By Steven Scarpa, Associate Director of Marketing and Communications
Museums are central to Yale Peabody Museum curator Martha Muñoz’s identity. Without being exposed to New York City’s great institutions while growing up, she might not have envisioned the path that led her to be a 2024 recipient of the MacArthur Fellowship, colloquially known as the ‘genius’ award.
Muñoz’s knees buckled earlier this month when she learned that she was the recipient of the prestigious honor. “I was shocked. I got some messages that they were trying to get through to me, but I thought that they wanted feedback on another candidate. I didn’t think it would be me,” said Muñoz, assistant professor of ecology and evolutionary biology in Yale’s Faculty of Arts and Sciences and assistant curator of Vertebrate Zoology in the Yale Peabody Museum.
Each recipient receives an $800,000 stipend over five years that they can spend however they wish. They are nominated anonymously by leaders in their respective fields and are evaluated by an anonymous selection committee. “I don’t know who the nominators were or who wrote the letters of support for me, but they have fundamentally changed my life for the better,” Muñoz said.
Muñoz’s study of tropical anole lizards challenged the assumption that environmental pressures are the primary drivers of evolution, instead showing that organisms can use behavior to modify the selective pressures they experience, in turn altering the rate of evolution. In another line of research, Muñoz demonstrated that biomechanical principles can also shape rates of evolution by biasing morphological pathways associated with locomotor adaptation. Her work uncovers the reasons why some organisms and traits evolve rapidly while others remain unchanged for millennia. Muñoz’ explains her work in this video.
“Her work is essential for understanding how evolution has shaped the lineages of contemporary species and for predicting how they will respond to future environmental changes,” Professor David Vasseur, chair of Yale’s Department of Ecology & Evolutionary Biology, told Yale Today. “This award solidifies Dr. Muñoz as one of the very best evolutionary biologists of her generation.”
As a first generation American, Muñoz didn’t grow up knowing what a career in science would entail. Her Cuban born parents had in mind two professions for their intelligent daughter: doctor or lawyer. The typical immigrant dream, Muñoz explained with a laugh. “There was a lot of emphasis placed on getting the best education possible, partly for personal achievement and success, but also to break poverty,” she said.
Muñoz had access to art and culture and a great public high school education as a kid in New York City – just some of the benefits of life in a big city. However, green space was at a premium. The American Museum of Natural History, the Bronx Zoo, and the Queens Botanical Gardens became where she accessed the things that made her feel most alive. She knew she wanted to work in nature.
“I went anywhere where you could connect to the natural world, even if it was behind glass or in a diorama. These were the places where my fascination with nature could run wild. I devoured books. I felt a need to memorize every bird, every fish, every reptile,” she said. “I thought, based on the careers that I knew, that I would become a wildlife veterinarian.”
Muñoz met her future in her first undergraduate class on her first day at Boston University. Professor Christopher Schneider gave a lecture on the deep history of animal life, offering her a glimpse into the study of evolution. The class had more meaningful effect on Muñoz than merely providing an interesting academic focus. As a young person entranced by the natural world, Muñoz was about to immerse herself in the story of life on Earth.
“I was moved physically to tears. It was an emotionally overwhelming experience to get a glimpse into the big questions that evolutionary biologists were asking,” Muñoz said.
Muñoz was insatiable in her studies once introduced to serious scientific ideas. “I worked in various labs, and I tried out many different things – endocrinology, immunobiology, neurophysiology, molecular ecology, invertebrate zoology … I did all kinds of things,” Muñoz said. She published four original research papers as an undergraduate and achieved her doctorate at Harvard.
She found the intellectual creativity inherent in studying evolution rewarding. “I love to generate ideas about how evolution works, to test those ideas, and to conceptually connect the dots. When you do happen upon something you didn’t know before about evolution, there is such a sense of discovery, almost like revealing a secret, that is joyous,” she said.
Muñoz joined the Yale faculty in 2019, in part because she saw the Yale Peabody Museum as a crucial part of her research experience. “The minute I came here I knew I wanted to be a curator. I wanted to be a part of the museum. This was an act of self-realization for me. I can’t imagine myself at Yale without the Peabody,” she said.
Last month, Muñoz and the members of her lab participated in the museum’s Fiesta Latina event, a yearly celebration of Hispanic Heritage Month. In some ways, this was a full circle moment for Muñoz. The MacArthur award recipient had yet one more reminder of the time when she was a kid, walking into the American Museum of Natural History in New York City, and getting a glimpse of the wonders of nature.
“We had all these kids coming through and I thought, one of those kids was me a long time ago,” she said. “Maybe now they’ll have a little bit of exposure to scientists who work in a museum. They won’t have to get to college before they learn you can be a scientist, that there are scientists to whom they can relate, and who come from backgrounds that they understand.”