Photo credits:
Stewen Quigley

Pim Edelaar

Natural Sciences Fellow, SCAS.
Professor of Biology, Pablo de Olavide University, Seville


After receiving a Master in Biology from Leiden University in 1995, Pim Edelaar obtained his PhD
in Biology from the University of Groningen in 2002. Following a Dutch TALENT post-doctoral
grant allowing stays at the New Mexico State University  and the University of British Columbia
and a short Honorary Fellowship at the University of Groningen (2002–04), Edelaar was granted a
Marie Curie Outgoing International Fellowship, divided into stays at the University of Arizona, Texas
A&M University and Uppsala University. This was followed by a JAE-Doc grant at the Estación
Biológica de Doñana and a Ramón y Cajal Assistant Professorship at the Pablo de Olavide University,
Seville, where he is now a full Professor.   

Edelaar’s research is a mixture of descriptive and experimental empirical work, computer simulation
studies, and conceptual advances. The empirical focus is on how certain forms of habitat choice can
promote population divergence, local adaptation, reproductive isolation and the maintenance of genetic
variation, while the conceptual work places findings in the context of evolutionary theory, thereby un-
covering the need for a more generalised view of adaptive evolution.

Edelaar has published over sixty scientific articles, including papers like ‘On the Origin of Species by
Natural and Sexual Selection’ in Science, and ‘Non-random Gene Flow: An Underappreciated Force
in Evolution and Ecology’ and ‘Appreciating the Multiple Processes Increasing Individual or Population
Fitness’, both in Trends in Ecology and Evolution.

During his stay at SCAS, Edelaar will write a book on generalised adaptive evolution, taking extended
phenotypes, the adaptive acquisition of traits, and non-genetic inheritance into account.


This information is accurate as of the academic year 2021-22.