Email: jwvsossi@berkeley.edu

Phone: (510) 643-5791

Web page: http://www.ucmp.berkeley.edu/people/jwv/jwv.html

His research: Jim studies the evolutionary origins of morphological novelties.

Burning questions: "How did the metazoan genome respond to selection so as to produce the great radiation in body types found, for example, during the Cambrian explosion? What were the selective features?"

Sidelights: He is also interested in the macroevolution of ecogeographic units (species' populations, communities, provinces, etc.), especially with regard to diversity problems in marine bivalves in the Cenozoic oceans. According to Jim, this involves "accumulating a database of the geographic and geologic ranges of all genera and subgenera, and all species in certain local cases through the last 65 million years...Fortunately, I have hard-working colleagues, chiefly Dave Jablonski at U. Chicago and Kaustuv Roy at UCSD."

His favorite thing about science: "The opportunity to see things first."

Krug, A.Z., D. Jablonski, and J. W. Valentine. 2008. Global scale patterns in species/genus ratios of marine bivalves. Proceedings of the Royal Society, London, B 275: 1117-1123.

Krug, A.Z., D. Jablonski, and J. W. Valentine. 2008. Global scale patterns in species/genus ratios of marine bivalves. Proceedings of the Royal Society, London, B 275: 1117-1123.

Valentine, J. W. 2008. Tropics: latitudinal biodiversity gradient. McGraw-Hill Yearbook of Science and Technology 2008: 346-348

Valentine, J. W., D. Jablonski, A. Z. Krug, and K. Roy. 2008. Incumbency, diversity, and latitudinal gradients. Paleobiology 34: 169-178.

Valentine, J. W. 2007. Seeing ghosts: Neoproterozoic bilaterian bodyplans. Pp. 369-375 in P. Vickers-Rich, and P. Kamarower (eds.), The Rise and Fall of the Ediacaran Biota. Geol. Soc. London Special Publications 286: 369-375.

Jablonski, D., A. Z. Krug, K. Roy, and J. W. Valentine. 2007. Dynamics of the latitudinal diversity gradient: fossil record of "normal" and contrarian bivalve clades. Ecologocal Society of America 92nd Annual Meeting, Abstract SYMP 7-9.

Krug, A. Z., D. Jablonski, and J. W. Valentine. 2007. Geographic range, taxonomic structure, and global diversity patterns in marine bivalves. Geological Society of America Abstracts with Program 39 (6): 90-91.

Krug, A. Z., D. Jablonski, D., and J. W. Valentine 2007. Contrarian clade confirms the ubiquity of spatial origination patterns in the production of latitudinal diversity gradients. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA 104: 18129-18134.

Krug, A. Z., D. Jablonski, D., and J. W. Valentine. 2007. Contrarian clade confirms the ubiquity of spatial origination patterns in the production of latitudinal diversity gradients. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA 104: 18129-18134.

Valentine, J. W., D. Jablonski, A. Z. Krug, and K. Roy. 2007. Incumbency and latitudinal diversity gradients. Geological Society of America Abstracts with Program 39 (6): 91.

Jablonski, D., K. Roy, and J.W. Valentine. 2006. Out of the tropics: evolutionary dynamics of the latitudinal diversity gradient. Science 314:102-106.

Valentine, J.W. 2006. Ancestors and Urbilateria. Evolution and Development 8:391-393.

Valentine, J.W., D. Jablonski, S. Kidwell, and K. Roy. 2006. Assessing the fidelity of the fossil record by using marine bivalves. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA 103:6599-6604.