Bernard Joseph Crespi is an American professor of

evolutionary biology Evolutionary biology is the subfield of biology that studies the evolutionary processes (natural selection, common descent, speciation) that produced the diversity of life on Earth. It is also defined as the study of the history of life fo ...

Simon Fraser University Simon Fraser University (SFU) is a public research university in British Columbia, Canada, with three campuses, all in Greater Vancouver: Burnaby (main campus), Surrey, and Vancouver. The main Burnaby campus on Burnaby Mountain, located from ...

British Columbia British Columbia (commonly abbreviated as BC) is the westernmost province of Canada, situated between the Pacific Ocean and the Rocky Mountains. It has a diverse geography, with rugged landscapes that include rocky coastlines, sandy beaches, ...

, Canada. His research focuses on

social evolution {{unreferenced, date=February 2015 ''Social Evolution'' is the title of an essay by Benjamin Kidd, which became available as a book published by Macmillan and co London in 1894. In it, Kidd discusses the basis for society as an evolving phenomenon ...

across multiple scales, using genetic and ecological approaches. He is one of the initiators of the imprinted brain hypothesis. In 2010, he was elected as a fellow of the

Royal Society of Canada The Royal Society of Canada (RSC; french: Société royale du Canada, SRC), also known as the Academies of Arts, Humanities and Sciences of Canada (French: ''Académies des arts, des lettres et des sciences du Canada''), is the senior national, bil ...

Career

After earning his PhD and conducting postdoctoral work in Europe, Crespi joined the faculty at

in 1992. In 2006, he was the recipient of a Killam Research Fellowship. Bernard Crespi 2016

In 2008, Crespi published a paper describing observed patterns of imprinting in humans and other organisms. He explained that Genomic imprinting is an

epigenetic In biology, epigenetics is the study of stable phenotypic changes (known as ''marks'') that do not involve alterations in the DNA sequence. The Greek prefix '' epi-'' ( "over, outside of, around") in ''epigenetics'' implies features that are "o ...

process by which certain

gene In biology, the word gene (from , ; "...Wilhelm Johannsen coined the word gene to describe the Mendelian units of heredity..." meaning ''generation'' or ''birth'' or ''gender'') can have several different meanings. The Mendelian gene is a ba ...

s are expressed in a parent-of-origin-specific manner. The imprinted brain theory is a variant of the conflict theory of imprinting which argues that in

diploid Ploidy () is the number of complete sets of chromosomes in a cell, and hence the number of possible alleles for autosomal and pseudoautosomal genes. Sets of chromosomes refer to the number of maternal and paternal chromosome copies, respectively ...

organisms, such as humans, the maternal and paternal set of genes may have antagonistic reproductive interests since the mother and father may have antagonistic interests regarding the development of the child. Following this, he was named a Fellow of the

. In 2013, Crespi and fellow UMich alumni Kyle Summers co-edited "''Human Social Evolution, The Foundational Works of Richard D. Alexander,''" which was published through the

Oxford University Press Oxford University Press (OUP) is the university press of the University of Oxford. It is the largest university press in the world, and its printing history dates back to the 1480s. Having been officially granted the legal right to print books ...

. In 2016, Crespi won SFU's Nora and Ted Sterling Prize in Support of Controversy for his evolutionary biology research. The next year, he conducted a study with

Gerhard Gries Gerhard J. Gries (born 1955; Duderstadt, Germany) is a full professor of Animal Communication Ecology at the Department of Biological Sciences at Simon Fraser University. Education and career Gries graduated from the Duderstadt Gymnasium in 1974. ...

, and Regine Gries to study the effect of natural selection on stick insects and mating. He was also selected as a Tier 1

Canada Research Chair Canada Research Chair (CRC) is a title given to certain Canadian university research professors by the Canada Research Chairs Program. Program goals The Canada Research Chair program was established in 2000 as a part of the Government of Canada ...

in Evolutionary Genetics and Psychology.

References

External links

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NYT article
{{DEFAULTSORT:Crespi, Bernard Living people Year of birth missing (living people) Fellows of the Royal Society of Canada Evolutionary biologists Simon Fraser University faculty Canada Research Chairs