Menno Schilthuizen (born 1965,

Vlaardingen Vlaardingen () is a large town and List of municipalities of the Netherlands, municipality in South Holland in the Netherlands. It is located on the north bank of the Nieuwe Maas river at the confluence with the Oude Maas. The municipality admin ...

) is a Dutch

evolutionary biologist 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 biol ...

, ecologist, and permanent

research scientist A scientist is a person who researches to advance knowledge in an area of the natural sciences. In classical antiquity, there was no real ancient analog of a modern scientist. Instead, philosophers engaged in the philosophical study of nature ...

Naturalis Biodiversity Center Naturalis Biodiversity Center () is a national museum of natural history and a research center on biodiversity in Leiden, Netherlands. It was named the European Museum of the Year 2021. Although its current name and organization are relatively ...

Leiden Leiden ( ; ; in English language, English and Archaism, archaic Dutch language, Dutch also Leyden) is a List of cities in the Netherlands by province, city and List of municipalities of the Netherlands, municipality in the Provinces of the Nethe ...

and a professor of

evolution Evolution is the change in the heritable Phenotypic trait, characteristics of biological populations over successive generations. It occurs when evolutionary processes such as natural selection and genetic drift act on genetic variation, re ...

and

biodiversity Biodiversity is the variability of life, life on Earth. It can be measured on various levels. There is for example genetic variability, species diversity, ecosystem diversity and Phylogenetics, phylogenetic diversity. Diversity is not distribut ...

Leiden University Leiden University (abbreviated as ''LEI''; ) is a Public university, public research university in Leiden, Netherlands. Established in 1575 by William the Silent, William, Prince of Orange as a Protestantism, Protestant institution, it holds the d ...

. He has published numerous articles about evolution and ecology and six

popular science Popular science (also called pop-science or popsci) is an interpretation of science intended for a general audience. While science journalism focuses on recent scientific developments, popular science is more broad ranging. It may be written ...

books.Emma Marris (2008) ''No species is an island'', ''Nature'' 455, 1178-1179 (30 October 2008) is a review of ''The Loom of Life''. In particular, his studies have concerned

land snail A land snail is any of the numerous species of snail that live on land, as opposed to the sea snails and freshwater snails. ''Land snail'' is the common name for terrestrial molluscs, terrestrial gastropod mollusks that have gastropod shell, shel ...

s and

beetle Beetles are insects that form the Taxonomic rank, order Coleoptera (), in the superorder Holometabola. Their front pair of wings are hardened into wing-cases, elytra, distinguishing them from most other insects. The Coleoptera, with about 40 ...

s. His ''Nature's Nether Regions'', on the evolution of genitalia, was published by

Penguin Penguins are a group of aquatic flightless birds from the family Spheniscidae () of the order Sphenisciformes (). They live almost exclusively in the Southern Hemisphere. Only one species, the Galápagos penguin, is equatorial, with a sm ...

in May 2014. Translations have appeared in Dutch, German, Chinese, Greek, Japanese, French and Italian. His book, ''Darwin Comes to Town'', is on "urban evolution", evolutionary adaptation in cities, and has appeared in 2018 in English (with Quercus Kand Picador SA, and also in Chinese, Dutch, German, Greek, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Norwegian, Polish, Russian, and Spanish. French and Turkish translations are in preparation. Besides his academic positions, Schilthuizen works as an independent science communicator via his own company, Studio Schilthuizen. Recently, together with biospeleologist Iva Njunjić, he has begun the organisation Taxon Expeditions (and its nonprofit, Taxon Foundation), which organise field courses for citizen scientists to Borneo, Montenegro, Panama and other wild places, but also to urban centres like Amsterdam, and allows non-biologists to be involved in the discovery and naming of new species.

Education and career

Menno Schilthuizen graduated from and received his PhD at Leiden University. From 1995 to 2000 he worked at

Wageningen University Wageningen University & Research (also known as WUR) is a public university, public research university in Wageningen, Netherlands, specializing in life sciences with a focus on agriculture, technical and engineering subjects. It is a globally i ...

. From 2000 to 2006 he worked at the Institute for Tropical Biology and Conservation in Sabah,

Malaysian Borneo East Malaysia (), or the Borneo States, also known as Malaysian Borneo, is the part of Malaysia on and near the island of Borneo, the world's third-largest island. East Malaysia comprises the states of Sabah, Sarawak, and the Federal Territory ...

, where he studied land snail ecology and evolution in

tropical forests Tropical forests are forested ecoregions with tropical climates – that is, land areas approximately bounded by the tropics of Cancer and Capricorn, but possibly affected by other factors such as prevailing winds. Some tropical forest types ...

, caves, and limestone habitats. In January 2007 he became deputy director of research at Naturalis Museum, Leiden. He stayed at this post for one and a half years, and then became permanent research scientist there. From 2007 to 2012, he was honorary professor of insect biodiversity at

University of Groningen The University of Groningen (abbreviated as UG; , abbreviated as RUG) is a Public university#Continental Europe, public research university of more than 30,000 students in the city of Groningen (city), Groningen, Netherlands. Founded in 1614, th ...

. He now holds a professorship in Character Evolution and Biodiversity at Leiden University.

Books

* ''Frogs Flies & Dandelions: The Making of Species'', 2002.

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 ...

. 254 pages. * ''The Loom of Life: Unravelling Ecosystems'', 2008. Springer. 168 pages. * ''Nature's Nether Regions: What the Sex Lives of Bugs, Birds, and Beasts Tell Us About Evolution, Biodiversity, and Ourselves''. 2014. Viking / Penguin. 256 pages. * ''Darwin Comes to Town'', 2018.

Quercus Books Quercus is a formerly independent publishing house, based in London, that was acquired by Hodder & Stoughton in 2014. It was founded in 2004 by Mark Smith and Wayne Davies. Quercus is known for its lists in crime (publishing such authors as Ell ...

* ''Wie Wat Bewaart'', 2020. Unieboek Het Spectrum. (in Dutch, with Freek Vonk) * ''The Urban Naturalist'', 2025.

MIT Press The MIT Press is the university press of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), a private research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. The MIT Press publishes a number of academic journals and has been a pioneer in the Open Ac ...

Selected articles

* Schilthuizen et al., 2020
''Craspedotropis gretathunbergae'', a new species of Cyclophoridae (Gastropoda: Caenogastropoda), discovered and described on a field course to Kuala Belalong rainforest, Brunei
''Biodiversity Data Journal'', 8: e47484. * Kerstes, N.A.G., T. Breeschoten, V. Kalkman & M. Schilthuizen, 2019
Snail shell colour evolution in urban heat islands detected via citizen science
''Communications Biology'', 2: 264. * Merckx et al., 2015
Evolution and endemism on a young tropical mountain
Nature, 524: 347-350. * Schilthuizen, M., 2005. 'On the origin of reproductive isolation'. ''BioEssays'', 27: 669-670. * Schilthuizen, M., 2000. 'Dualism and conflicts in understanding speciation'. ''BioEssays'', 22: 1134-1141.

References

External links

Homepage of Studio Schilthuizen

Personal page at Naturalis

Homepage of Taxon Expeditions

Author page at Amazon

Homepage of Taxon Foundation
{{DEFAULTSORT:Schilthuizen, Menno 1965 births Living people Dutch biologists Dutch malacologists Dutch non-fiction writers Evolutionary biologists Leiden University alumni Academic staff of Leiden University People from Vlaardingen Academic staff of the University of Groningen