Mary Jane West-Eberhard (born 1941[1]) is an American theoretical biologist noted for arguing that phenotypic and developmental plasticity played a key role in shaping animal evolution and speciation.
Hawkins Award for the Outstanding Professional, Reference or Scholarly Work[4] for her book Developmental Plasticity and Evolution (618 pages).
West-Eberhard's mother was a primary school teacher, and her father, a small-town businessman, and as parents they encouraged her curiosity.
She records that "I also learned the excitement of being a sleuth in the university libraries where even an undergraduate could explore an idea beyond textbooks and could feel like a pioneer".
She also corresponded with Edward Wilson on trophic eggs in insects, and spent summers at Woods Hole and Cali in Colombia.
She has argued that origins of nonreproductive females in social wasps involves mutualism rather than only kin selection or parental manipulation.
[10] Her work upon social insects has played an important role in the development of her ideas upon phenotypic plasticity.
[19] As a member of the United States National Academy of Sciences, West-Eberhard has served for three terms on its Committee on Human Rights.