Anurag Agrawal
Congratulations to Anurag Agrawal, the recipient of the 2024 ASN Conceptual Unification Award. Dr. Agrawal's research exemplifies the central emphasis of this award, and of the ASN itself, in its integration of evolution, genetics, ecology and behavior in investigation of the "milkweed village" – the guild of insects that consume milkweeds, along with the milkweed hosts themselves. Professor Agrawal studies the interactions of varied insects with this plant group at multiple levels, ranging from community diversity, through individuals, to nucleotide variation. The research also spans from macroevolutionary to contemporary time scales, as well as spatial scales from local to continental, in order to disentangle the many threads of coevolution that interconnect the members of this community. In unifying scales, perspectives, and questions within evolutionary ecology through an elegant focus on an iconic group of plant-insect interactions, Professor Agrawal's work is emblematic of conceptual unification.
The ASN Award for Distinguished Achievement in the Conceptual Unification of the Biological Sciences is given annually to honor relatively senior but still active investigators who are making fundamental contributions to the Society's goals in promoting the conceptual unification of the biological sciences.