Robert E. Page Jr. (born 12 November 1949) is one of the foremost honey bee geneticists in the world and a Foundation Chair of Life Sciences of

Arizona State University Arizona State University (Arizona State or ASU) is a public research university in the Phoenix metropolitan area. Founded in 1885 by the 13th Arizona Territorial Legislature, ASU is one of the largest public universities by enrollment in the ...

. An author of more than 250 research papers and articles, his work on the self-organizing regulatory networks of honey bees has been outlined in his book, "The Spirit of the Hive: The Mechanisms of Social Evolution," published by

Harvard University Press Harvard University Press (HUP) is a publishing house established on January 13, 1913, as a division of Harvard University, and focused on academic publishing. It is a member of the Association of American University Presses. After the retirem ...

in 2013. Page currently holds the titles of Arizona State University Provost Emeritus and Regents Professor Emeritus. He is also chair and professor emeritus at the

University of California-Davis The University of California, Davis (UC Davis, UCD, or Davis) is a public land-grant research university near Davis, California. Named a Public Ivy, it is the northernmost of the ten campuses of the University of California system. The institut ...

and an external professor at the Santa Fe Institute.

Biography and education

Page was born in Bakersfield, California, and spent his childhood there until he attended high school in Porterville, California. He served in the U.S. Army from 1969 to 1972. With support from the

G.I. Bill The Servicemen's Readjustment Act of 1944, commonly known as the G.I. Bill, was a law that provided a range of benefits for some of the returning World War II veterans (commonly referred to as G.I.s). The original G.I. Bill expired in 1956, bu ...

, he received his undergraduate degree in entomology, with a minor in chemistry, from

San Jose State University San José State University (San Jose State or SJSU) is a public university in San Jose, California. Established in 1857, SJSU is the oldest public university on the West Coast and the founding campus of the California State University (CSU) sys ...

in 1976. He was awarded his Ph.D. in entomology from

in 1980. He began his career as an assistant professor in the Department of Entomology with

Ohio State University The Ohio State University, commonly called Ohio State or OSU, is a public land-grant research university in Columbus, Ohio. A member of the University System of Ohio, it has been ranked by major institutional rankings among the best publ ...

in 1986, moving to the University of California-Davis in 1989, where he became chair for UC-Davis's Department of Entomology in 1999. He joined Arizona State University (ASU) in 2004 as founding director of ASU's School of Life Sciences, one of the first interdisciplinary academic units developed under President Michael Crow's vision of the "New American University." His background is in behavior and population genetics and the focus of his current research is on the evolution of complex social behavior. Using the honey bee as a model, Professor Page has dissected bee's complex foraging division of labor at all levels of biological organization – from

gene networks A gene (or genetic) regulatory network (GRN) is a collection of molecular regulators that interact with each other and with other substances in the cell to govern the gene expression levels of mRNA and proteins which, in turn, determine the fu ...

to complex social interactions. An internationally recognized scholar, he has published more than 230 research papers and articles. In 2005, he was listed as an ISI's Highly Cited author in plant and animal science – representing the top ½ percent of publishing researchers. He served as provost of Arizona State University (2013–2015), and vice provost and dean of the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, the largest college in the university (2011–2013). During this period he forged a platform to accelerate ASU’s transdisciplinary collaboration in the U.S. and Europe, advance educational reform, and jumpstart cutting-edge "virtual" learning formats. He also established ASU's Honey Bee Research Facility.

Scientific work

Robert Page's background is in

behavior Behavior (American English) or behaviour (British English) is the range of actions and mannerisms made by individuals, organisms, systems or artificial entities in some environment. These systems can include other systems or organisms as wel ...

and

population genetics Population genetics is a subfield of genetics that deals with genetic differences within and between populations, and is a part of evolutionary biology. Studies in this branch of biology examine such phenomena as adaptation, speciation, and pop ...

and the focus of his current research is on the evolution of complex social behavior. Using the honey bee as a model, he has dissected bee's complex foraging division of labor at all levels of biological organization – from gene networks to complex social interactions. His work, as well as that of his distinguished students, is outlined in his publication "The Spirit of the Hive: The Mechanisms of Social Evolution," released by

in 2013. As described on the fly leaf: "This book presents a comprehensive picture of the genetic and physiological mechanisms underlying the division of labor in honey bee colonies and explains how bees' complex social behavior has evolved over millions of years." His work has been cited in more than 18,000 publications and has an

h-index The ''h''-index is an author-level metric that measures both the productivity and citation impact of the publications, initially used for an individual scientist or scholar. The ''h''-index correlates with obvious success indicators such as winn ...

value of 74.

Honors

* Elected fellow of 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 ...

. (1992) * He received the Alexander von Humboldt Senior Scientist Award (the Humboldt Prize), the highest honor given by the German government to foreign scientists. (1995) * Elected Foreign Member of the Brazilian Academy of Sciences. (1999) * Robert E. Page is an elected fellow of the

American Academy of Arts and Sciences The American Academy of Arts and Sciences (abbreviation: AAA&S) is one of the oldest learned societies in the United States. It was founded in 1780 during the American Revolution by John Adams, John Hancock, James Bowdoin, Andrew Oliver, and ...

. (2006) * Elected to the Leopoldina – the German National Academy of Sciences, the longest continuing academy in the world. (2009) * Fellow of theWissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin. (2009) * Fellow of

Entomological Society of America The Entomological Society of America (ESA) was founded in 1889 and today has more than 7,000 members, including educators, extension personnel, consultants, students, researchers, and scientists from agricultural departments, health agencies, ...

. (2012) * He was awarded the

Carl Friedrich von Siemens Carl Friedrich von Siemens (5 September 1872, in Berlin – 9 September 1941, in Heinendorf, near Potsdam) was a German Entrepreneur and politician. A member of the Siemens family, he became associated with Siemens & Halske AG in 1899, his family ...

Fellowship. (2013) * Elected fellow of the

California Academy of Sciences The California Academy of Sciences is a research institute and natural history museum in San Francisco, California, that is among the largest museums of natural history in the world, housing over 46 million specimens. The Academy began in 1853 ...

. (2016) *James W. Creasman Award of Excellence, Arizona State University Alumni Association. (2018) *Distinguished Emeritus Award, University of California Davis. (2019)

Publications

Journal articles

Robert Page has authored or coauthored more than 250 scientific studies or review articles on genetics and evolution of social insect behavior. * Page, R. E. 1980. The evolution of multiple mating behavior of honey bee queens
Genetics 96: 263–273
* Hunt, G.J., R.E. Page, M.K. Fondrk, and C.J. Dullum. 1995. Major quantitative trait loci affecting honey bee foraging behavior
Genetics 141: 1537–1545
* Hunt, G. J, and R.E. Page. 1995. A linkage map of the honey bee, ''Apis mellifera'', based on RAPD markers
Genetics 139: 1371–1382
* Page, R.E., J. Erber, and M.K. Fondrk. 1998. The effect of genotype on response thresholds to sucrose and foraging behavior of honey bees (''Apis mellifera'' L.)
Journal of Comparative Physiology A 182: 489–500
* Scheiner, R., J. Erber, and R.E. Page. 1999. Tactile learning and the individual evaluation of the reward in honey bees
Journal of Comparative Physiology A 185: 1–10
* Beye, M., M. Hasselmann, M.K. Fondrk, R.E. Page, and S.W. Omholt. 2003. The gene ''csd'' is the primary signal for sexual development in the honeybee and encodes an SR-type protein
Cell 114: 419–429
nowiki> over article * Amdam, G.V., K. Norberg, M.K. Fondrk, and R.E. Page. 2004. Reproductive ground plan may mediate colony-level effects on individual foraging behavior in honey bees
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA 101: 11350-11355
* Amdam, G., A. Csondes, M.K., Fondrk, and R.E. Page. 2006. Complex social behavior derived from maternal reproductive traits

nowiki> over article * Nelson, C.M., K.E. Ihle, M.K. Fondrk, R.E. Page, and G.V. Amdam. 2007. The gene vitellogenin has multiple coordinating effects on social organization
PLOS Biology 5: 673–677
*Linksvayer, T. A. and R.E. Page 2009. Honey bee social regulatory networks are shaped by colony-level selection.
The American Naturalist 173 (3) E99-E107. DOI: 10.1086/596527
*Page, R. E., T. A. Linksvayer, G.V. Amdam. Social life from solitary regulatory networks: a paradigm for insect sociality. 2009
Organization of insect societies: from genomes to socio-complexity. Harvard University Press, Cambridge. 357–376
*Amdam, G. V. and R. E. Page. 2010. The developmental genetics and physiology of honeybee societies.�
Animal Behavior 79: 973–980
*Page, R. E., O. Rüppell, and G. V. Amdam. 2012. Genetics of reproduction and regulation of honey bee (Apis mellifera L.) social behavior
Annual Review of Genetics 46: 97–119
*Beye M., C. Seelmann, T. Gempe, M. Hasselmann, Vekemans X., M. K. Fondrk, and R. E. Page. 2013. Gradual molecular evolution of a sex determination switch through incomplete penetrance of femaleness.�
Current Biology 23: 1–6
*Ihle K. E., O. Rueppell, Z. Y. Huang, Y. Wang, M. K. Fondrk, R. E. Page, and G. V. Amdam. 2015. Genetic architecture of a hormonal response to gene knockdown in honey bees.�
Journal of Heredity 106: 155–165
*Traynor K. S., Y. Wang, C. S. Brent, G. V. Amdam, R. E. Page Young and old honeybee (Apis mellifera) larvae differentially prime the developmental maturation of their caregivers. 2017
Animal Behaviour. 124: 193–202

Books

* *

Edited books

* Needham, G. R., R. E. Page, M. Delfinado Baker, and C. E. Bowman (editors). 1988. ''Africanized Honey Bees and Bee Mites''. Ellis Horwood Ltd., West Sussex, England, 572 pp. * Breed, M. D. and R. E. Page (editors). 1989. ''The Genetics of Social Evolution'', Westview Press, Boulder, Colorado, 213 pp. * Erickson, E. H., R. E. Page, and A. A. Hanna (editors). 2002. ''Proceedings of the 2nd International Conference on Africanized Honey Bees and Bee Mites Proceedings of the 2nd International Conference on Africanized Honey Bees and Bee Mites''. The A.I. Root Co., Medina, Ohio, 379 pp.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Page, Robert E. Jr. Arizona State University faculty Fellows of the American Association for the Advancement of Science Ethologists 1949 births Living people University of California, Davis alumni Behavior geneticists Population geneticists Fellows of the California Academy of Sciences