Nancy B. Simmons

Nancy B. Simmons is an American zoologist, mammalogist, professor, and author. Specializing in bats, Simmons has conducted extensive research on the morphology and evolutionary history of numerous bat species. She is also the curator-in-charge of the Department of Mammalogy at the American Museum of Natural History and a professor at the Richard Gilder Graduate School.

Education Simmons graduated cum laude from Pomona College in 1981. She then earned her Ph.D. from the University of California, Berkeley in 1989.

Research Simmons' research is primarily focused on the phylogeny of bats. In 2021, she was part of a team of scientists who discovered a new West African bat, Myotis nimbaensis.

Her findings contribute to constructing large-scale phylogenetic trees. Simmons and her team have submitted numerous evolutionary data surrounding bats and other animal clades to Morphobank, an archive of evolutionary research.

MorphoBank Simmons' evolutionary data has contributed to MorphoBank's database of morphological features, submitting hundreds of morphological characteristics of Chiroptera species in order to conduct genetic testing to create an accurate phylogenetic tree.

Publications

Simmons has been cited on 141 publications regarding bat phylogeny including:

Gunnell, G., N. B. Simmons, and E. R. Seiffert. 2014. Myzopodidae (Chiroptera) from the Late Paleogene of Egypt: Emended family diagnosis and biogeographic origins of Noctilionoidea. PLoS ONE 9(2): e86712. Velazco, P. M., R. Gregorin, R. S. Voss, and N. B. Simmons. 2014. Extraordinary local diversity of Disk-winged bats (Thyropteridae: Thyroptera) in northeastern Peru, with the description of a new species and comments on roosting behavior. American Museum Novitates 379: 1-28. Olival, K. J., C. W. Dick, N. B. Simmons, J. C. Morales, D. Melnkck, K. Dittmar, S, L, Perkins, P. Daszak, and R. Desalle. 2013. Lack of population genetic structure and host specificity in the bat fly, Cyclopodia horsfeldi, across species of Pteropus bats in Southeast Asia. Parasites and Vectors, 6: 231 (18 pp). Burleigh, G., K. Alphonse, A. J. Alverson, H. M. Bik, C. Blank, A. L. Cirranello, H. Cui, M. Daly, T. G. Dietterich, G. Gasparich, J. Irvine, M. Julius, S. Kaufman, E. Law, J. Liu, L. Moore, M. A. O'Leary, M. Passarotti, S. Ranade, N. B. Simmons, D. W. Stevenson, R. W. Thacker, E. C. Theriot, S. Todorovic, P. M. Velazco, R. L. Walls, J. M. Wolfe, and M. Yu. Next-generation phenomics for the Tree of Life. PLOS Currents Tree of Life, 2013.

Awards and recognition

In 1986, Simmons was named by the Society of Vertebrate Paleontology as an honorable mention for the Romer Prize, and then was awarded the Romer Prize in 1988. In 1989, Simmons was awarded with the Outstanding Graduate Student Instructor Award by the University of California. In 2008, Simmons was awarded the Gerrit S. Miller Award from the North American Society for Bat Research.