Hopi Hoekstra

Hoekstra is best known for her “elegant and inventive research” studying the genetic mechanisms that influence the evolution of highly complex natural behaviors. In 2013, Hoekstra published an article in the journal Nature on the genetics of burrowing behavior in two sister species of Peromyscus mice; the oldfield mouse (P. polionotus), which builds elaborate burrows complete with an escape tunnel, and the deer mouse (P. maniculatis), which builds a simple and shallow nest. The study is unusual for dealing with a highly complex natural behavior. Using a combination of behavioral assays and classical genetic strategies, Hoekstra and her students identified four regions of DNA, which control the length of the tunnels dug by the mice. With these sections of DNA in mind, Hoekstra is currently trying to narrow down the specific genes that control tunneling behavior in mice. Students in her lab are also studying the connections between digging behavior and the neurobiology of reward.

She has also previously studied the evolution of the color of mice coats, and its significance for adaptation. In 2013 her team published a paper in the journal Science, describing how coat color in mice was controlled by nine separate mutations within a single gene, named "agouti." Speaking about this discovery, Hoekstra said "The question has always been whether evolution is dominated by these big leaps or smaller steps. When we first implicated the agouti gene, we could have stopped there and concluded that evolution takes these big steps as only one major gene was involved, but that would have been wrong. When we looked more closely, within this gene, we found that even within this single locus, there are, in fact, many small steps." Her work supports the hypothesis that evolution can occur through incremental changes.

Hopi Hoekstra received her B.A. in Integrative Biology from UC Berkeley. Before her graduate studies, she worked on grizzly bears for a year in Yellowstone National Park. She obtained her Ph.D. in Zoology as a Howard Hughes Predoctoral Fellow at the University of Washington, Seattle. For her postdoctoral work, she studied the genetic basis of adaptive melanism in pocket mice at the University of Arizona. In 2003, she became an Assistant Professor at UC San Diego. Three years later she moved to Harvard University, where she was promoted to full professor in the Department of Organismic and Evolutionary Biology and the Department of Molecular and Cellular Biology in 2010. She is a member of the Editorial Board for Current Biology.

Danielle "Hopi" Elizabeth Hoekstra (born 1972) is an evolutionary biologist working at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Her lab uses natural populations of rodents to study the genetic basis of adaptation – from morphology to behavior. She is the Alexander Agassiz Professor of Zoology in the Department of Organismic and Evolutionary Biology and the Department of Molecular and Cellular Biology at Harvard University. She is also the Curator of Mammals at the Museum of Comparative Zoology and a Harvard College Professor. In 2014 Hoekstra became a Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI) Investigator. In 2016 Hoekstra was elected to the National Academy of Sciences, and in 2017 was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.