Russell Lande
Professor of Biology, UCSD

e-mail: rlande@biomail.ucsd.edu

Quantitative Genetics and Evolutionary Theory
      Most morphological, behavioral and physiological characters of organisms of interest to evolutionary biologists are continuously varying, genetically complex traits, such as body size and shape, that are influenced by multiple genetic factors as well as environmental effects.  In the half century after the origin of population genetics in the 1920's, most of the efforts devoted to understanding the evolution of such quantitative characters occurred in the applied fields of animal and plant breeding.  A large body of empirical and theoretical work accumulated on measuring quantitative genetic variation in domesticated populations, and predicting how this affects the response to artificial selection.  My research focuses on  answering basic questions concerning the maintenance of genetic variability and the dynamics of phenotypic evolution in natural populations.  The purpose is to derive simple laws that may be used to analyze phenotypic evolution in living and fossil populations.  The models have been applied to investigate (1) the number of genes contributing to variation in quantitative characters (2) the importance of observed amounts of spontaneous mutation in maintaining quantitative genetic variation, (3) the magnitude of random genetic drift in experimental and natural populations, (4) the measurement of natural selection on correlated characters, (5) sexual selection and evolution of sexual dimorphism, (6) mechanisms of speciation, (7) life history evolution, (8) the joint evolution of inbreeding depression and plant mating systems, and (9) coevolution of ecologically interacting species.
      Recent work develops explicit multilocus models to analyze how sex-ratio distortion interacts with sexual selection in the origin of species with extreme sexual dimorphisms.  Examples include (1) evolution of X-linked meiotic drive and male eye span in Malaysian stalk-eyed flies and (2) X-linked sex-reversal associated with color polymorphism in Lake Victoria cichlid fish. 

Ecology and Conservation Biology
      I applied demographic theory and developed a new model of habitat occupancy for a population in a fragmented habitat to perform the first demographic analysis of the northern spotted owl.  This eventually resulted in listing of the northern spotted owl as a threatened subspecies under the Endangered Species Act, and the implementation of plans to conserve millions acres of old-growth forests in the Pacific Northwest.  My students and I developed models for population viability analysis of African elephants, Asian elephants, and spring-run chinook salmon in Oregon.  With Dr. Georgina Mace (London Zoological Society) I published suggestions for new population-based criteria for classifying endangered species.  Our criteria were adopted in modified form by the World Conservation Union and the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species.  I developed general theories of relative risks of population extinction from different factors, including demographic and environmental stochasticity, random catastrophes, overexploitation of harvested populations, inbreeding, random genetic drift, and fixation of deleterious mutations in small populations.  I developed and applied statistical methods for partitioning species diversity to analyze spatial and temporal patterns of species diversity in tropical butterflies. 

     Lande, R., S. Engen, B.-E. Saether, F. Filli, E. Matthysen and H. Weimerskirch. (2002). Estimating density dependence from population time series using demographic theory and life history data.  Am. Nat. 159: 321-337.

     Lande, R., S. Engen and B.-E. Saether. (2003). Stochastic Population Dynamics in Ecology and Conservation. Oxford University Press, Oxford.

     Myers, R.A., S.A. Levin, R. Lande, F.C. James, W.W. Murdoch and R.T. Paine. (2004). Hatcheries and endangered salmon.  Science [Policy Forum] 303: 1980.

     Porcher, E. and R. Lande. (2005). Loss of gametophytic self-incompatibility with evolution of inbreeding depression.  Evolution 59: 46-60.

     Servedio, M.R. and R. Lande. (2005). Population genetic models of male and mutual mate choice.  Evolution 60: 674-685.

     Goldberg, E.E., K. Roy, R. Lande and D. Joblonski. (2005). Diversity, endemism, and age distributions in macroevolutionary sources and sinks. Am. Nat. 165: 623-633.

     Russell Lande received his Ph. D. from Harvard University.  He is past President of the Society for the Study of Evolution, member of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences, and a MacArthur Foundation Fellow.