About

Richard Prum is the William Robertson Coe Professor of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, as well as a Professor of Forestry and Environmental Studies at Yale University. He serves as the Head Curator of Vertebrate Zoology at the Peabody Museum of Natural History. His recent research has focused on theoretical and molecular studies of the development and evolution of feathers, developing and applying new tools for the study of the physics and evolution of structural coloration, and continued efforts in phylogenetic ethology of polygynous birds. Prum has conducted field work throughout the Neotropics and in Madagascar, and has studied fossil theropods in China. His work integrates evolutionary biology, ornithology, and structural biology, contributing to our understanding of bird behavior, evolution, and morphology.

Research topics

• Biology
• Evolutionary biology
• Computer Science
• Ecology
• Communication
• Visual arts
• Composite material
• Nanotechnology
• Paleontology
• Optoelectronics
• Materials science
• Neuroscience
• Speech recognition
• Art
• Psychology
• Cognitive psychology

Selected publications

• Genetic Characterization of the Cell Types in Developing Feathers, and the Evolution of Feather Complexity

  Evolution & Development · 2025-08-25 · 1 citations

  articleSenior author

  Feathers are the most complex and diverse epidermal appendages found in vertebrates. Their unique hierarchical organization and development is based on a diversity of cell types and morphologies. Despite these presumptive feather cell types being well characterized morphologically, little is known about how gene regulation contributes to their development. Here, we use single cell and single nuclear RNA sequencing with in situ hybridization to identify and characterize cells types in embryonic chicken feathers. We show that the distinct cell morphologies correspond to feather cell types with distinct gene expression profiles. We also describe a previously unidentified cell type, the barb ridge basal epithelium, which appears to play a role alongside the marginal plate in barb ridge differentiation. A cell-cell signaling analysis provides evidence of important roles for the barb ridge basal epithelium and marginal plate signaling to the barb ridge. Furthermore, we analyze RNA velocity trajectories of developing feather cells and find distinct developmental trajectories for epidermal cells that constitute the mature feather and those that function only in feather development. Finally, we produce an evolutionary tree of feather cell types based on transcription factor expression as a test of the prior developmental hypotheses about feather evolution. Our tree is consistent with the developmental model of feather evolution, and sheds light on the influence of ancestral epidermal stratification on feather cell evolution. This transcriptomic approach to studying feather cell types helps lay the ground work for understanding the developmental evolutionary complexity and diversity of feathers.

  PublisherDOI

• Social Environment and the Evolution of Delayed Reproduction in Birds

  Systematic Biology · 2025-08-11 · 1 citations

  articleSenior author

  One puzzling feature of avian life histories is that individuals in many different lineages delay reproduction for several years after they finish growing. Intraspecific field studies suggest that various complex social environments-such as cooperative breeding groups, nesting colonies, and display leks-result in delayed reproduction because they require forms of sociosexual development that extend beyond physical maturation. Here, we formally propose this hypothesis and use a full suite of phylogenetic comparative methods to test it, analyzing the evolution of age at first reproduction (AFR) in females and males across 963 species of birds. Phylogenetic regressions support increased AFR in colonial females and males, cooperatively breeding males, and lekking males. Continuous Ornstein-Uhlenbeck models support distinct evolutionary regimes with increased AFR for all of cooperative, colonial, and lekking lineages. Discrete hidden state Markov models suggest a net increase in delayed reproduction for social lineages, even when accounting for hidden state heterogeneity and the potential reverse influence of AFR on sociality. Our results support the hypothesis that the evolution of sociality reshapes the dynamics of life history evolution in birds. Comparative analyses of even the most broadly generalizable characters, such as AFR, must reckon with unique, heterogeneous, historical events in the evolution of individual lineages.

  PublisherDOI

• Unusual fossil skin appendage is not a feather

  Nature · 2025-07-23

  article1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• Developmental evolution of social signals in the delayed plumage maturation of manakins (Aves: Pipridae)

  bioRxiv (Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory) · 2025-05-19

  preprintOpen accessSenior author

  Abstract Avian plumage maturation involves replacing feathers, via discrete molts, until reaching an iteratively-regenerated definitive plumage. In most birds, this process takes about one year. In the Neotropical lekking manakins (Pipridae), males of most species exhibit delayed plumage maturation (DPM), passing through drab predefinitive plumages for two or three years before reaching a bright, sexually dimorphic, definitive plumage. We used a phylogenetic analysis to investigate the evolutionary history of DPM in manakins. Our unique comparative dataset derived characters from a graph structure representing the developmental schedules of individual, colorful plumage patches. We traced the origin of one-year DPM to the ancestor of sexually dichromatic Piprinae manakins, followed by three separate origins of prolonged, two-year DPM, plus one subsequent extension to three-year DPM. Consistent with social signaling hypotheses, prolonged DPM evolved to reveal and maintain signals of young male status. This interspecific pattern sheds light on the sociosexual development of lekking birds, a topic usually restricted to autecological field studies. By detailing heterochronic dynamics in manakin plumage evolution, we also show how the iterative regeneration of characters like bird feathers, insect instars, mammalian antlers, and angiosperm flowers can create multiple distinct levels of developmental homologies among bodies, sexes, and species.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Fighting isn’t sexy in lekking greater sage-grouse: a relational event model approach for mating interactions

  Proceedings of the Royal Society B Biological Sciences · 2025-05-01 · 2 citations

  articleOpen accessSenior author

  The relationship between aggression and mate choice in mating systems is critical for understanding the evolution and diversification of sexual organisms and yet remains the subject of vigorous debate. A key challenge is that traditional correlational approaches cannot distinguish underlying mechanisms of social interaction and can indicate misleading positive associations between aggression and mating events. We implement a novel relational event model (REM) incorporating temporal dependencies of events in a social network to study natural reproductive behaviour in a lek-breeding system where males gather to display and females visit to evaluate mates, often observing both male courtship displays and fights. We find that fighting is not attractive to females. Indeed, males are less likely to start and more likely to leave fights with females present, plausibly to avoid entanglement in protracted combat cycles arising from emergent social processes that reduce availability to mate. However, fighting serves other roles, e.g. to deter copulation interruptions and rebuff competitors. Our findings support the hypothesis that social systems regulating conflict and promoting females' choice based on display are fundamental to stable lek evolution. Moreover, our analysis highlights the utility of the REM framework in testing mechanistic hypotheses in behavioural ecology and evolution.

  PublisherDOI

• Genome and life-history evolution link bird diversification to the end-Cretaceous mass extinction

  Science Advances · 2024-07-31 · 14 citations

  articleOpen access

  Complex patterns of genome evolution associated with the end-Cretaceous [Cretaceous-Paleogene (K-Pg)] mass extinction limit our understanding of the early evolutionary history of modern birds. Here, we analyzed patterns of avian molecular evolution and identified distinct macroevolutionary regimes across exons, introns, untranslated regions, and mitochondrial genomes. Bird clades originating near the K-Pg boundary exhibited numerous shifts in the mode of molecular evolution, suggesting a burst of genomic heterogeneity at this point in Earth's history. These inferred shifts in substitution patterns were closely related to evolutionary shifts in developmental mode, adult body mass, and patterns of metabolic scaling. Our results suggest that the end-Cretaceous mass extinction triggered integrated patterns of evolution across avian genomes, physiology, and life history near the dawn of the modern bird radiation.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Developmental Axioms in Life History Evolution

  Biological Theory · 2024-07-11 · 3 citations

  articleSenior author
  PublisherDOI

• Species status and phylogenetic relationships of the enigmatic Negros Fruit Dove (<i>Ptilinopus arcanus</i>)

  Ibis · 2024-01-29 · 3 citations

  articleSenior author

  The Negros Fruit Dove Ptilinopus arcanus is an enigmatic bird known only from a single specimen collected on Negros Island, Philippines, in 1953. We extracted and sequenced ultra‐conserved elements from historical toe‐pad samples of the type specimen of P. arcanus and 27 other species of ptilinopine doves to investigate the species status and phylogenetic relationships of this taxon. We establish that P. arcanus represents a valid species, resolve its phylogenetic position at the base of the radiation of ‘core’ Ptilinopus fruit doves, and estimate that P. arcanus diverged from its most recent common ancestor several million years before Negros Island emerged from the seafloor. We also perform an ancestral range reconstruction to evaluate the effect of different altitudinal preferences on the putative historical range of this species, and we discuss how these findings can inform future efforts to relocate and potentially conserve this species.

  PublisherDOI

• Genetic Characterization of the Cell Types of in Developing Feathers, and the Evolution of Feather Complexity

  bioRxiv (Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory) · 2024-11-21 · 1 citations

  preprintOpen accessSenior author

  Abstract Feathers are the most complex and diverse epidermal appendages found in vertebrates. Their unique hierarchical organization and development is based on a diversity of cell types and morphologies. Despite being well characterized morphologically and extensive molecular developmental research focusing on candidate genes, little is known about the gene regulatory identities of these presumptive feather cell types. Here, we use single cell and single nuclear RNA sequencing with in situ hybridization to identify and characterize cells types in embryonic chicken feathers. We show that the distinct cell morphologies correspond to feather cell types with distinct gene expression profiles. We also describe a previously unidentified cell type, the basal barb ridge epithelium, which appears to play a role in signaling necessary for barb ridge differentiation and pulp cap production. We also analyze RNA velocity trajectories of developing feather cells, and find distinct developmental trajectories for epidermal cells that constitute the mature feather and those that function only in feather development. Finally, we produce an evolutionary tree of feather cell types based on transcription factor expression in order to test prior developmental hypotheses about feather evolution. Our tree is consistent with the developmental model of feather evolution, and sheds light on the influence of ancestral epidermal stratification on feather cell evolution. This transcriptomic approach to study feather cell types helps lay the ground work for understanding the developmental evolutionary complexity and diversity of feathers.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Developmental axioms in life history evolution

  2023-12-15

  preprintOpen accessSenior author

  Life history theory is often invoked to make universal predictions about phenotypic evolution. For example, it is conventional wisdom that organisms evolve older ages at first reproduction because they have longer lifespans. We clarify that life history theory does not currently provide such universal predictions about phenotypic diversity. Using the classic Euler-Lotka model of adaptive life history evolution, we demonstrate how predictions about optimal age at first reproduction depend on prior, theoretical assumptions (i.e. axioms) about organismal development. These developmental axioms include the rates, forms, and tradeoffs involving growth or differentiation. Developmental innovations transform the biology underlying these axioms. Consequently, Euler-Lotka and related life history models do not make coherent predictions at macroevolutionary scales, where developmental innovations occur (e.g., across mammals, birds, or insects). By focusing on historical innovations instead of universal rules, life history theory can reconnect with flourishing research in evolutionary developmental biology.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

Recent grants

• Collaborative Research: IDBR: New Technology to Measure Oganismal Color Phenotypes: 3D, Hyperspectral, UV-Vis, Virtual Reality Models of Organismal Coloration

  NSF · $541k · 2009–2013

• A Fourier Analysis Tool for Biological Nano-optics

  NSF · $512k · 2000–2004

• Mechanics and Evolution of Tonal Sounds Produced by Feathers

  NSF · $449k · 2009–2013

• Conflict, Social Behavior and Evolution

  NSF · $385k · 2009–2013

Frequent coauthors

• Vinodkumar Saranathan

  Krea University

  75 shared

• Eric R. Dufresne

  44 shared

• Jacob S. Berv

  University of Michigan–Ann Arbor

  37 shared

• Teresa J. Feo

  Smithsonian Institution

  32 shared

• Christopher J. Clark

  University of California, Riverside

  30 shared

• S. G. J. Mochrie

  Yale University

  30 shared

• Heeso Noh

  Kookmin University

  28 shared

• Scott Williamson

  Stantec (Canada)

  28 shared