Bernard Joseph Crespi is an American professor of

evolutionary biology Evolutionary biology is the subfield of biology that studies the evolutionary processes such as natural selection, common descent, and speciation that produced the diversity of life on Earth. In the 1930s, the discipline of evolutionary biolo ...

Simon Fraser University Simon Fraser University (SFU) is a Public university, public research university in British Columbia, Canada. It maintains three campuses in Greater Vancouver, respectively located in Burnaby (main campus), Surrey, British Columbia, Surrey, and ...

British Columbia British Columbia is the westernmost Provinces and territories of Canada, province of Canada. Situated in the Pacific Northwest between the Pacific Ocean and the Rocky Mountains, the province has a diverse geography, with rugged landscapes that ...

, Canada. His research focuses on

social evolution Social evolution may refer to: *Social change *Sociocultural evolution, the change of cultures and societies over time *Sociobiology, explaining social behavior in terms of evolution *Cultural evolution Cultural evolution is an evolutionary theor ...

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; , 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, bilingual council of distinguishe ...

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 Genomic imprinting is an epigenetic phenomenon that causes genes to be expressed or not, depending on whether they are inherited from the female or male parent. Genes can also be partially imprinted. Partial imprinting occurs when alleles from b ...

is an

epigenetic In biology, epigenetics is the study of changes in gene expression that happen without changes to the DNA sequence. The Greek prefix ''epi-'' (ἐπι- "over, outside of, around") in ''epigenetics'' implies features that are "on top of" or "in ...

process by which certain

gene In biology, the word gene has two meanings. The Mendelian gene is a basic unit of heredity. The molecular gene is a sequence of nucleotides in DNA that is transcribed to produce a functional RNA. There are two types of molecular genes: protei ...

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. Here ''sets of chromosomes'' refers to the number of maternal and paternal chromosome copies, ...

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 publishing house of the University of Oxford. It is the largest university press in the world. Its first book was printed in Oxford in 1478, with the Press 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, 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 American evolutionary biologists Academic staff of Simon Fraser University Canada Research Chairs