Michael J. Wade is a professor of biology at

Indiana University Bloomington Indiana University Bloomington (IU Bloomington, Indiana University, IU, IUB, or Indiana) is a public university, public research university in Bloomington, Indiana, United States. It is the flagship university, flagship campus of Indiana Univer ...

. 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 The University of Chicago (UChicago, Chicago, or UChi) is a Private university, private research university in Chicago, Illinois, United States. Its main campus is in the Hyde Park, Chicago, Hyde Park neighborhood on Chicago's South Side, Chic ...

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 and the theoretical population geneticist, Montgomery Slatkin (now at

University of California, Berkeley The University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley, Berkeley, Cal, or California), is a Public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in Berkeley, California, United States. Founded in 1868 and named after t ...

). His doctoral committee included the cicada ecologist, Monty Lloyd, the laboratory ecologist, David Byron Mertz, and the anuran systematist, Robert Inger. Park arranged for him to meet and discuss his doctoral research with

Sewall Wright Sewall Green Wright ForMemRS HonFRSE (December 21, 1889March 3, 1988) was an American geneticist known for his influential work on evolutionary theory and also for his work on path analysis. He was a founder of population genetics alongside ...

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 Chicago is the List of municipalities in Illinois, most populous city in the U.S. state of Illinois and in the Midwestern United States. With a population of 2,746,388, as of the 2020 United States census, 2020 census, it is the List of Unite ...

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 depe ...

. Interactions at the population and genetic levels are often non-additive. Thus, explaining and predicting many genetic and evolutionary phenomena in nature require understanding non-additive causal effects. As

Richard Lewontin Richard Charles Lewontin (March 29, 1929 – July 4, 2021) was an American evolutionary biologist, mathematician, geneticist, and social commentator. A leader in developing the mathematical basis of population genetics and evolutionary theory, ...

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 The shifting balance theory is a theory of evolution proposed in 1932 by Sewall Wright, suggesting that adaptive evolution may proceed most quickly when a population divides into subpopulations with restricted gene flow. The name of the 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 David Sloan Wilson (born 1949) is an American evolutionary biologist and a Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Biological Sciences and Anthropology at Binghamton University. He is a son of author Sloan Wilson, a co-founder of Evolution Institu ...

, helped rekindle interest in

group selection Group selection is a proposed mechanism of evolution in which natural selection acts at the level of the group, instead of at the level of the individual or gene. Early authors such as V. C. Wynne-Edwards and Konrad Lorenz argued that the beha ...

in the biological community. Wade has also done influential work on

sexual selection Sexual selection is a mechanism of evolution in which members of one sex mate choice, choose mates of the other sex to mating, mate with (intersexual selection), and compete with members of the same sex for access to members of the opposite sex ...

(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). Wade and his collaborators are increasingly employing rich

genomics Genomics is an interdisciplinary field of molecular 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, ...

data and turning to other model systems, such as

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

. In addition to biological topics, Wade is also interested in the

history and philosophy of science The history and philosophy of science (HPS) is an academic discipline that encompasses the philosophy of science and the history of science. Although many scholars in the field are trained primarily as either historians or as philosophers, there ...

, politics, and literature. He has published on topics central to the philosophy of science, such as levels and units of selection and causality.

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 a United States–based international nonprofit with the stated mission of promoting cooperation among scientists, defending scientific freedom, encouraging scientific responsib ...

in 2007, in the

American Academy of Arts and Sciences The American Academy of Arts and Sciences (The Academy) 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 other ...

in 2008, and he was recognized with the

Sewall Wright Award ASN Award for Distinguished Achievement in the Conceptual Unification of the Biological Sciences, previously known as the Sewall Wright Award, is given annually by the American Society of Naturalists to a "senior-level" and active investigator mak ...

in 2009.

Key publications

*Wade MJ. 1978. "A Critical Review of the Models of Group Selection." ''

Quarterly Review of Biology ''The Quarterly Review of Biology'' is a peer-reviewed scientific journal covering all aspects of biology. It was established in 1926 by Raymond Pearl. In the 1960s it was purchased by the Stony Brook Foundation when the editor H. Bentley Glass ...

'' 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