Adriana Briscoe

Adriana Darielle Mejía Briscoe is an American evolutionary biologist and professor of ecology and evolutionary biology at the School of Biological Sciences at the University of California, Irvine. She specializes in research questions at the intersection of sensory physiology, color vision, coloration, animal behavior, molecular evolution, and genomics.

Briscoe's work is largely focused on questions surrounding vision in butterflies with a specific focus on establishing links between genetic expression patterns leading to coloration and vision with the physiological and behavioral traits of butterflies. Briscoe has discovered and systematically demonstrated over the course of her career that butterflies are a unique organism to enable such studies on account of the diversity of photoreceptor proteins, or opsins, which are expressed in the retina of a butterfly. She is also known for her studies on gene expression of phototransduction proteins, duplication events in opsin genes, the discovery of new opsins, and the discovery of pigments which present in the wing coloration patterns of butterflies. Her studies have also demonstrated the co-evolution of butterfly vision and wing color at a molecular-level as a strategy for secure inter-species communication.

For her research contributions, Briscoe has been recognized as an elected fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and the Royal Entomological Society. Briscoe has also been recognized as a Distinguished Scientist of the Society for the Advancement of Chicanos/Hispanics and Native Americans in Science (SACNAS). In 2021, she was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship.

Early life and education Briscoe was born in Hawaii and was raised in Colton, California, where she graduated from Colton High School in 1988. In 1937, Briscoe's maternal grandmother was the only Spanish-named woman attending Colton High in San Bernardino County to graduate. Briscoe's mother was the only Spanish-named woman from San Bernardino county to graduate from the University of California, Riverside in 1965. She jumped a grade in school and found herself inspired by her new teacher who showed them fossil teeth and taught them songs to remember the name of dinosaurs.

After graduating high school, Briscoe went on to study at Stanford University, where she received a B.A. in philosophy, a B.S. in biological sciences and a M.A. in philosophy. As an undergraduate, she conducted field work at the Rocky Mountain Biological Laboratory with Professor Ward Watt. She continued her graduate studies at Harvard University, specializing in evolutionary biology where her Ph.D. advisers were Naomi Pierce and Richard Lewontin. After receiving her Ph.D. she was a post-doctoral fellow at the University of Arizona and at the University of Colorado, Denver, In the area of policy and higher education, Briscoe has been vocal on her support of government action to get more Latino individuals to teach science. She now works at University of California, Irvine as a Professor in the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology. Professor Briscoe promotes intellectual inquiry and curiosity. For example, in her insect ecophysiology class of Spring 2026, she invited Indigenous artist Merced Maldonado as a guest lecturer. Maldonado explained the process of how silkmoth cocoons are used to make garments and shed light on their used within an indigenous culture, the Pascua Yaqui Tribe.

Briscoe's career has been distinguished by the study of diverse butterfly species and international collaborations which have supported these investigations. Her recent research collaboration between her team and that of Jorge Llorente Bousequets from the UNAM-Facultad De Ciencas was particularly productive and led to the discovery that the Heliconius butterfly species differentially expresses one or two genes for an opsin photoreceptor which is uniquely sensitive to ultra-violet reflecting wing colors. This discovery was particularly significant as it demonstrated that the Heliconius butterfly had co-evolved two traits, ultra-violet photoreceptors and ultra-violet reflecting wing pigments, as an effectively private (or secure) inter-species communication channel. In the course of the investigations, Briscoe and collaborators also identified the chemical composition of the evolved pigment which, in combination with the nanostructured nature of scale cells on the butterfly wing, leads to the phenomena of UV-yellow butterfly wing coloration.

Her team's continued investigations on ultra-violet opsins in the Heliconius erato butterfly have elucidated additional layers of diversification in gene expression which are linked to a butterfly's gender. Specifically, females of the species have two different UV receptors, UVRh1 and UVRh2, while males only have one (UVRh2). These studies are of particular interest towards future investigations on understanding the evolutionary mechanisms leading to the emergence of novel opsins.

In the area of service to the scientific community, Briscoe served as associate editor for the journal Molecular Biology and Evolution from 2005 until 2012. Since 2015, she has been an editorial board member of Physiological and Biochemical Zoology. She served as council member for the American Genetic Association from 2011 to 2014. She also served as an advisory board member of the National Evolutionary Synthesis Center (NESCENT) from 2010 until 2012. Since beginning her independent research group in 2002, Briscoe has mentored fourteen graduate students and postdocs.

Awards and honors

Elected member, National Academy of Sciences (2024) Elected member, American Academy of Arts and Sciences (2022) Guggenheim Fellowship (2021) Scientific Advisory Board Member, Max Planck Institute (2019-2024) Distinguished Scientist Award, Society for the Advancement of Chicanos/Hispanics and Native Americans in Science (SACNAS) (2018) Fellow, American Association for the Advancement of Science (2017) Fellow, Royal Entomological Society (2018) Fellow, California Academy of Sciences (2018) Plenary speaker, Entomological Society of America (2017) Overseas Visiting Scholar, St. John's College, University of Cambridge (2012) James P. Holland Named Lecture, Indiana University (2011) Advisory Board Member, National Evolutionary Synthesis Center (NESCENT)(2010-2012) Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology Diversity Award Burroughs Wellcome Fund Research Award (2008) Elected member, Sigma Xi (2004) Postdoctoral Fellowship, Ford Foundation (2000-2001) Predoctoral fellowship, Howard Hughes Medical Institute (1993-1998)

Select publications Briscoe has a publication record in the areas of physiological genomics, molecular evolution, color, vision, and sensory biology. Some of her works are listed below: