Michael J. Wade is a professor of biology at Indiana University Bloomington. Since 2009 he has been the Associate Vice Provost for Faculty and Academic Affairs at Indiana University. He is also affiliated faculty in the following departments and centers at Indiana University: Center for the Integrative Study of Animal Behavior (CISAB), the Cognitive Science Progra

and the Department of History and Philosophy of Science.

Academic career

Wade was a professor at University of Chicago from 1975 to 1998 (Assistant Professor, Department of Biology, 1975-1981; Associate Professor, Department of Biology, 1981-1986; Professor, Department of Ecology and Evolutio

1986-1998; Chair, Department of Ecology and Evolution, 1991-1998). He received his PhD from University of Chicago in 1975, under the joint tutelage of the ecology, ecologist

Thomas Park Thomas Park (1759–1834) was an English antiquary and bibliographer, also known as a literary editor. Life He was the son of parents who lived at East Acton, Middlesex. When ten years old he was sent to a grammar school at Heighington, County ...

and the theoretical population geneticist,

Montgomery Slatkin Montgomery Wilson Slatkin is an American biologist, and professor at University of California, Berkeley. Education Slatkin received his undergraduate degree in mathematics from Massachusetts Institute of Technology and his PhD from Harvard Univers ...

(now at University of California, Berkeley). His doctoral committee included the cicada ecologist, Monty Lloyd, the laboratory ecologist, David Byron Mertz, and the anuran

systematist Biological systematics is the study of the diversification of living forms, both past and present, and the relationships among living things through time. Relationships are visualized as evolutionary trees (synonyms: cladograms, phylogenetic tre ...

, Robert Inger. Park arranged for him to meet and discuss his doctoral research with Sewall Wright on several occasions. His dissertation, and subsequent research program, focused on the evolution, ecology, and genetics of flour beetles of the genus ''Tribolium''. At the earliest stages of his graduate career, he had been interested in the ecology of frogs in vernal ponds in Chicago.

Research

Two central interests of Wade's research program are population structure and

epistasis Epistasis is a phenomenon in genetics in which the effect of a gene mutation is dependent on the presence or absence of mutations in one or more other genes, respectively termed modifier genes. In other words, the effect of the mutation is dep ...

. Interactions at the population and genetic levels are often non-additive. Thus, explaining and

predicting A prediction (Latin ''præ-'', "before," and ''dicere'', "to say"), or forecast, is a statement about a future event or data. They are often, but not always, based upon experience or knowledge. There is no universal agreement about the exact ...

many genetic and evolutionary phenomena in nature require understanding non-additive causal effects. As Richard Lewontin wrote, "context and interaction are of the essence". In effect, Wade has found extensive empirical support, in the laboratory and in the field, for Sewall Wright's Shifting balance theory. Through significant mathematical modeling, Wade has also shown that Wright's theory is robust and explanatorily powerful. Wade's results, in concert with work by David Sloan Wilson, helped rekindle interest in group selection in the biological community. Wade has also done influential work on sexual selection (see papers with Stevan Arnold, and book with Stephen Shuster, cited below), and the genetics of

speciation Speciation is the evolutionary process by which populations evolve to become distinct species. The biologist Orator F. Cook coined the term in 1906 for cladogenesis, the splitting of lineages, as opposed to anagenesis, phyletic evolution within ...

, stressing the need to consider variation within species as well as fixed differences among species. Recently, his work has turned to social evolution and indirect genetic effects (e.g.,

maternal effects A maternal effect is a situation where the phenotype of an organism is determined not only by the environment it experiences and its genotype, but also by the environment and genotype of its mother. In genetics, maternal effects occur when an org ...

). Wade and his collaborators are increasingly employing rich

genomics Genomics is an interdisciplinary field of biology focusing on the structure, function, evolution, mapping, and editing of genomes. A genome is an organism's complete set of DNA, including all of its genes as well as its hierarchical, three-dim ...

data and turning to other model systems, such as

social insects Eusociality (from Greek εὖ ''eu'' "good" and social), the highest level of organization of sociality, is defined by the following characteristics: cooperative brood care (including care of offspring from other individuals), overlapping genera ...

. In addition to biological topics, Wade is also interested in the history and philosophy of science, politics, and literature. He has published on topics central to the philosophy of science, such as levels and units of selection and

causality Causality (also referred to as causation, or cause and effect) is influence by which one event, process, state, or object (''a'' ''cause'') contributes to the production of another event, process, state, or object (an ''effect'') where the cau ...

Distinctions

Wade has published over 150 scientific papers and book chapters,See this ISI Web of Knowledge search, which does not include book chapters, URL

/ref> and received several distinctions, including membership in the

American Association for the Advancement of Science The American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) is an American international non-profit organization with the stated goals of promoting cooperation among scientists, defending scientific freedom, encouraging scientific respons ...

in 2007, in the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2008, and he was recognized with the Sewall Wright Award in 2009.

Key publications

*Wade MJ. 1978. "A Critical Review of the Models of Group Selection." '' Quarterly Review of Biology'' 53: 101-114. *Wade MJ. 1980. "Kin Selection: Its Components." ''Science'' 210: 665-67. *Arnold SJ, Wade MJ. 1984. "On the Measurement of Natural and Sexual Selection: Theory." ''Evolution'' 38: 709-719. *Arnold SJ, Wade MJ. 1984. "On the Measurement of Natural and Sexual Selection: Applications." ''Evolution'' 38: 720-734. *Wade MJ. 1985. "Soft Selection, Hard Selection, Kin Selection, and Group Selection." '' American Naturalist'' 125: 61-73. *Wade MJ, and Goodnight CJ. 1998. "Genetics and adaptation in metapopulations: When nature does many small experiments." ''Evolution'' 52:1537-1553. *Wolf JB, Brodie III ED, and Wade MJ. 2000. ''Epistasis and the Evolutionary Process''. Oxford University Pres

*Shuster SM, Wade MJ. 2003. ''Mating Systems and Strategies''. Princeton University Pres

References

External links

Michael J. Wade's Homepage

{{DEFAULTSORT:Wade, Michael J. American evolutionary biologists Population geneticists University of Chicago alumni Indiana University Bloomington faculty Fellows of the American Association for the Advancement of Science Living people Year of birth missing (living people) Place of birth missing (living people) University of Chicago faculty