Leticia Avilés is an Ecuadoran evolutionary biologist and ecologist who studies the evolution of social behavior and the evolution of life history traits in

metapopulation A metapopulation consists of a group of spatially separated populations of the same species which interact at some level. The term metapopulation was coined by Richard Levins in 1969 to describe a model of population dynamics of insect pests in ...

s. Her methods include a combination of theory and empirical work, the latter using social spiders as a model system. Her research on these organisms has addressed questions such as why some spiders live in groups,Avilés, L. and P. Tufiño. 1998. Colony size and individual fitness in the social spider ''Anelosimus eximius''. The American Naturalist 152: 403–418.
Yip, E.C, K.S. Powers, and L. Avilés. 2008. Cooperative capture of large prey solves scaling challenge faced by large spider societies. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the USA 105: 11818-11822.
why do they exhibit highly female-biased sex ratios,Avilés, L. 1993. Interdemic selection and the sex ratio: a social spider perspective. The American Naturalist 142:320–345.
and why have they evolved a system where individuals remain in the natal nest to mate from generation to generation.Avilés, L. 1997. Causes and consequences of cooperation and permanent sociality in spiders. In book: Evolution of Social Behaviour in Insects and Arachnids, Cambridge University Press, Eds: J. Choe and B. Crespi, pp.476–498.
Avilés, L. and T. Bukowski. 2006. Group living and inbreeding depression in a subsocial spider. Proceedings of the Royal Society of London B: 270: 157–163.
Avilés, L. and J. Purcell. 2012. The evolution of inbred social systems in spiders and other organisms: From short-term gains to long term evolutionary dead-ends? Invited synthesis paper, Advances in the Study of Behavior, 44: 99–133.

Career

Avilés is perhaps best known for having recognized the importance of social spiders as model systems to address basic questions in ecology and evolution. In the process she discovered a number of social spiders previously unknown to science, including a nomadic social spider whose colonies reproduce by fission—''Aebutina binotata'',Avilés, L. 1993. Newly-discovered sociality in the neotropical spider ''Aebutina binotata'' Simon (Araneae, Dictynidae). Journal of Arachnology 21:184–193.
Avilés, L. 2000. Nomadic behaviour and colony fission in a cooperative spider: life history evolution at the level of the colony? Biological Journal of the Linnean Society 70: 325–339.
a social lynx spider—''Tapinillus sp.'',Avilés, L. 1994. Social behavior in a web building lynx spider, ''Tapinillus sp''. (Araneae: Oxyopidae). Biological Journal of the Linnean Society 51:163–176.
and a social theridiid whose colonies exhibit a boom and bust pattern of growth and adult females occur in two distinct size classes—''Theridion nigroannulatum''.Avilés, L. W. Maddison, and I. Agnarsson. 2006. A new independently derived social spider with explosive colony proliferation and a female size dimorphism. Biotropica, 36: 743–753.
Her theoretical work has addressed questions such as the importance of multilevel selection in the evolution of female-biased sex ratios, why strongly inbred systems may evolve, and the importance of ecology and nonlinear dynamics in social evolution. Avilés, L. 1999. Cooperation and non-linear dynamics: An ecological perspective on the evolution of sociality. Evolutionary Ecology Research, 1: 459–477.
/ref>Avilés, L., P. Abbot and A. Cutter. 2002. Population ecology, nonlinear dynamics, and social evolution I: Associations among nonrelatives. The American Naturalist 159: 115–127.
One of Avilés's theoretical papers addresses the question of how cooperation among nonrelatives can be maintained despite the presence of freeloaders.Avilés, L. 2002. Solving the freeloaders paradox: Genetic associations and frequency dependent selection in the evolution of cooperation among nonrelatives. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the USA 99(22):14268-14273.
Today, Avilés is a professor in the Department of Zoology at the University of British Columbia in Canada, where she does research in ecology and evolution. Department of Zoology." Leticia Avilés. University of British Columbia, 20 May 2014. Web. 19 Oct. 2014. http://www.zoology.ubc.ca/person/laviles /ref>

Education

Avilés is a native of Ecuador. * Undergraduate: Licentiate in Biological Sciences, Pontificia Universidad Católica del Ecuador, Quito. * Ph.D: Organismic and Evolutionary Biology, Harvard University, 1992. * Postdoctoral Fellow: Research Training Group in the Analysis of Biological Diversification, University of Arizona, 1992–1994.

Awards

* 2001 Fellow Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin for Research * 1992 Young Investigator Award, American Society of Naturalists for Research

Career

Education

Awards

References

Further reading