Professor Endler is interested in the commonalities among the fields of Evolution, Ecology, Behavioural Ecology and Sensory Ecology, and uses Natural History to generate and test hypothesis. He is particularly well known for his books on how geographical variation can develop in spite of movement between habitats, another on Natural Selection in the wild, as well as his hypothesis of Sensory Drive, the hypothesis that the environment sets the direction of the joint evolution of senses, signals, and both mate and microhabitat choice behaviour. He has worked with a variety of animals, most notably wild guppies and bowerbirds and subjects from population genetics and evolution through behavioural ecology and visual physiology.
Born in Montreal in 1947. Bachelor’s degree (honours with distinction) from the University of California Berkeley, 1969. PhD University of Edinburgh, 1973, Ford Foundation postdoctoral fellowship Princeton University, 1972. Academic at several universities in the US, UK and Australia, most notably Princeton University and the University of California Santa Barbara. Moved to Deakin University in 2009 to be closer to his Bowerbird field sites and Australia’s unique fauna and flora. Fellow American Academy of Arts and Sciences 2007, Fellow Australian Academy of Sciences 2012.
Professional position
- Emeritus Professor, School of Life and Environmental Sciences, Deakin University
- Adjunct Professor, Zoology and Ecology, Tropical Environments Sciences, College of Science and Engineering, James Cooke University
Subject groups
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Computer Sciences
Artificial intelligence, machine learning, vision
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Multicellular Organisms
Behavioural neuroscience
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Patterns in Populations
Biological Anthropology, Ecology (incl behavioural ecology), Ethology, Evolution, Organismal animal biology including invertebrate and vertebrate zoology, Population genetics, Sensory Ecology, Ecology (incl behavioural ecology), Ethology, Evolution
