Elaina Marie Tuttle

Elaina Marie Tuttle (November 9, 1963 – June 15, 2016) was an American behavioral geneticist and biology professor whose academic research focused on ornithology and study of the white-throated sparrow. During her graduate and post-doctoral work, she investigated how bird sexual selection has evolved and the trade-offs in reproduction that have occurred alongside sperm competition mechanisms in sparrows and in the fairy wren.

Her last major publication in 2016 discussed the evolution of a sexual "supergene" in the white-throated sparrow that has created a complementary pair of genetic sexes in addition to the W and Z sex chromosomes found in birds. The decades of work researching the sparrow at the Cranberry Lake Biological Station (CLBS) for Indiana State University resulted in her being given multiple awards and the President's Medal for her accomplishments.

Childhood and education Born in Nashua, New Hampshire on November 9, 1963, to Raymond Tuttle and Ingeborg Leichsenring Tuttle and having later been raised in West Springfield, Massachusetts, Elaina attended West Springfield High School where she showed an early interest in ecology and investigating tadpoles in local environments. Her 1993 Ph.D. dissertation discussed the white-throated sparrow and how the different color morphs are kept at a stable and equal amount in each subsequent generation.

She continued her research at Indiana University Bloomington as a post-doctoral fellow for Ellen Ketterson, which included an international trip to the United Kingdom for additional ornithology research with Tim Birkhead. The latter part of her post-doctoral education took place at the University of Chicago with an additional fellowship in the lab of Stephen Pruett-Jones and another international trip instead to Australia to study the fairy wren.

Starting in 2010, Tuttle was made an associate editor for the academic journal The Auk. This active and recent evolutionary change was highly similar to the early formation of the human X and Y chromosomes, with a sequence inversion causing an inheritable "supergene" that caused differential groupings for mating. This has resulted in the species having not only common male and female individuals, but also independent tan and white individuals as sexual differentiators. The act of disassortative mating for the species revolves around the birds with white stripes having genetically connected behavior traits of being outgoing, aggressive in defending their territory, and generally promiscuous in a manner that is poor at raising chicks, while the birds with tan stripes are more docile, only mate monogamously, and are highly focused on raising and protecting their chicks. These behavioral differences have resulted in the species only forming white-tan mating pairs in order to be able to successfully defend their territory and raise their chicks, as any same color pairs would have a much lower likelihood of passing on their genes and raising chicks to adulthood.

Awards and honors From Indiana State University, Tuttle was given the Theodore Dreiser Award for Research and Creativity, along with the President's Medal from the university president. That same year, she was given the Outstanding Teacher award for ISU.

Selected publications