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ECOSAVE
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Faculty Members: | ||
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Adalgisa Caccone Senior Research Scientist and Lecturer, Department of Ecology & Evolutionary Biology Director, ECOSAVE Molecular Systematics Conservation Genetics Laboratory Curator Affiliate in Vertebrate Zoology, Peabody Museum of Natural History Lecturer, Epidemiology & Public Health Senior Research Scientist, Yale School of Forestry & Environmental Studies |
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Michael Donoghue Director & Curator of Botany, Peabody Museum of Natural History G. Evelyn Hutchinson Professor, Department of Ecology & Evolutionary Biology Professor, Department of Geology & Geophysics |
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Jacques Gauthier Professor, Department of Geology & Geophysics Professor, Department of Ecology & Evolutionary Biology |
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Jeffrey Powell Professor, Department of Ecology & Evolutionary Biology Professor, Yale School of Forestry & Environmental Studies |
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Rick Prum William Robertson Coe Professor and Director of Graduate Studies, Department of Ecology & Evolutionary Biology Curator of Vertebrate Zoology, Peabody Museum of Natural History Professor, Yale School of Forestry & Environmental Studies |
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Elisabeth Vrba (ECOSAVE Center Director) Professor, Department of Geology & Geophysics Curator of Vertebrate Paleontology, Peabody Museum of Natural History |
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YIBS ECOSAVE Center’s
faculty represent a diverse spectrum in terms of the organisms studied,
analytical methods, and global field locations. Yet they all share the
central focus of ECOSAVE, which is to add new knowledge on global
biodiversity and on the processes that produced it. Included within this
focus is understanding the historical pattern of phylogenetic relationships
among living and extinct organisms, and the distribution in time and over
geography of the elements of that pattern (from molecules and morphology to
speciation and extinction) in the context of earth’s physical dynamics. Such
compound patterns are a powerful substrate for innovation on evolutionary
processes and conservation strategy. The interaction of the YIBS ECOSAVE
Center’s specialists on living organisms with paleontologists is a special
strength because understanding the present - or predicting the future -
requires understanding the past.
Our goals for the future fit in well with the renaissance over the past decade in environmental science at Yale. YIBS ECOSAVE Center’s support will emphasize exploration and discovery of new living and fossil forms - the naissance or birth of new information on hitherto unknown species in present and past ecosystems from the far-flung corners of the earth - because we envision that this is where the cutting edge will be in the future. International, and especially third-world collaborations in research, and exchange of scientists and students, will feature prominently. Third-world countries contain a large proportion of Earth’s undescribed species. Yet their poverty, high population growth, and low level of education imply a greater risk of future extinction. Thus we are motivated not only by the will to serve the educational and research efforts of those countries, but also by Yale’s interests. These partnerships will be equal ones with benefits for us, ranging from access to foreign sites, collection programs, and specimens, through the newsworthiness of scientific announcements on exotic biota, to influence on policy. In our view, the globalization of science is on the march at Yale and elsewhere, and ECOSAVE should be a part of that globalization. YIBS ECOSAVE Center’s past and ongoing achievements in science, teaching, and worldwide collaborations have positioned it well to succeed in these goals. The places involved range from the southwestern U.S, through Ecuador, Brazil, Europe, Russia, China, Laos and Vietnam, to Ethiopia, Mali, Burkina Faso and Madagascar. The launching in 1998 of the YIBS ECOSAVE Molecular Systematics and Conservation Genetics Laboratory (MSCGL), and recruitment of its director Dr. Gisella Caccone, is one of the Center’s seminal successes. The MSCGL has established flourishing teaching programs, and is also the exceptionally productive site of a wide range of integrative programs with foreign collaborators. Two former Gaylord Donnelley Postdoctoral Environmental Fellows, Assistant Professor Claudio Ciofi at the University of Florence, Italy, and Dr. Luciano Beheregaray, Senior Lecturer at Macquarie University in Australia, each spent two years as Donnelley postdoctoral fellows in the MSCGL. |