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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.
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He has described dozens of
new species, and mentored nearly as many students and postdocs. Initially,
tropical fieldwork comprised intensive studies of Guatemalan cloud forest
habitats, but ultimately Wake’s renowned ‘elevational transect’ approach
extended into Mexico, Costa Rica, and Panama, with more modest forays into
other countries of Central and South America. Today, neotropical
plethodontids offer a paradigm for analyzing the evolutionary biology of
adaptive radiation and organismal diversification, largely as a result of
the contributions of David Wake and his numerous collaborators and students.