Early Career Spotlight with Illiam Jackson

Illiam Jackson just wrapped up his work at Tobias Uller’s lab (Lund) and is moving on to great things. We talked to Illiam about himself, his work, and papers he liked under the EES project.

 

Check out his new paper:

 

Developmental bias in the fossil record.
[download PDF]
Illiam S. C. Jackson. 2019. Evolution & Development DOI: 10.1111/ede.12312

 

 

Lynn: tell us a bit about yourself, Illiam.

 

Illiam:I’m Illiam Jackson and I just finished my first postdoc with the Uller group at Lund. My work with the EES has been on patterns of plasticity and developmental bias in the Anolis lizards. I’m now heading to Austin to work with Melissa Kemp and further explore this genus!

 

Lynn: what is your latest publication about?

 

Illiam: It’s about viewing the fossil record through the lens of the EES and using this perspective to identify macroevolutionary evidence for plasticity-led evolution, which I argue resembles patterns previously described as punctuated equilibria and quantum evolution.

 

Lynn: tell us a bit about the work you’ve been doing in the Uller lab.

 

Illiam: I’ve been CT scanning and conducting morphometric analysis on a very large number of Anolis lizards. The majority of my work at Lund is still in preparation. Preliminary results look extremely interesting so keep your eyes on the horizon for this publication!

 

Lynn: can you recommend work from the EES research program?

 

Illiam: The papers that have most significantly guided my understanding of evolution & the EES are the Laland etal 2015 ProcB paper & the Uller etal 2018 paper in Genetics. Both of them provided a conceptual ‘click’ that have really been important to my thinking!

 

Developmental bias and evolution: A regulatory network perspective.
[download PDF]

Uller T, Moczek AP, Watson RA, Brakefield PM, Laland KN. 2018. Genetics DOI: 10.1534/genetics.118.300995.

 

The extended evolutionary synthesis: its structure, assumptions and predictions.
[download PDF]

Laland KN, Uller T, Feldman MW, Sterelny K, Müller GB, Moczek AP, et al. Proc R Soc B. 2015;282(20151019).

 

Lynn: Thank you, Illiam! We wish you a smooth journey and a great new start! Keep us posted.

 

 

Illiam Jackson’s personal website: https://illiamjackson.wordpress.com/

 

 

Read about research project 15: Plasticity and adaptive radiation in Anolis lizards, led by Tobias Uller and Natalie Feiner