Maria Servedio

Professor of Biology, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill

After receiving an A.B. in Biology from Harvard College in 1993, Maria Servedio attended
the University of Texas at Austin for her graduate work in theoretical evolutionary biology,
obtaining a Ph.D. in Zoology in 1998. Following a brief lectureship at Cornell University
(1998–1999), she obtained a Center for Population Biology Postdoctoral Fellowship at the
University of California, Davis, which she held from 1999 to 2001. She spent 2001–2002
at the University of California, San Diego, as a visiting scholar before joining the faculty
of the University of North Carolina in 2002. Her research focuses on the development of
mathematical models to address outstanding questions in evolutionary biology, concentrating
on the topics of speciation, mate choice, and the evolutionary effects of learning. She is
currently serving as a handling editor for the journal Evolution and as the Vice President (in
2018) of the American Society of Naturalists.

Servedio has published over sixty scientific articles in journals such as Evolution; the American
Naturalist; Trends in Ecology and Evolution; the Proceedings of the Royal Society of London B;
the Annual Review of Ecology, Evolution, and Systematics; and the Proceedings of the National
Academy of Sciences. These include bodies of work on reinforcement, on male mate choice, and
most recently on the effects of sexual selection on the process of speciation.

During her stay at SCAS, Servedio will explore novel mathematical models of how the choice of
well-adapted mates may promote speciation.

This information is accurate as of the academic year 2017-18.