Kevin Lala

Kevin Lala
Born
Kevin Neville Lala

(1962-10-05) 5 October 1962 (age 64)
Other nameKevin Laland
EducationUniversity College London (Ph.D., 1990)
Alma materUniversity of Southampton
Known forNiche construction theory
AwardsRoyal Society Wolfson Research Merit Award
Scientific career
FieldsBehavioral biology
Evolutionary biology
WorkplacesUniversity of St Andrews
Thesis Social transmission in Norway rats and its implications for evolutionary theory  (1990)
Henry Plotkin

Kevin Neville Lala (formerly Laland; born 5 October 1962) is an English evolutionary biologist who is Professor of Behavioural and Evolutionary Biology at the University of St Andrews in Scotland. Educated at the University of Southampton and University College London, he was a Human Frontier Science Program fellow at the University of California, Berkeley before joining the University of St Andrews in 2002. He is one of the co-founders of niche construction theory and a prominent advocate of the extended evolutionary synthesis. He is a fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh and the Society of Biology. He has also received a European Research Council Advanced Grant, a Royal Society Wolfson Research Merit Award, and a John Templeton Foundation grant. He was the president of the European Human Behaviour and Evolution Association from 2007 to 2010 and a former president of the Cultural Evolution Society. Lala is currently an external faculty of the Konrad Lorenz Institute for Evolution and Cognition Research and Editor-in-Chief of Biological Theory.

Cognition and learning

The Lala Lab is primarily focused on animal social learning, innovation, and intelligence, as well as human evolution, particularly the evolution of cognition and culture. Their work lies at the interdisciplinary interface of evolutionary biology, animal behavior, ecology, and psychology.

Niche construction theory

Following John Odling-Smee's attempt in 1988 to formalize the process of niche construction as an evolutionary process, Odling-Smee, Lala, and Marcus W. Feldman developed a theoretical framework – Niche Construction Theory – that models niche construction as an evolutionary process reciprocally interacting with the process of natural selection. This theory has been applied widely across multiple fields, including ecology evolutionary developmental biology, and human and cultural evolution.

Extended evolutionary synthesis

In the mid-2010s, Kevin Lala, Tobias Uller, and colleagues pushed for an extended evolutionary synthesis in a series of high-impact articles. From 2015 to 2018, Uller and Lala led a large international John Templeton Foundation grant to test key hypotheses and assumptions of the extended evolutionary synthesis.

Anti-racism work

Kevin Lala previously served on the Equality, Diversity and Inclusion division of the School of Biology as deputy director. He is currently serving as an anti-racism advocate.

Lala changed his name from Laland, stating on his lab website "Lala was my original family name, which my parents anglicized when I was 4, in an attempt to reduce the racism that their children experienced. I may have benefited from my surname being anglicized, but it did not sit right with me that I should still bear that name more than 50 years later. I wish to celebrate my ancestry not hide it. I am proud of my Parsi Indian heritage. I am not going to be intimidated by racists."

Publications

Journal articles

Books

References

  1. ↑ "Laland, Kevin N." Library of Congress Name Authority File. Retrieved 10 October 2018.
  2. ↑ "Current lab members – The Lala Lab". lalandlab.wp.st-andrews.ac.uk. Retrieved 1 February 2023.
  3. ↑ Odling-Smee, J.; Laland, K. N.; Feldman, M. W. (February 2000). "Niche construction, biological evolution, and cultural change". Behavioral and Brain Sciences. 23 (1): 131–146, discussion 146–175. doi:10.1017/s0140525x00002417. ISSN 0140-525X. PMID 11303338. S2CID 13893525.
  4. 1 2 Laland, K. N.; Odling-Smee, J.; Feldman, M. W. (2003). Niche Construction: The Neglected Process in Evolution. Princeton University Press. p. 488. ISBN 978-0-691-04437-8.
  5. ↑ Zimmer, Carl (22 November 2016). "Scientists Seek to Update Evolution". Quanta Magazine. Retrieved 10 October 2018.
  6. ↑ "ERC Funded Projects". European Research Council. Archived from the original on 26 June 2020. Retrieved 24 June 2020.
  7. ↑ "Royal Society Wolfson Fellowship". University of St. Andrews. Retrieved 24 June 2020.
  8. 1 2 "Putting the Extended Evolutionary Synthesis to the Test". John Templeton Foundation. Retrieved 24 June 2020.
  9. ↑ "archived:www.cambridge.org/core/membership/ehbea/about-us". cambridge.org. Archived from the original on 1 November 2020. Retrieved 21 October 2022.
  10. ↑ "About Us". culturalevolutionsociety.org. Retrieved 1 February 2023.[permanent dead link]
  11. ↑ Lala, Kevin N. (2026). "The Importance of Biological Theory". Biological Theory. 21 (1): 1–4. doi:10.1007/s13752-026-00529-8. ISSN 1555-5542.
  12. ↑ "People | External Faculty | Discover The KLI". kli.ac.at. Retrieved 10 March 2023.
  13. ↑ Toyokawa, Wataru; Whalen, Andrew; Laland, Kevin N. (21 January 2019). "Social learning strategies regulate the wisdom and madness of interactive crowds". Nature Human Behaviour. 3 (2): 183–193. doi:10.1038/s41562-018-0518-x. hdl:10023/18143. ISSN 2397-3374. PMID 30944445. S2CID 256703977.
  14. ↑ Laland, Kevin; Seed, Amanda (4 January 2021). "Understanding Human Cognitive Uniqueness". Annual Review of Psychology. 72 (1): 689–716. doi:10.1146/annurev-psych-062220-051256. ISSN 0066-4308. PMID 33400565. S2CID 230784383.
  15. ↑ "The Lala Lab – Research in the School of Biology". lalandlab.wp.st-andrews.ac.uk. Retrieved 1 February 2023.
  16. ↑ Odling-Smee FJ (1988) Niche-constructing phenotypes. In: Plotkin HC (ed) The Role of Behavior in Evolution. The MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, pp. 73–132
  17. ↑ Odling-Smee, F. John; Laland, Kevin N.; Feldman, Marcus W. (1996). "Niche Construction". The American Naturalist. 147 (4): 641–648. doi:10.1086/285870. ISSN 0003-0147. JSTOR 2463239. S2CID 222326061.
  18. ↑ Laland, K. N.; Odling-Smee, F. J.; Feldman, M. W. (31 August 1999). "Evolutionary consequences of niche construction and their implications for ecology". Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. 96 (18): 10242–10247. Bibcode:1999PNAS...9610242L. doi:10.1073/pnas.96.18.10242. ISSN 0027-8424. PMC 17873. PMID 10468593.
  19. ↑ Matthews, Blake; De Meester, Luc; Jones, Clive G.; Ibelings, Bas W.; Bouma, Tjeerd J.; Nuutinen, Visa; de Koppel, Johan van; Odling-Smee, John (May 2014). "Under niche construction: an operational bridge between ecology, evolution, and ecosystem science". Ecological Monographs. 84 (2): 245–263. Bibcode:2014EcoM...84..245M. doi:10.1890/13-0953.1. ISSN 0012-9615.
  20. ↑ Laland, Kevin N.; Odling-Smee, John; Gilbert, Scott F. (15 November 2008). "EvoDevo and niche construction: building bridges". Journal of Experimental Zoology Part B: Molecular and Developmental Evolution. 310B (7): 549–566. Bibcode:2008JEZB..310..549L. doi:10.1002/jez.b.21232. PMID 18756522.
  21. ↑ Kendal, Jeremy; Tehrani, Jamshid J.; Odling-Smee, John (27 March 2011). "Human niche construction in interdisciplinary focus". Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences. 366 (1566): 785–792. doi:10.1098/rstb.2010.0306. ISSN 0962-8436. PMC 3048995. PMID 21320894.
  22. ↑ Laland, Kevin N.; Odling-Smee, John; Myles, Sean (February 2010). "How culture shaped the human genome: bringing genetics and the human sciences together". Nature Reviews Genetics. 11 (2): 137–148. doi:10.1038/nrg2734. ISSN 1471-0056. PMID 20084086. S2CID 10287878.
  23. ↑ Laland, Kevin N.; Odling-Smee, John; Feldman, Marcus W. (February 2000). "Niche construction, biological evolution, and cultural change". Behavioral and Brain Sciences. 23 (1): 131–146. doi:10.1017/s0140525x00002417. ISSN 0140-525X. PMID 11303338. S2CID 13893525.
  24. ↑ Laland, Kevin; Uller, Tobias; Feldman, Marc; Sterelny, Kim; Müller, Gerd B.; Moczek, Armin; Jablonka, Eva; Odling-Smee, John; Wray, Gregory A.; Hoekstra, Hopi E.; Futuyma, Douglas J.; Lenski, Richard E.; Mackay, Trudy F. C.; Schluter, Dolph; Strassmann, Joan E. (October 2014). "Does evolutionary theory need a rethink?". Nature. 514 (7521): 161–164. Bibcode:2014Natur.514..161L. doi:10.1038/514161a. hdl:1885/28950. ISSN 1476-4687. PMID 25297418. S2CID 4467421.
  25. ↑ Laland, Kevin N.; Uller, Tobias; Feldman, Marcus W.; Sterelny, Kim; Müller, Gerd B.; Moczek, Armin; Jablonka, Eva; Odling-Smee, John (22 August 2015). "The extended evolutionary synthesis: its structure, assumptions and predictions". Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences. 282 (1813) 20151019. doi:10.1098/rspb.2015.1019. PMC 4632619. PMID 26246559.
  26. ↑ "Extended Evolutionary Synthesis – An integrative research program". Retrieved 27 January 2023.
  27. ↑ "Committee – Equality, Diversity and Inclusion". biology.st-andrews.ac.uk. Retrieved 27 January 2023.
  28. ↑ "Anti-racism – Equality, Diversity and Inclusion". biology.st-andrews.ac.uk. Retrieved 27 January 2023.
  29. ↑ "Current lab members – the Laland Lab". Retrieved 23 February 2024.