When Eileen Lacey took first year high school biology from a woman named Laine Gurley, she realized that biology — and in particular animal behavior — could be a career path for women. As an undergraduate at Cornell University, she was introduced to naked mole-rats, which set the stage for a career devoted to studying subterranean rodents. Early papers examined cooperative breeding in these fascinating rodents, and she still publishes with her undergraduate mentor on topics, such as “what is eusociality”? By the time she completed her Ph.D. at the University of Michigan, she was focused on understanding the social biology of burrowing rodents.

Now a professor at the University of California, Berkeley, and a curator in the Museum of Vertebrate Zoology, she trains future scientists while exploring the lives of tuco-tucos, tojos, cururos, and other subterranean rodents in their natural environments in South America. Using comparative studies, she seeks to disentangle the impacts of ecology, phylogeny, and physiology on patterns of social behavior, including patterns of reproductive success and suppression, within and among species. Many of her ideas on this topic are covered in the edited volume Life Underground (Lacey et l. 2000). Her contributions to our understanding of trade-offs between sociality and reproduction include papers that explore how reproductive success is related to group size, alloparental care, and territoriality.

Recent work in her lab has expanded to encompass mechanistic aspects of social behavior. Current research topics include the effects of the social environment on stress physiology and reproductive success, as well as the role of the maternal environment in shaping those interactions. Her numerous contributions and administrative acumen led to her election as president of the American Society of Mammalogists in 2012.

(Excerpt from Reproduction in Mammals: The Female Perspective by Dr. Virginia Hayssen and Dr.Teri J. Orr)