Joan Roughgarden facts for kids

Joan Roughgarden (born March 13, 1946) is an American scientist who studies ecology and evolutionary biology. Ecology is the study of how living things interact with each other and their environment. Evolutionary biology is the study of how life has changed over millions of years.

Roughgarden is known for her research on Anolis lizards in the Caribbean and barnacles on the coasts of California and Oregon. She has also challenged some of Charles Darwin's famous ideas and has developed her own theories about how animals cooperate.

Education and Personal Life

Joan Roughgarden was born in Paterson, New Jersey. She was a very bright student and earned two degrees from the University of Rochester in 1968: one in biology and one in philosophy. She then went to Harvard University and earned her Ph.D. in biology in 1971.

In 1998, Roughgarden shared that she is a transgender woman and changed her first name to Joan.

A Career in Science and Teaching

Roughgarden began her career teaching biology at the University of Massachusetts Boston. In 1972, she moved to Stanford University, where she became a full professor. At Stanford, she started a new program called the Earth Systems Program and won awards for her excellent teaching.

After retiring from Stanford in 2011, she moved to Hawaii. There, she became a professor at the Hawaiʻi Institute of Marine Biology. Throughout her career, she has guided many students and written over 180 scientific articles and several books.

Scientific Discoveries

Roughgarden's research has helped scientists understand the natural world in new ways. She often combines theories with hands-on experiments in the wild.

Caribbean Lizards and Competition

In the 1970s and 1980s, Roughgarden studied Anolis lizards in the Caribbean. She wanted to understand how different species of lizards live together on the same islands. She set up experiments to see what happened when two species had to share the same space and food.

Her work showed that when resources are scarce, competition between species becomes stronger. This research helped make Anolis lizards a famous example of how evolution and ecology are connected.

Barnacles and Ocean Currents

Later, Roughgarden studied barnacles, which are small sea creatures that stick to rocks. Other scientists believed that the number of barnacles in an area was mainly controlled by predators and competition for space.

Roughgarden and her students studied barnacles on the California coast. They discovered that the most important factor was the number of baby barnacles, called larvae, that arrived from the ocean. In areas with strong ocean currents, fewer larvae arrived, so there were fewer adult barnacles. This idea changed how marine biologists thought about life in the intertidal zone.

A New Idea: Social Selection

Roughgarden is well-known for questioning a part of Darwin's theory called sexual selection. Sexual selection is the idea that animals evolve certain traits to attract mates, like a peacock's colorful tail. The theory often focuses on competition between individuals.

Roughgarden noticed that many animals in nature cooperate more than they compete. She proposed a new theory called social selection. This theory suggests that evolution favors animals that work together as a team to raise their young successfully. Instead of focusing on competition for mates, social selection focuses on cooperation and teamwork.

This idea caused a lot of debate among scientists. Many defended Darwin's original theory, but Roughgarden's work encouraged them to think about animal behavior in new ways.

Holobionts: The Team of Host and Microbes

More recently, Roughgarden has been studying the concept of the holobiont. A holobiont is an organism, like a plant or animal, plus all the tiny microbes (like bacteria) that live on and inside it.

She believes that an organism and its microbes evolve together as a single unit. The genes of the host and the genes of its microbes work together. Roughgarden created a mathematical model to show how this "team" can evolve, even if the microbes are not passed down directly from parent to child. This research helps explain the close partnership between animals and their helpful microbes.

Awards and Honors

Joan Roughgarden has received many awards for her work.

• Elected Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1993.
• Dinkelspiel Award for excellent teaching from Stanford University in 1995.
• Stonewall Book Award in 2005.

She has also served on many scientific boards and committees, helping to guide research and conservation efforts.

See also

In Spanish: Joan Roughgarden para niños