John Endler facts for kids

John Arthur Endler FRS (born 1947) is a Canadian scientist. He is an ethologist, which means he studies animal behavior. He is also an evolutionary biologist, meaning he studies how living things change over time.

Professor Endler is well-known for his work on how animals, especially vertebrates (animals with backbones), adapt to their unique surroundings. He also studies how an animal's senses and its color patterns change together over time.

Early Life and Education

John Endler was born in Canada in 1947. He moved to Scotland to continue his studies. He earned his PhD degree from the University of Edinburgh in Scotland in 1973.

Career and Discoveries

After finishing his PhD, Professor Endler worked at many different universities. He taught and did research at Princeton University and the University of Utah in the United States. He also worked at the University of California, Santa Barbara.

Later, he moved to Australia. There, he worked at James Cook University and is now a professor at Deakin University. In 2006, he became a professor at the University of Exeter in England. He was also elected as a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2007. In 2020, he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society, which is a very high honor for scientists.

Studying Guppies

Endler's livebearer, now classified as Poecilia wingei

Professor Endler has done a lot of important work studying guppies. These are small, colorful fish. In 1975, he "rediscovered" a special type of guppy. This fish is now known as Endler's guppy in his honor. It is a very brightly colored fish. Some people thought it was just a different kind of common guppy. But now, scientists usually treat it as its own separate species, called Poecilia wingei. Even though this fish had been seen before, Professor Endler was the first to properly study and document it.

Evolution Experiments

Among other scientists, Professor Endler is famous for his experiments. He showed how small-scale evolution can happen right in the laboratory. This means he could see changes in animals over a short time. His work on guppies in Trinidad was even featured in a popular science book called The Beak of the Finch.

Bowerbirds and Other Animals

Besides guppies, Professor Endler has studied many other animal species. For example, he investigated bowerbirds in North Queensland, Australia. Bowerbirds are known for building special structures, called "bowers," to attract mates. He studied how they build these and why.

Awards and Recognition

In 2008, Professor Endler received an important award from the European Research Council. This award helps scientists do advanced research. In 2012, he was elected a Fellow of the Australian Academy of Science. In 2021, he and another scientist, Susanne von Caemmerer, won the first-ever Suzanne Cory Medal for Biomedical Sciences.

Books by John Endler

• Endler, John A. (1977). Geographic Variation, Speciation, and Clines. This book is about how animals change across different places.
• Endler, John A. (1986). Natural Selection in the Wild. This book explains how natural selection works in real-world environments.