Joan Strassmann

Joan Strassmann is a member of the Department of Biology in Arts & Sciences as professor. Formerly she was the Harry C. and Olga K. Wiess Professor in Natural Sciences and Department Chair of Ecology Biology at Rice University. Dr. Strassmann’s work investigates cooperative alliances that have occurred at several important steps in the evolution of life, and have proven evolutionarily and ecologically very successful. Studying how these alliances came to be, how conflicts are subsumed into cooperation, what conflicts remain, and how they influence sociality comprise her dominant research interests.

Dr. Strassmann received her doctorate in the department of Zoology from the University of Texas at Austin. She is the author of numerous publications and has won a number of prestigious grants and honors. She is also on several editorial boards, including Evolution and BMC Evolutionary Biology and is an elected member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Dr. Strassmann has recently received Texas Teacher Quality Grants Program funds to develop rigorous teaching training in Elementary Science. Currently, Dr. Strassmann is working with Dr. Queller on a research project entitled “Social interactions and molecular evolution” which has been awarded a four-year grant from the National Science Foundation.?

Her publications are as follows:
DiSalvo, S., Haselkorn, T. S., Bashir, U., *Jimenez, D. A., Brock, D. A., Queller, D. C., Strassmann, J. E. 2015. Burkholderia bacteria infectiously induce the proto-farming symbiosis of Dictyostelium amoebae and food bacteria. Proc. Nat. Acad. Sci. USA 112 E5029 – E5037 doi: 10.1073/pnas.1511878112.
Ostrowski, E.A., Shen, Y., Tian, X., Sucgang, R., Jiang, H., Qu, J., Katoh-Kurasawa, M., Brock, D.A., Dinh, C., Lara-Garduno, F., Lee, S.L., Kovar, C.L., Dinh, H.H., Korchina, V., Jackson, L., Patil, S., Han, Y., Chaboub, L., Shaulsky, G., Muzny, D.M., Worley, K.C., Gibbs, R.A., Richards, S., Kuspa, A., Strassmann, J.E., and Queller, D.C. 2015. Genomic Signatures of Cooperation and Conflict in the Social Amoeba. Current Biology 25: 1661-1665.
*Levin, S. R., Brock, D. A., Queller, D. C., Strassmann, J. E. 2015. Concurrent co-evolution of intra-organismal cheaters and resisters Journal of Evolutionary Biology DOI: 10.1111/jeb.12618.
smith, j. Queller, D. C., and Strassmann J. E. 2014. Fruiting bodies of the social amoeba Dictyostelium discoideum increase spore transport by Drosophila. BMC Evolutionary Biology 14:105. doi:10.1186/1471-2148-14-105.
Strassmann, J.E. and Queller, D.C. 2014. Privatization and property in biology. Animal Behaviour 92: 305 – 311 http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.anbehav.2014.02.011.
Werner. G.D.A, Strassmann, J.E., Ivens, A.B.F. , Engelmoer, D.J.P. , Verbruggen, E., Queller, D.C. , Nöe, R., Johnson, N.C. , Hammerstein, P., E. Kiers, E.T. 2014. The evolution of microbial markets. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA 111:1237-1244.
Queller, D. C. & Strassmann, J. E. 2013. The veil of ignorance can favor biological cooperation. Biology Letters 9(6) 10.1098/rsbl.2013.0365.
Stallforth, P., Brock, D. A., Cantley, A. M., Tian, X., Queller, D.C., Strassmann, J.E. and Clardy, J. 2013. A bacterial symbiont is converted from an inedible producer of beneficial molecules into food by a single mutation in the gacA gene. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA. doi:10.1073/pnas.1308199110.