Curator/Professor Emeritus
His research: Dave studies the evolutionary history of the nearshore marine environment around the Pacific Rim. "I am fascinated with plate tectonics in the Pacific Rim," he says. Because of the tectonic activity, the nearshore marine habitat has changed a lot over the past 25 million years, affecting the evolution of the organisms that have lived there.
His path to science: "I'm one of those kids who knew at 8 or 9 years old that I wanted to be a marine biologist." However, Dave didn't follow the typical path towards a career in marine biology. Along the way, Dave spent six years in the military and started a family. Only then did he begin college. While in school, Dave volunteered at the California Academy of Sciences, where he started doing research on mollusks. Dave got a Ph.D. at UC Santa Cruz, and then came to Berkeley, continuing his research on the inhabitants of the Pacific Rim.
Selected Publications
Cotoras, D.D., K. Bi, M. Brewer, D.R. Lindberg, S. Prost, and R. Gillespie. 2016. Co-occurrence of ecologically similar species of Hawaiian spiders reveals critical early phase of adaptive radiation. BMC Evolutionary Biology 18: 100.
Read it
- Kahanamoku, S.S., P.M. Hull, D.R. Lindberg, A.Y. Hsiang, E.C. Clites and S. Finnegan. 2018. Twelve thousand recent patellogastropods from a northeastern Pacific latitudinal gradient. Scientific Data, 5:170197. Read it
- Cotoras, D.D., M.S. Brewer, P.J.P. Croucher, G.S. Oxford, D.R. Lindberg and R.G. Gillespie. 2017. Convergent evolution in the colour polymorphism of Selkirkiella spiders (Theridiidae) from the South American temperate rainforest. Biological Journal of the Linnaean Society, 120: 649-663.
- Brusca, R.C., D.R. Lindberg, and W.F. Ponder. 2016. Phylum Mollusca. Pp.453 - 530 in R.C. Brusca, W. Moore and S.M. Shuster (eds.), Invertebrates. 3rd Ed., Sinauer Associates, Sunderland, MA.
- Thanukos, A., J.G. Scotchmoor, R. Caldwell, and D.R. Lindberg. 2010. Science 101: Building the foundations for real understanding. Science 330:1764-1765.