Duncan Irschick
Duncan Irschick (born 1969 in San Francisco, California) is an evolutionary ecologist and a functional morphologist who has primarily studied animal performance (animal athletics). He was a faculty member at Tulane University for five years (2001-2006) before joining the faculty at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst in 2006.
He earned his B.S. in Zoology from the University of California at Davis in 1991. He earned his Ph.D. from Washington University in St. Louis in 1996 with Jonathan Losos and Allan Larson as his advisors. He then went on to postdoctoral research with Bruce Jayne at the University of Cincinnati and Robert Full at the University of California at Berkeley. During this period, he expanded his research to functional themes, including studies of kinetics, and kinematics.
Duncan Irschick is best known for his work on lizard adhesion, animal locomotion in natural settings, rapid evolution[1], and sexual selection. As an undergraduate, he along with several colleagues, conducted the first tests of how much force a gecko toepad could produce[2]. His recorded value of 20 Newtons of force[3] for a Tokay gecko launched a large body of research on bioadhesion and synthetic production of gecko setae. This work has been widely followed in the National and International Media, and was featured in a feature show on lizard adhesion by the Discovery Channel[4]. During his Ph.D., he pioneered the use of video technology to accurately measure how fast animals moved in complex natural environments[5], which was a harbinger of an emerging naturalistic approach to animal locomotion. In 2004, he, along with several other colleagues, completed the first study showing that rapid evolution (36 years) of a body part (a cecal valve of the intestinal tract in Croatian lizards) can occur, apparently due to invasion of a novel island habitat[6]. This study, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences in 2008, has been presented as some of the strongest evidence for evolution in modern times.[7]
Duncan Irschick currently serves as the Executive Editor for the journal Functional Ecology, and as an associate editor for The Quarterly Review of Biology. He has served on several other editorial boards as a faculty member. His work has been widely featured in the media, including the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, the Independent UK, the BBC, and the Discovery Channel. He has been named as the Hilgendorf lecturer for the University of Tubingen in 2010, and as the OCIB lecturer for the University of Ottawa in 2008. He has been awarded several grants from the National Science Foundation and the National Institutes of Health.
Publications
Irschick DJ, Austin CC, Petren K, Fisher RN, Losos JB, Ellers O. 1996. A comparative analysis of clinging ability among pad-bearing lizards. Biological Journal of the Linnean Society 59:21-35.
Irschick DJ, Losos JB. 1998. A comparative analysis of the ecological significance of locomotor performance in Caribbean Anolis lizards. Evolution 52:219-226.
Irschick DJ, VanHooydonck B, Herrel A, Androsceu A. 2003. Effects of loading and size on maximum power output and kinematics in geckos. Journal of Experimental Biology. 206:3923-3934.
Irschick DJ, Herrel A, Vanhooydonck B, Van Damme R. 2007. A functional approach to sexual selection. Functional Ecology. 21:621-626.
Ramos M, Irschick DJ, Christenson T. 2004. Overcoming an evolutionary conflict: Removal of a reproductive organ greatly enhances locomotor performance. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. 101:4883-4887.
Herrel A, Huyghe K, Vanhooydonck B, Backeljau T, Breugelmans K, Grbac I, Van Damme R, Irschick DJ. 2008. Rapid large scale evolutionary divergence in morphology and performance associated with the exploitation of a novel dietary resource in the lizard Podarcis sicula. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. 105:4792-4795
References
- ^ http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/07/22/a-natural-selection/
- ^ Irschick DJ, Austin CC, Petren K, Fisher RN, Losos JB, Ellers O. 1996. A comparative analysis of clinging ability among pad-bearing lizards. Biological Journal of the Linnean Society 59:21-35.
- ^ Irschick DJ, Austin CC, Petren K, Fisher RN, Losos JB, Ellers O. 1996. A comparative analysis of clinging ability among pad-bearing lizards. Biological Journal of the Linnean Society 59:21-35.
- ^ http://store.discoveryeducation.com/product/show/51365
- ^ Irschick DJ, Losos JB. 1998. A comparative analysis of the ecological significance of locomotor performance in Caribbean Anolis lizards. Evolution 52:219-226.
- ^ Herrel A, Huyghe K, Vanhooydonck B, Backeljau T, Breugelmans K, Grbac I, Van Damme R, Irschick DJ. 2008. Rapid large scale evolutionary divergence in morphology and performance associated with the exploitation of a novel dietary resource in the lizard Podarcis sicula. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. 105:4792-4795
- ^ Richard Dawkins. The Greatest Show on Earth: The Evidence for Evolution. Free Press (United States), Transworld (United Kingdom and Commonwealth). 2009. ISBN 0-593-06173-X.