David B. Wake has devoted much of his adult life to studying the evolutionary
biology of lungless salamanders (family Plethodontidae), and especially the
group’s explosive radiation in the New World tropics. Beginning with a
Masters thesis that described the comparative osteology of the North
American genus Aneides, Wake’s approach continually expanded into new areas.
He has made major contributions to population biology and genetics, ecology,
behavior, functional and developmental morphology, taxonomy and systematics,
comparative genomics, and conservation biology