Joan Roughgarden facts for kids

Joan Roughgarden (born March 13, 1946) is an American scientist. She studies ecology and evolution. Ecology is about how living things interact with each other and their environment. Evolution is how living things change over many generations.

Dr. Roughgarden has studied how different species of Anolis lizards compete in the Caribbean. She also looked at how many young barnacles settle in areas along the coasts of California and Oregon. More recently, she is known for her ideas about sexual selection and her belief that science and faith can work together. She also studies how holobionts evolve.

About Joan Roughgarden

Early Life and Education

Joan Roughgarden was born in Paterson, New Jersey, in the United States. She went to the University of Rochester. There, she earned a degree in biology and another in philosophy in 1968. She then went to Harvard University and earned her Ph.D. in biology in 1971.

In 1998, when she was 52, Dr. Roughgarden shared that she is transgender. She changed her name to Joan.

Her Career in Science

From 1970 to 1972, Dr. Roughgarden taught biology at the University of Massachusetts Boston. In 1972, she joined the biology department at Stanford University. She became a full professor and retired in 2011, becoming a professor emeritus (a retired professor who keeps their title).

At Stanford, she started and led the Earth Systems Program. This program teaches students about the environment. She won awards for her work helping undergraduate students. In 2012, she moved to Hawaii. There, she became a professor at the [[Hawaiʻi Institute of Marine Biology]]. During her career, she guided 20 Ph.D. students and 15 postdoctoral researchers.

Dr. Roughgarden has written many books and over 180 scientific papers. In 1979, she wrote a textbook about ecology and evolution. She also did field research on Caribbean lizards and on barnacles along the California coast. In 2015, she wrote a science fiction novel called Ram-2050.

What Did Joan Roughgarden Research?

Studying Caribbean Lizards

In the 1970s and 80s, Dr. Roughgarden's early work focused on Anolis lizards in the Caribbean. These lizards became an important group for studying evolution and ecology. For example, she did experiments on two Caribbean islands. She showed that when different species of lizards share the same resources, they compete more strongly. This idea is a main part of competition theory. Her work with Anolis lizards helped show how ecosystems and evolution affect each other. Other scientists, like Jonathan Losos, continued this work. It became a key example of adaptive radiation, which is when many new species evolve from one ancestor.

Researching Barnacles and Their Larvae

Dr. Roughgarden also studied acorn barnacles along the California coast. Barnacles are small sea creatures that attach to rocks. Earlier scientists had thought that the way different species of barnacles settled in different zones on rocks was mainly due to predators (like starfish) and competition. For example, some barnacles might push out others from certain areas.

However, Dr. Roughgarden and her student Steve Gaines found something different. They showed that competition was most important where barnacles were very crowded. In places like Central California, where barnacles were less crowded, the amount of empty space on rocks was mostly due to how many young barnacles (larvae) arrived.

With another student, Sean Connolly, she found that ocean currents along the west coast of North America affected how many barnacle larvae arrived. Strong currents in the south (California) meant fewer larvae, while weaker currents in the north (Oregon and Washington) meant more larvae. This explained why scientists in different areas found different things. Her work helped change how marine ecologists thought about ocean populations. They started to focus more on how larvae spread and settle, rather than just adult interactions.

Connecting Science and Faith

Dr. Roughgarden has written about how Christianity and science can relate. In her book, Evolution and Christian Faith: Reflections of an Evolutionary Biologist, she explains that the Bible does not conflict with evolutionary biology. She believes that all life is connected, just like people in a faith community are connected. She does not support creationism or intelligent design. Instead, she believes that God is involved in the process of evolution.

Understanding Holobiont Evolution

After retiring, Dr. Roughgarden began studying holobionts. A holobiont is an animal or plant host (like a human) along with all the tiny living things (microbes) that live on or inside it. These microbes are called the microbiome. Scientists can now study these microbial communities much better with new DNA methods.

Because the microbiome and its host are so closely linked, many scientists think that the holobiont might be a unit of evolution. This means that the host's genes and the microbiome's genes together form an "extended genome," or hologenome. However, some scientists have questioned this idea. This is because microbiomes are not always passed directly from parent to child in the same way genes are.

In a 2018 review, Dr. Roughgarden and others looked at the evidence for the holobiont concept. They showed how closely the host and its microbes work together in many ways, like in development and reproduction. For example, human mothers' milk contains sugars that babies cannot digest. These sugars seem to be there to feed the helpful microbes in the baby's gut.

Dr. Roughgarden also developed a model to understand how holobionts evolve. Her model showed that even if microbes are not passed directly from parent to child, holobiont evolution can still happen. This is especially true if helpful microbes make their hosts more successful. She calls this "collective inheritance." She also explored how a host might control which microbes stay with it, like using antibodies. This process helps explain why hosts and their microbial partners are so closely connected across all eukaryotic life.

Awards and Recognitions

• Stonewall Book Award, 2005
• Center Fellow, National Center for Ecological Synthesis and Analysis, University of California (Santa Barbara), 1998
• Dinkelspiel Award for Undergraduate Teaching, Stanford University, 1995
• Visiting research fellow at the Merton College, University of Oxford, 1994
• Elected Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, 1993
• Fellow of Guggenheim Foundation, 1985
• University Fellow, Stanford University, 1978

Dr. Roughgarden has also served as an editor for several academic journals. These include Philosophy and Theory in Biology, American Naturalist, Oecologia, and Theoretical Population Biology. She was also the vice-chair and Chair of the Theoretical Ecology Section of the Ecological Society of America from 2002 to 2003. She has served on boards for groups like the Oceanic Society and the EPA.

See also

In Spanish: Joan Roughgarden para niños