David Queller

Biosketch

David Queller is an evolutionary biologist known for his work on the evolution of social behavior. A main theme of his work has been kin selection and the way it affects the interactions among relatives in animals, plants, and microbes. He earned a B.A. in history and philosophy of science at the University of Illinois (1976), followed by a PhD in biological sciences at the University of Michigan (1983). After a postdoctoral year at the University of Sussex, he became the Julian Huxley Instructor at Rice University (1984), eventually rising to be Harry Carothers and Olga Keith Wiess Professor. In 2011 he moved to Washington University in St. Louis as Spencer T. Olin Professor of Biology. He has been a J.S. Guggenheim Fellow (1988), a fellow of Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin (2018-9), and won the Hamilton Award of the International Society for Behavioral Ecology (2018). He has also been elected fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and the Animal Behavior Society. He is married to Joan Strassmann and has three children.

Research Interests

David Queller is an evolutionary biologist best known for his pioneering work on the evolution of cooperation and social behavior across diverse organisms. His research has provided deep insights into how cooperation evolves and persists, using a blend of theoretical modeling, genetic analysis, and experimental evolution. His theoretical research includes advances in kin selection theory, which explains how genetic relatedness promotes altruistic and cooperative behaviors, even when natural selection typically favors selfishness. He also developed widely used methods for estimating genetic relatedness, crucial for the empirical study of social evolution. Empirically, Queller – often collaborating with Joan Strassmann ¬– has demonstrated the central role of relatedness in social insects and social amoebas, revealing how the evolution of cooperation and conflict are shaped by kinship. Their work uncovered mechanisms controlling cheating and altruism in social amoebas, including kin discrimination and resistance evolution. Queller has also contributed to understanding major evolutionary transitions, such as the evolution of multicellularity and eusociality, and has explored topics like genomic imprinting, symbiosis, and the evolution of organismality.