Eviatar Nevo

Professor emeritus; University of Haifa, Israel

Eviatar Nevo (born 1929 ) is an evolutionary biologist , professor emeritus at the University of Haifa, Israel, in charge of the Chair in Evolutionary Biology and a Foreign Member of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States. Founded the Institute of Evolution, Haifa University. Established the International Centre for Doctoral evolution. He has published over 1200 articles and 24 books. Discovered hundreds of species of animals in scientific difference, including 77 kinds of mushrooms in the Dead Sea.

Nevo obtained his MSc degree (Distinguished) and PhD degree at the Hebrew University Jerusalem. Nevo is a Foreign Member of the Linnean Society, London (1990), Ukraine Academy of Sciences (1997); Foreig Associate National Academy of Sciences USA (2000); Honorary Member of the Ukraine Botanical Society (1995), the American Society of Mammalogists (2002), and the Israel Zoological Society (2007); Honorary doctorates of World University (1990), the University of Duisberg -Essen, Germany, the Yorker International University, Milan, Italy.

Research achievements: Professor Eviatar Nevo is a world leader in Evolutionary Biology and has contributed substantially to the understanding of genetic diversity and correlates and predictors of genetic diversity in nature, under diverse environmental stresses (chemical, climatic, thermal, biotic, and atomic). His extensive studies (1200 + papers and 26 books) involve the study of genes, genomes, phenomes, populations, species, and ecosystems of bacteria, fungi, plants, animals, and humans focusing on the structure, function, and causation of genetic diversity in nature. He has conducted local (in four natural laboratories of "Evolution Canyons" in Israel), regional (in Israel and the Near East Fertile Crescent as natural genetic laboratories), and global (across all continents as genetic labs) genetic studies, interdisciplinarily linking genetics and ecology in terms of ecological genetics and ecological genomics, bridging genotypes and phenotypes, integrating molecular and organismal biology, organism-environment relationships, and elucidating the patterns and causation of genetic diversity in nature.

These studies link environmental stress with the level of genetic polymorphism in proteins and DNA across life (bacteria, fungi, plants, and animals) and the entire planet (all continents). Nevo established the Environmental Theory of Genetic Diversity proposing that, generally, genetic polymorphism AT ALL SCALES, LOCAL, REGIONAL AND GLOBAL, AND ACROSS LIFE, is positively correlated with and predictable by environmental stress.

The "Evolution Canyon" model initiated by Nevo and dubbed by him the "Israeli Galapagos", became a classical model of biodiversity evolution at a microscale caused by sharp microclimatic interslope divergence confronting biotic representation of two continents, Africa and Europa. The 200 papers and three books published on the model involve diverse fundamental problems of evolutionary biology. These include biodiversity evolution , genetic polymorphism, transposon and retrotransposon dynamics and their effects on genome size, DNA repair; mutation, recombination, and gene conversion rates as well as methylation associated with stress, lateral transfer, splice variation, wide genome gene expression; and the twin evolutionary processes of adaptation and incipient sympatric speciation across life from bacteria through fungi, plants, and animals from invertebrates to mammals.

Mosaic Evolution of Subterranean Mammals: Regression, Progression, and Global Convergence

Subterranean life exists within an extraordinary environment and has evolved among different groups of mammals all over the globe. With relatively constant temperature, few opportunities to meet organisms other than the immediate family, and a completely different sensory environment, the evolution of such life is fascinating. Locomotion, communication, food-finding, navigation, circadian rhythms, and indeed the whole of the animals’ physiology may be specialized to cope with life underground. And from burrowing to blindness, magnetic communication to the weird bee-like eusociality of blind mole rats, specialization has been extreme and has led to speciation in a whole range of new contexts.

That the subterranean way of life occurs in different species of mammals across the globe has provided scientists with one of nature’s best studied global evolutionary demonstrations of adaptive radiation and speciation. The revolution in molecular biology that has occurred over the last ten years has massively expanded these horizons, allowing scientists to explore, map, and clone the genes underlying the basis of adaptation and speciation and translate their fascinating structural and functional evolution into genes and genomic language.

This book draws together the burgeoning literature about all aspects of the biology of subterranean mammals. Beginning with their evolutionary history and the processes that led to the subterranean way of life, the author reviews ecology, behavior, and physiology within the context of the highly stressful subterranean context, considers the specialization that has evolved in response, and then compares the eleven families of extant subterranean mammals.

The incredible circumstances surrounding subterranean mammals present a unique, global, ‘natural experiment’ in evolution that has implications throughout biology. As such, this broad survey will stand as an invaluable reference to evolutionary biologists, ecologists, and molecular biologists for years to come.

Selected publications

Test of selection and neutrality in natural populations. (1973) Nature 244:573-575.

Evolutionary theory and processes of active speciation and adaptive radiation in subterranean mole rats, Spalax ehrenbergi superspecies in Israel. (1991) Evol. Biol. 25:1-125.

Phenotypic plasticity in larval development of six amphibian species in stressful natural environments (2012) Zool. Studies 51(3):345-361.

Genome diversity in wild grasses under environmental stress (2011) Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA 108(52):21140-21145

Is evolution of blind mole rats determined by climate oscillations? (2012) PLoS ONE 7(1):e30043.

Evolution under environmental stress at macro-and microscales. (2011) Genome Biol. Evol. 2:1039-1052.

Adaptive evolution of flaky thumb claw and elongated compulsory arousal duration in the subterranean rodent plateau zokor. (2011) Ethol. Ecol. Evol. 77 23:77-80.

Evolution under environmental stress at macro-and microscales. (2011) Genome Biol. Evol. 2:1039-1052

Stress, adaptation, and speciation in the evolution of the blind mole rat, Spalax, in Israel. (2013) Mol. Phylogenet. Evol. 66:515-525.
Complete list of publications

For a complete list of over 1300 publications, click here

Eviatar Nevo

Professor emeritus; University of Haifa, Israel

Books

Mosaic Evolution of Subterranean Mammals: Regression, Progression, and Global Convergence

Publications

Selected publications

Complete list of publications

Websites