Science and creativity: at first glance, the two may not be synonymous. However, successful science is accomplished through questioning what others hold to be true which takes true creativity. Dr. Patty Gowaty, Distinguished Professor of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, at the University of California, Los Angeles, studies the causes and consequences of sexual behavior, often by taking novel approaches to interesting questions that have never been asked in quite the same way. To understand selection, she asks how variation among individuals in mating behavior affects the Darwinian parameters of their survival and reproductive success in real time. Her methods include field study of social behavior of birds, experimental lab studies of multiple species of fruit flies, and theory; each approach shedding light upon the origins of the health of offspring and the lifespan of breeding adults. Additionally, under the assumptions that individuals in all species experience social and ecological constraints and that all species - including humans - are subject to the force of selection, her research has the potential to inform debates about the origins of human social behavior.

Distinguished by her critical testing of key assumptions of predominating theories of the evolution of social behavior, Dr. Gowaty’s discoveries have often resulted in conclusions at odds with prevailing wisdom. Thus, her research helps produce a more realistic view of the veracity and appropriateness of theories for origins of and differences between the social/sexual behavior of the sexes. Dr. Gowaty believes that “science at its core is collaboration,” and thus she brings together collaborators to study diverse species to provide a more global understanding of her questions. She also studies her questions with theory. Her multidisciplinary approach has lead to the expedited discovery process where rather than 30 years to reach successful benchmarks her team has accomplished them in three. In short, Dr. Gowaty’s approach to science has sustained collaborative science that over the years has illuminated some of the age old questions about sex and behavior. Current research includes:

• Eastern Bluebirds: Dr. Gowaty is working to complete her study of lineage success over 30 generations of wild-living individual eastern bluebirds to test the hypothesis that parents dissimilar at immune coding genes have greater lineage success than parents with similar immune coding genes. To complete this project, she and her team are seeking funds to characterize the genetic parentage of 8000 individuals using modern molecular techniques which would help to identify whether or not early indicators of health of the offspring predict the heritage of success.

• W-Distribution: Dr. Gowaty is expanding her lab studies of different Drosophila species to the field, attempting to characterize variations in the w-distribution. The w-distribution is the shape of the curve of fitness in a population, and its shape predicts the likelihood of indiscriminate or choosy mating by individuals in the populations. In other words, the w-distribution helps to determine if an individual will settle on a potential mate or wait for a better mate.

• Theoretical Models: Dr. Gowaty is now completing, along with her co-author Stephen P. Hubbell, The Theory of Mating: Reproductive Decisions Under Ecological and Social Constraints. The book describes a series of theoretical models about the behavior of individuals under “demographic stochasticity” i.e., chance variation in encounters with potential mates and an individual’s survival likelihood, as well as variation in the w-distribution. She and her team are now developing a web portal in JAVA for DYNAMATE© that will be available for other researchers to explore how the rules of her new models might play out under the ecological conditions of their particular systems.