American Society of Naturalists

The ASN 2022 Elections will be open starting February 15 for the offices of President, Vice President, and Treasurer. Email was sent to ASN member to access the election website. Please let us know if you think you are a member and you did not receive the email. The election website randomizes the order for each person voting. The names below are in alphabetical order.

President

The PRESIDENT leads the ASN Executive Council and selects the membership of the award and officer nomination committees. The President selects the President’s Award for the “best” paper in The American Naturalist in the past year, gives the ASN Presidential Address and presents the Society’s awards at the annual meeting, and represents the ASN in multiple other ways through the year. The President serves on the Executive Council for five years, including one year as President-Elect and three years as a Past-President.

Jeff Conner

I am honored to be nominated to be President of ASN because I think my career has exemplified the ASN goal of conceptual unification of the biological sciences. My lab integrates evolution, genetics, genomics, and ecology in the laboratory, greenhouse, and field to understand how natural selection on weeds and native plants produces (sometimes very rapid) adaptation to a variable environment. I started out as a behavioral ecologist, with my first papers on lizards and beetles, and then switched to studying pollinator-mediated floral evolution during my postdoc. Current work also includes stamen loss after the transition to selfing, adaptation of a weed to agricultural habitats, and field estimates of fitness effects of duplicate gene knockouts.

I received my Ph.D. in the Section of Neurobiology and Behavior at Cornell, then moved one building over to do an NIH individual NRSA postdoctoral fellow in evolutionary genetics. I was an Assistant Professor at University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign before moving to KBS where I am now Professor; I was also a Distinguished Sabbatical Scholar at the National Evolutionary Synthesis Center. I was elected as a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) in 2011 and won Outstanding Faculty awards at the college and university level, but my favorite awards are my college graduate and junior faculty mentoring awards, as I was nominated by my mentees for both and I see mentoring as the most important part of my job. I still often hear that my Primer of Ecological Genetics (with Dan Hartl) has been useful for graduate students. I was Handling Editor (now just called Editor) at Evolution, edited or co-edited special issues of the Methods in Ecology and Evolution and International Journal of Plant Sciences, and have served on the editorial boards of Evolution, Journal of Evolutionary Biology, Oecologia, and IJPS. I have served on several NSF and one USDA panels and was chair of the Plant Population Ecology Section of the Ecological Society of America. I honed leadership skills that I genuinely didn’t realize I had during almost two years as Interim Director of KBS.

I am afraid that beyond being a member for decades, attending the joint meetings many times and publishing papers in The American Naturalist, I have not been as involved in ASN as I should have been! However, I am committed to doing a great job leading ASN if elected. I think the highest priority for ASN must be redoubling the great efforts underway to increase DEI in the Society and in our field; we have made progress on this in my lab and at KBS. I would advocate strongly for more support and mentoring for undergraduates and graduate students from underrepresented groups, including at our meetings, for including DEI efforts as an explicit criterion for ASN awards, and for a continued emphasis on safety and respectful behavior at our meetings.

Greg Grether

I do empirical and theoretical research at the intersection of animal behavior, ecology, and evolutionary biology. I am particularly interested in the ecological and evolutionary effects of behavioral interference (e.g., aggression and reproductive interference) between species, and consider myself a leader in that area. My students and I study an eclectic assortment of animals, and some of our research applies directly to endangered species recovery.

I received my higher degrees at UC Davis, moved to UC Santa Barbara with an NSF Postdoctoral Research Fellowship in 1996, and then moved a bit farther south to accept a faculty position at UCLA in 1999. I received the Animal Behavior Society’s Allee Award in 1995 and its Outstanding Investigator Award in 2000, and have since been elected as a Fellow of that society and also of the venerable Linnean Society of London. My latest and most humbling honor is being nominated to run for President of ASN.

I have had the pleasure of serving as an editor for three journals that I consider to be the best in their respective areas. I served as an editor at Animal Behavior for one 3-year term, and have been an editor at Ecology Letters and The American Naturalist since 2010 and 2019, respectively. My colleagues at UCLA have entrusted me with several important leadership positions over the years, and I have also served on multiple grant review panels for NSF.

In graduate school, I developed a deep respect for The American Naturalist. I saw that articles published there were consistently novel, important, and practically flawless, with polished figures that captured the essence of complex ideas and results. What sets The American Naturalist apart became clear when I submitted my first paper to the journal and received multiple rounds of constructive feedback from the editor. Now as an editor myself, I fully embrace The American Naturalist’s commitment to giving authors feedback for improving their work, even if it belongs in a different journal, and ensuring that every paper published in the journal advances the field in novel and important ways.

It would be a great honor to serve as President of ASN. If elected, I would learn as much as I can from the current President and do my best to keep on top of the various duties described in the ASN Officer’s handbook, to keep the society and journal functioning smoothly. I would also strive to help ASN navigate any new challenges and opportunities that arise, hopefully with the COVID-19 pandemic behind us.

Vice President

The VICE-PRESIDENT organizes the Vice-President’s Symposium for the annual meeting and edits the special supplement to The American Naturalist that contains the papers derived from the VP Symposium. The Vice-President is also the Society’s liaison for the organizers of the annual meeting. The Vice-President serves as a member of the Executive Council for three years, including one year as Vice-President Elect and one year as a Past Vice President.

Lauren Buckley

Reading The American Naturalist inspired me to shift my undergraduate aspirations from engineering to biology. I may have been misled by the journal title when looking for examples of ‘muddy boots’ biology, but it turns out the articles, with their integration of data and modeling in pursuit of conceptual advances, provided optimal inspiration for my biological career. I am thus honored to be nominated to serve as VP of the ASN. My research integrates modeling, field and lab collection of ecological and physiological data, and informatics to identify the organismal mechanisms underlying responses to climate change. I use the mechanisms to develop ecological and evolutionary forecasting approaches.

I am a Professor of Biology at the University of Washington, where I am an affiliate of the Center for Quantitative Science and the eScience Data Science Institute and a board member of the Program in Climate Change. I studied biology and math at Williams College, conducted graduate research at Stanford University, and held postdoctoral fellowships at the National Center for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis (NCEAS) and the Santa Fe Institute. I have been recognized as a Kavli Frontiers of Science Fellow and a Future Leader of the Science and Technology in Society Forum.

I strive to build capacity for integrative, quantitative, collaborative, and open science to accelerate biology and its applications to environmental challenges in a manner that promotes equity and inclusion. I lead the TrEnCh project focused on developing computational and visualization tools to Translate Environmental Change into biological responses for research, education, and outreach (trenchproject.com). I have organized several symposia and workshops as well as NCEAS and National Evolutionary Synthesis Center working groups.

I have served on the American Naturalist editorial board since 2018. I am grateful for The American Naturalist publishing one of my initial papers and hope to work with the ASN to facilitate other early career researchers adopting integrative approaches.

I propose to organize a VP symposium highlighting integrative work by diverse scientists repeating historical experiments to understand mechanisms underlying responses to environmental change. I look forward to assisting the ASN in advancing conceptual unification of the biological sciences by capacity building, promoting a diverse and inclusive society, and inspiring integrative biological approaches if elected.

Gil Rosenthal

I work as part of a diverse network of colleagues and mentees on the mechanisms and eco-evolutionary dynamics of mate choice. The ASN’s purpose towards the “conceptual unification of the biological sciences” has guided my research vision since graduate school, just as it has guided the ever-growing and ever-humbling realization that it takes a village to get there. I’ve tried to build an integrative research program based on inclusive excellence.

I have just moved my permanent academic home to the University of Padua, Italy. I have served as a reviewing editor for Evolution and for Behavioral Ecology, and as Public Affairs Chair and later Treasurer for the Animal Behavior Society. I was honored to receive a Fulbright Fellowship and was named a Fellow of the Animal Behavior Society. In partnership with community leaders in Calnali, Mexico, I have co-directed the CICHAZ field station in the Sierra Madre Oriental since 2005. While on the faculty of Texas A&M, I led the creation of a new doctoral program in ecology and evolutionary biology, again animated by a unifying conceptual framework.

I have had the honor of publishing in The American Naturalist since my Ph.D. days, and my current primary research project on the evolution of mate-choice mechanisms was directly shaped by a symposium I was in at Asilomar 2016 (when the power went out on the grad student lightning talks!). My Ph.D. student serves on the ASN Graduate Council, and I have closely followed recent initiatives to give the society a more global and inclusive reach. As someone who has worked deeply within and across different cultures, and who recently moved my career across an ocean, I am mindful of strategies for overcoming the barriers of language and distance. Even as we take advantage of technologies for virtual interactions, I am excited to liaise with organizers of our joint and stand-alone meetings and facilitate engagement for ASN members around the world by focusing on the intersection of participant demographics and of taxonomic and geographic coverage. My proposed VP symposium is on the fitness consequences of mate choice for populations.

Treasurer

The TREASURER manages the accounts of the ASN, tracks all revenues and expenses, arranges for official annual financial reviews and tax return preparation, files tax returns, makes payments for all annual awards and travel reimbursements related to the annual meeting, keeps track of revisions to the award amounts and reimbursement policies, and prepares the annual Treasurer’s Report. The Treasurer also convenes a Finance Committee comprised of two other members of the Executive Council, for making investment decisions as needed. The Treasurer serves on the Executive Council for six years, three as a regular member and three as Past Treasurer.

Martha Burford Reiskind

I am an evolutionary biologist who studies the effects of environmental change (anthropogenically induced or natural) on the evolution of species. I seek a basic understanding of how species adapt to these changes and the genes involved in these adaptations, and use molecular tools to assess the current standing of populations of conservation concern. These tools include population genetic and genomic approaches, combining mathematical modeling and demographic and environmental data to forecast the future of these species. My lab is inclusive of all people and taxonomic groups.

I received my B.A. in Integrative Biology from UC Berkeley, an M.A. in Marine Biology from San Francisco State University, and my Ph.D. in Evolutionary Biology from UC Santa Cruz. After a year as an Assistant Professor at University of Central Oklahoma, I moved to NC State University where I am an Assistant Professor and the director of the Genetics & Genomics Scholars graduate training program. I have received the College of Sciences Faculty Diversity External Endowment in 2022, and Certificate of Recognition for the 2018 Equity of Women Award, and two College level awards for teaching excellence in 2018 and 2022. I started a group called being an Ally in Academics that includes staff, faculty, and students at NC State university and is addressing systemic racism in the academy. The experience I have garnered from this group has informed my vision for the role of scientific societies and their leadership.

I have been a member of SSE (2006 to current) and ASN (most recently from 2020 to current) for many years and have been involved in programs to mentor diversity in these societies. I have participated in the diversity mentorship program at SSE for college graduates and served as a Conduct Moderator for the Society Meetings. In this respect, I believe these societies such as ASN are critical for building programs that daylight and counteract the systemic racism in institutions and address that critical component of DEI programs, retention.

How do we create an environment where students, faculty and staff feel they belong and can thrive? Scientific societies provide a network of researchers, peers, mentor and a community outside of their institutions for young scientists or early career faculty from minoritized and historically (and currently) excluded communities. I believe scientific societies can be a potent force for change, but there is much work still to be done within our societies to address these issues in an open and explicit way. Here is where the leadership for the society will set the stage for important change, which I’m excited to be a part of. Financial support for continuing and new programs, tracking where the society is spending money, making sure the budget is balanced and fair are important parts of building our capacity to retain diversity.

Santiago Ramírez

I am thrilled to be nominated as a candidate for Treasurer for the American Society of Naturalists. As a supporter and member of ASN, and I would be honored to serve in this capacity. I am an evolutionary biologist, and my research focuses on the evolution of chemical signals in bees and the role that these signals play in a variety of biological contexts, including mate recognition, sexual selection, speciation, social interactions (e.g. eusociality), and species interactions (e.g. mutualism between plants and pollinators). To address these broad questions, my research combines chemical ecology, functional genomics, populations genetics and natural history.

I received my B.Sc. from Universidad de los Andes (Bogotá Colombia) in 2001. I completed my Ph.D. in the Department of Organismic and Evolutionary Biology at Harvard University in 2008. Subsequently, I worked as a postdoctoral fellow at the University of California Berkeley between 2008 and 2013. I am now an Associate Professor in the Department of Evolution and Ecology at the University of California Davis, where I have been since 2013. I was awarded a Packard Fellowship in 2014, and recently I was elected Chancellor Fellow at UC Davis.

Currently, I am an Associate Editor for the journal Evolution, and I have served as a reviewer for multiple journals in the areas of evolution and ecology. I have participated in diverse departmental and university-wide committees. My extensive experience, knowledge and organizational skills would allow me to assume the important role of Treasurer for the American Society of Naturalists. I have been a member of the ASN for several years, and I have been an avid reader of The American Naturalist since I was a graduate student. Becoming the Treasurer for ASN is an ideal opportunity for me to contribute in meaningful ways to the growth and stability of our society.

The Treasurer fulfills an important role in the American Society of Naturalists. This officer position oversees many of the day-to-day activities of the society, including making payments to publishers, issuing grants and awards in a timely manner, and making sure that all the financial information is organized and updated in a regular basis. I would ensure open and fluid communication with other officers and accountants. In addition, as a member of the executive committee I would ensure that our society continues its mission of excellence in the fields of evolution and ecology, and also continue with its mission to increase diversity and representation of scientists around the world.