Andrés Bendesky joins G3 as Associate Editor

Andrés Bendesky
Associate Editor

Andrés Bendesky is a geneticist and neuroscientist who trained as an M.D. at the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (UNAM) and then obtained his Ph.D. at Rockefeller University. His lab aims to understand how and why animals behave the way they do, with a special emphasis on social behaviors and other behaviors critical for survival. To that end, his lab takes a multilevel ethological approach combining tools from evolutionary, quantitative, and molecular genetics, as well as biochemistry, endocrinology, developmental biology, and neuroscience. They choose optimal species for specific questions, such as monogamous species to study pair bonding and parental care, prey species to study responses to threats, and animals bred for fighting to study aggression. In addition to their main focus on behavior, they work on selected projects to tackle other long-standing questions in evolutionary biology, including the molecular mechanisms that prevent species from mixing with each other. To answer these ethology and evolutionary questions, his lab focuses primarily on mice of the genus Peromyscus and on Siamese fighting fish (Betta splendens).