Academic Editors
The following people constitute the Editorial Board of Academic Editors for PeerJ Open Advances in Zoology. These active academics are the Editors who seek peer reviewers, evaluate their responses, and make editorial decisions on each submission to the journal. Learn more about becoming an Editor.
Michael Wink
Prof. Dr. Michael Wink is Professor of Biology and Director at the Institute of Pharmacy and Molecular Biotechnology of Heidelberg University; Head of Biology Department (1989-2019). Senior professor since 2019. Editor of Diversity, Biotechnology Journal and Journal of Ornithology. Member of several editorial boards and scientific societies. Author of over 20 books and over 900 original peer-reviewed publications.
Jennifer Vonk
Jennifer Vonk is a comparative/cognitive psychologist with primary research interests in two overlapping areas: (1) animal cognition and behavior, and (2) animal welfare. The underlying goal of her work is to examine cognitive continuities and discontinuities between humans and both closely and distantly related species. Her current work centers on social cognition, such as theory of mind, prosociality, and reasoning about emotions, as well as physical cognition, such as causal reasoning, analogical reasoning, numerosity, and natural concept formation. More recent work is focused on examining the effects of early life experiences on human and animal decision-making processes.
Mark T Young
’m a Scottish evolutionary biologist and vertebrate palaeontologist. My research focus is on major evolutionary transitions: understanding both how and why the vertebrate body-plan radically transforms when adapting to new niches. My interdisciplinary approach including biomechanics, comparative anatomy, neuroanatomy, nomenclature, philosophy of biology, phylogenetics, and systematics/taxonomy.
My areas of research are:
(1) The land-to-sea transition of fossil marine crocodylomorphs. This focuses on the biology of Thalattosuchia (marine crocs that evolved flippers and a tail fin during the Age of Dinosaurs). My research includes understanding their endocranial anatomy, sensory systems, evolutionary relationships, and morphofunctional diversity. Finally, what do thalattosuchians tell us about common evolutionary pathways seen in secondarily aquatic vertebrates?
(2) The air-to-land transition within Columbidae (pigeons and doves). This focuses on the biology of the Dodo (Raphus cucullatus) and the Solitaire (Pezophaps solitaria). My research includes understanding their skeletal anatomy, locomotory biomechanics, and evolutionary relationships. Finally, what does the Dodo tell us about common evolutionary pathways seen in secondarily flightless birds.
(3) Philosophy of biology. The goal of the sciences is to cumulatively gather descriptive and ultimately causal understanding of objects and events. My research includes ensuring that my work is compatible with the goal of scientific inquiry, and to promote a view of biology and biological research that encapsulates biological theory, applied technological innovation, with a philosophical underpinning.
(4) Promotion of best practice in descriptive biology and zoological nomenclature. Given the current ‘age of extinctions’ we are living through and the dire shortage of trained taxonomists, there is a greater need than ever to ensure that taxonomic and descriptive research meets best practice and is compatible with the goal of scientific inquiry.
I am an ICZN Commissioner, a Fellow of the Linnean Society of London, and a member of the Royal Society of Biology (RSB). I have Chartered Biologist status, registered with the RSB. I am a member of two IUCN Species Survival Commission groups: the Crocodile Specialist Group, and the Pigeon & Dove Specialist Group. I am the editor-in-chief of Historical Biology, and also an academic editor for PeerJ and PeerJ Open Advances in Zoology.
Kenneth De Baets
I am a paleobiologist. My main research focuses on reproductive strategies and macroevolution, particularly on the contributions of biotic interactions (e.g., parasitism) and abiotic factors (e.g., climate) in controlling evolutionary and diversity patterns. To this end, I work with a variety of approaches that combine research on fossil molluscs, coprolites and fieldwork with large-scale quantitative analyses. Other interests are quantitative methods to study biostratigraphy, intraspecific variability and paleobiology in general. My main taxonomic expertise is on invertebrates, mainly (extinct) cephalopod mollusks and parasitic helminths. The promotion of diversity and young scientists as well as scientific collaboration and reproducibility in paleontology are particularly close to my heart.
Rodrigo Nunes-da-Fonseca
Associate Professor at the Center for Ecology and Socio-Environmental Development of Macaé, (NUPEM), Federal University of Rio de Janeiro (UFRJ-Macaé). Affiliate Member of the Brazilian Academy of Sciences (2017-2021). Scientist of Our State at FAPERJ (2019-nowadays), PhD (2008) and Postdoctoral studies (2009) in Functional Genomics and Evolutionary Developmental Biology (Evo-Devo) at the University of Cologne, Germany.
Published more than 85 articles in specialized journals with more than 3500 citations (Google Scholar-Fator H = 24). He serves as a reviewer for several international journals (NAR, Cell Reports, Dev. Gen Evol, Dev. Biol, FEBS J, Plos One, Gene, among others) particularly in the evolutionary genetics of arthropod development.
Lesley J Rogers
Lesley J. Rogers is a Fellow of the Australian Academy of Science and Emeritus Professor at the University of New England, Australia. After being awarded a First-Class Honours degree by the University of Adelaide, she studied at Harvard University in USA and then the University of Sussex, UK. She was awarded a Doctor of Philosophy and later a Doctor of Science from the University of Sussex, UK. After returning to Australia, she has held academic positions at Monash University, Australian National University and the University of New England, serving as Professor and Head of Physiology for several years.
Her publications, numbering over 500, include 19 books and over 280 scientific papers and book chapters, mainly on brain and behaviour. In the 1970s her discovery of lateralized behaviour in chicks was one of three initial findings that established the field of brain lateralization in non-human animals, now a very active field of research. Initially, her research was concerned with the development of lateralization in the chick, as a model species, and the importance of light stimulation before hatching on the development of visual asymmetry, which she investigated at the neural and behavioural levels. She then compared lateralized behaviour in different species spanning from bees to primates and, more recently, has focussed on the advantages of brain asymmetry and the link between social behaviour and population-level asymmetry. She also edits the journal Laterality.
Giorgio Vallortigara
Giorgio Vallortigara is Professor of Neuroscience at the Centre for Mind/Brain Sciences at the University of Trento, Italy, and he has been an Adjunct Professor at the School of Biological, Biomedical and Molecular Sciences at the University of New England, Australia for several years.
He is the author of over 400 scientific papers (with more than 30,000 citations overall; h-index: 76 Scopus; 96 Google Scholar), most in the area of animal cognition and comparative neuroscience. He discovered the first evidence of functional brain asymmetry in the so-called “lower” vertebrate species (fish, amphibians); he also worked on comparative cognition, in particular on visual perception of biological motion, and spatial and number cognition.
He served in the editorial boards of several cognitive science and neuroscience journals, he was co-editor of the journal “Laterality: Asymmetries of Brain, Body and Cognition” and has been the recipient of several awards.
His major research interest is the study of cognition in a comparative and evolutionary perspective, with particular reference to the mechanisms underlying the use of geometry in spatial navigation and the origins of number and object cognition in the animal brain. He also studied extensively the evolution of the asymmetry of the brain.
Julia A. Clarke
Julia Clarke is a paleontologist and evolutionary biologist at The University of Texas at Austin. She is also a John A. Wilson Centennial Fellow in Vertebrate Paleontology and a member of the Graduate Faculty in Ecology, Evolution, and Behavior at UT.
She has a Ph.D. from the Department of Geology and Geophysics at Yale University and a B.A. (comparative literature and geobiology) from Brown University. She currently serves as co-editor-in-chief of the Journal of Anatomy and is an associate editor of Paleobiology. She has published numerous technical papers, including 9 in Nature or Science, and has been recognized for excellence in research, undergraduate teaching, and outreach.
Tetsuro Matsuzawa
Majoring Comparative Cognitive Science; Primatology. PhD from Kyoto University in 1989. Tetsuro Matsuzawa has been studying chimpanzees both in the laboratory and the wild. The laboratory work is known as the "Ai-project" in the Primate Research Institute of Kyoto University since 1977: A female chimpanzee named Ai learned to use Arabic numerals to represent numbers (Matsuzawa, 1985, Nature). The fieldwork has been carried out in Bossou-Nimba, Guinea, since 1986, focusing on the tool use and the culture in the wild. Matsuzawa tries to synthesize the field and the lab work to understand the mind of chimpanzees to know the evolutionary origins of the human mind. He published the English books such as “Primate Origins of Human Cognition and Behavior", “Cognitive Development in Chimpanzees", “The Minds of the Chimpanzees”, and “The Chimpanzees of Bossou and Nimba".
James D Wasmuth
Dr. Wasmuth is an Associate Professor within the Department of Ecosystem and Public Health, Faculty of Veterinary Medicine at the University of Calgary, US. His primary research interests include parasite genomics and evolution.
Caitlin E O'Connell-Rodwell
Dr. Caitlin Elizabeth O'Connell-Rodwell is a conservation biologist and author. She is an instructor at Harvard Medical School, and scientific consultant, co-founder and chief executive officer of Utopia Scientific, a non-profit foundation promoting the importance of science and conservation.
Dr. O'Connell-Rodwell's research centers on middle-ear mechanics and the low frequency acoustic and bone conduction hearing of species with sensitivity to frequencies below the human hearing threshold—primarily the elephant.
Sushma Reddy
Dr. Sushma Reddy is the Breckenridge Chair of Ornithology at the Bell Museum of Natural History and Associate Professor in Fisheries, Wildlife, and Conservation Biology at the University of Minnesota. Her research investigates biological diversity by using genetic, phenotypic, and geographic data to study the evolutionary history of birds. From adaptive radiations in Madagascar to diversification patterns in the Old World tropics and the early evolution of modern birds, her work spans the breadth of avian phylogenetics. As a natural history museum curator, she oversees the Bell Museum’s collection of bird specimens and is part of a global network of biodiversity repositories, a key resource for understanding environmental change. She collaborates with scientists across the world and trains students at all levels. Her research continues to build our knowledge of bird diversity and aid conservation efforts.