Anolis carolinensis, subsequently published in Nature in 2011. Losos has served as Editor of the American Naturalist, President of the American Society of Naturalists, and Editor-in-Chief of the Princeton Guide to Evolution. He has received numerous awards for his research and teaching, published over 175 articles including more twenty in Nature and Science, and released his first book: Lizards in an Evolutionary Tree.