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Richard Prum

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Citizenship
  
United States

Role
  
Professor

Name
  
Richard Prum


Known for
  
Evolution of feathers

Thesis
  
1989

Richard Prum httpswwwmacfoundorgmediaphotosRICHARDPRUM

Institutions
  
Peabody Museum of Natural History at Yale University

Education
  
University of Michigan (1989)

Awards
  
MacArthur Fellowship, Guggenheim Fellowship for Natural Sciences, US & Canada

Fields
  
Evolutionary biology, Ornithology

Alma mater
  
University of Michigan

The evolution of beauty richard prum at tedxyale


Richard O. Prum is William Robertson Coe Professor of Ornithology, and Head Curator of Vertebrate Zoology at the Peabody Museum of Natural History at Yale University.

Contents

Richard Prum Richard Prum MacArthur Foundation

Ornithologist richard prum 2009 macarthur fellow macarthur foundation


Life and work

Richard Prum Evolutionary Biology from an Aesthetic Perspective Yale Scientific

Prum describes himself as "an evolutionary ornithologist with broad interests in diverse topics," including phylogenetics, behavior, feathers, structural coloration, evolution and development, sexual selection, and historical biogeography.

Richard Prum Richard Prum MacArthur Foundation

Prum holds that birds are the living descendants of theropod dinosaurs, a previously highly disputed finding that has increasingly gained broad acceptance in the ornithological and evolutionary biology scientific communities.

Richard Prum Prum discusses beauty evolution

Prum grew up in rural Vermont and took his bachelor's degree at Harvard in 1983, and received his Ph.D. in 1989 from the University of Michigan. After gradually losing his hearing throughout the early 1990s due to illness, Prum moved from primarily doing field work to conducting research on plumage pigmentation, feather evolution, and Darwin's sexual selection theory. His book The Evolution of Beauty: How Darwin's Forgotten Theory Of Mate Choice Shapes The Animal World – And Us, was released in May 2017.

Reception

In his book Survival of the Beautiful, David Rothenberg reflects on Prum's analysis of sexual selection in birds, considering whether female birds are exercising an aesthetic sense when they choose a mate. In a chapter titled "It could be anything", Rothenburg argues Prum's position, that the females' aesthetic choice is essentially arbitrary and decoupled from natural selection: anything the females begin to choose becomes what the males must have if they are to have any offspring. The aesthetic aspect of sexual selection has been debated since the start of Darwinism in the nineteenth century. Prum is following Edward Bagnall Poulton, who was roundly criticised by Alfred Russel Wallace for asserting "female preferences based on aesthetic considerations". In Rothenberg's words, Wallace "had no place for Darwin's love of beauty, caprice, and feminine whim". Prum on the other hand considers art and male sexual display to be "coevolution of the work and its appreciation".

Awards

  • 2007 - 2008 Guggenheim Fellowship
  • 2009 MacArthur Fellows Program

    • Works

    From 1985 onwards, Prum has authored research papers including:

  • Prum, R.O (December 15, 1999), "Development and Evolutionary Origin of Feathers" (PDF), Journal of Experimental Zoology (Molecular and Developmental Evolution), 285 (4): 291–306, PMID 10578107, doi:10.1002/(SICI)1097-010X(19991215)285:4<291::AID-JEZ1>3.0.CO;2-9 
  • Xu, X., H. H. Zhou, and R. O. Prum (2001), "Branched integumental structures in Sinornithosaurus and the origin of feathers", Nature, 410 (6825): 200–204, PMID 11242078, doi:10.1038/35065589 CS1 maint: Multiple names: authors list (link)
  • Matthew P. Harris; John F. Fallon; Richard O. Prum (2002), "Shh-Bmp2 signaling module and the evolutionary origin and diversification of feathers", Journal of Experimental Zoology Part B: Molecular and Developmental Evolution, 294 (2): 160–176, doi:10.1002/jez.10157 
  • Prum, Richard O. & AH Brush (2002). "The evolutionary origin and diversification of feathers" (PDF). The Quarterly Review of Biology. 77 (3): 261–295. PMID 12365352. doi:10.1086/341993. 
  • Prum, R.O., & Brush, A.H. (March 2003), "Which Came First, the Feather or the Bird?" (PDF), Scientific American, 288 (3): 84–93, PMID 12616863, doi:10.1038/scientificamerican0303-84 CS1 maint: Multiple names: authors list (link)
  • Bostwick, Kimberly S. & Richard O. Prum (2005), "Courting Bird Sings with Stridulating Wing Feathers" (PDF), Science, 309 (5735): 736, PMID 16051789, doi:10.1126/science.1111701 
  • Geoffrey Edward Hill, Kevin J. McGraw, eds. (2006). "Anatomy, Physics, and Evolution of Structural Colors". Bird Coloration: Mechanisms and measurements. Harvard University Press. ISBN 978-0-674-01893-8. CS1 maint: Uses editors parameter (link)
  • Vinther, Jakob; Derek E. G. Briggs; Julia Clarke; Gerald Mayr; Richard O. Prum (2009). "Structural coloration in a fossil feather" (PDF). Biology Letters. 6 (1): 128–31. PMC 2817243 . PMID 19710052. doi:10.1098/rsbl.2009.0524. 

    • References

    Richard Prum Wikipedia
    (Text) CC BY-SA


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