Many flowering plants have fleshy fruits that are dispersed by animals, especially by frugivorous birds and mammals. Working with a former Yale graduate student, Miranda Sinnott-Armstrong, Michael Donoghue discovered patterns in the geographic distribution of the colors and sizes of fleshy fruits and related these to their dispersal agents and other factors. They focused special attention on fruit evolution in the flowering plant clade Viburnum. Here they documented the parallel evolution of two specialized fruit syndromes that differ in fruit color, water content, and nutritional chemistry. They also uncovered a specialized lipid-based structural mechanism for the production of a metallic blue color. Michael Donoghue will discuss these differences in Viburnum fruits in relation to their dispersal
Michael Donoghue joined Yale in 2000 as the G. Evelyn Hutchinson Professor of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology. He served as chair of the Ecology and Evolutionary Biology Department in 2001–02, and as the director of the Peabody Museum of Natural History from 2003-08. From 2008–10 he served as Yale’s inaugural vice president for West Campus Planning and Program Development, and in 2011 he was named Sterling Professor of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology. He served as director of Yale’s Marsh Botanical Garden from 2015–2018, and as director of the Yale Institute for Biospheric Studies from 2019–2021. Until his retirement in 2022, he served as the curator of botany and the curator of paleobotany in the Peabody Museum of Natural History.
Donoghue earned his undergraduate degree from Michigan State University (1976) and his Ph.D. in Biology from Harvard University (1982). He served on the faculty of San Diego State University (1982–85), the University of Arizona (1985–92), and Harvard University (1992–2000), where he was the director of the Harvard University Herbaria from 1995–99. He is a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (1997), a member of the National Academy of Sciences (2005), and a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (2008). His research concerns the diversity and evolutionary history of plants and connections between phylogeny, biogeography, and ecology. He has been active in movements to reconstruct the tree of life and to link evolution to ecology and biodiversity conservation. He has published over 290 scientific papers, two books, and mentored over 50 postdoctoral associates and graduate students.
Donoghue is continuing his research as a research professor at Yale. He currently resides in Tucson, Arizona, where he is an adjunct professor in the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at the University of Arizona.