Tanja Schwander

Tanja Schwander (born 1978) is a Swiss evolutionary biologist and professor at the University of Lausanne. She is known for her work on the evolution of sexual reproduction. She was awarded the John Maynard Smith Prize by the European Society for Evolutionary Biology in 2009. She serves on the Swiss National Academy of Sciences Board of the Platform Biology, and is the secretary of the Swiss Zoological Society.

Education and career Tanja Schwander was born in 1978 in Brugg in Switzerland. She obtained her PhD in 2007 from the University of Lausanne on 'Evolution, maintenance and ecological consequences of genetic caste determination in Pogonomyrmex harvester ants'. Tanja Schwander then took a postdoctoral position at Simon Fraser University in Prof. Bernard J. Crespi's lab, before being hired as an independent researcher at the University of Groningen. In 2013, she moved back to University of Lausanne to begin her own research group. She is an elected member of the Swiss National Academy of Sciences Board of the Platform Biology from 2023 until the end of 2025. Schwander is secretary of the Swiss Zoological Society.

Work

Tanja Schwander's work has focused on understanding the consequences of asexuality using Timema stick insects as a model system. Her work has contributed to the current understanding of the evolution of sexual reproduction, the paradox of sex, and sexual conflict.

Awards 2009. John Maynard Smith Prize of the European Society for Evolutionary Biology 2020. European Research Council Consolidator Grant "Deleterious mutation accumulation in asexual Timema stick insects", Molecular Biology and Evolution "Neutral and selection-driven decay of sexual traits in asexual stick insects", Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences "Consequences of asexuality in natural populations: insights from stick insects", Molecular Biology and Evolution