Siddall, Mark Edward, 1966-

Biography

Mark Siddall is a curator in the Museum’s Division of Invertebrate Zoology. His research has focused on the evolutionary biology of a wide range of parasites, from single-celled microbes to leeches. Siddall now concentrates on researching Darwinian selection and diversity of hemotoxic venom proteins of leeches, among them the new species Tyrannobdella rex (T. rex), recently described by him and his students, who discovered it in the Amazon. Intrigued by coevolutionary phenomena, in which species evolve in response to each other—for example, symbionts and parasites with their hosts, or predators with their prey—he has developed methodological strategies for the evaluation of these systems that continue to play a central role in our understanding of the emergence of diversity through time. Siddall has led expeditions throughout the world including to Zambia, Argentina, Peru, and Rwanda. He is a professor in the Museum’s Richard Gilder Graduate School and is principal investigator in the Museum’s Sackler Institute for Comparative Genomics. He also serves as vice president of the American Society of Parasitologists. In addition to serving as curator of The Power of Poison, Siddall is also the curator of the Museum’s exhibition Picturing Science: Museum Scientists and Imaging Technologies and co-curator of the Irma and Paul Milstein Family Hall of Ocean Life. (source: AMNH website, 2016)

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