Congratulations to Rosemary Gillespie, a professor in the Department of Environmental Science, Policy, and Management (ESPM), on receiving the 2025 Molecular Ecology Prize in recognition of her pioneering research on biodiversity and adaptation.
Created in 2005 by the editorial board of the journal Molecular Ecology, the prize recognizes significant contributions by scientists to the developing field of molecular ecology: an area of research that uses techniques from molecular genetics and genomics to address questions in ecology, evolution, conservation, and behavior. Researchers are nominated by their peers, and winners are selected by an independent selection committee.
The prize’s selection committee credited Gillespie with bridging evolutionary biology, island biogeography, community ecology, and molecular genetics to explore how species diversify and form distinct communities. In an accompanying Molecular Ecology editorial, Susan Kennedy and Henrik Krehenwinkel, biogeography researchers at Trier University in Germany, called Gillespie “a brilliant and highly prolific scientist, uniting a rare combination of big-picture thinking and mastery of details.”
An evolutionary biologist, Gillespie has dedicated her career to understanding spider and insect biodiversity and why remote island chains often become evolutionary hotbeds. She has studied the spiders of the Hawaiian archipelago—particularly long-jawed orbweavers (Tetragnatha)—since the 1980s, initially as a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa and as a UC Berkeley professor since 1999.
Globally, spiders within the genus exhibit similar morphology and behavior; but in Hawaiʻi, Gillespie observed spiders with diverse colorations, body shapes, and ecological affinities that differed from island to island. Her landmark 2004 Science study described the systematics and evolutionary ecology of the genus, and offered an explanation for the parallel yet independent evolution of the genus’ 60 identified species. While the Hawaiian islands are all part of the same volcanic hotspot, each rose at different times, providing a natural timeline for comparing similar ecosystems at different evolutionary ages. Gillespie was able to observe snapshots of how spider communities assemble and diversify in response to each island’s unique conditions. She continues to study the origins of biodiversity and the interplay between ecology and evolution within the island system.
At Berkeley, Gillespie has served as faculty director of the Essig Museum of Entomology—one of the largest university-based research collections of insects in North America—and has held the William M. and Esther G. Schlinger Chair in Systematic Entomology. She is a recipient of the International Biogeography Society’s Wallace Award, which recognizes an individual’s lifetime contributions to any subdiscipline of biogeography, and the Presidential Award for Excellence in Science, Mathematics and Engineering Mentoring, the highest national mentoring award. In 2018, Gillespie was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
Read more about Gillespie’s career in Molecular Ecology.
