biology

Menno Schilthuizen

Menno Schilthuizen is a biology topic covered in the lgStudy science library. This page brings together a partial reference excerpt, illustrations, worked examples, real-world applications and a short study plan, so you can understand Menno Schilthuizen rather than just read about it. In short: Menno Schilthuizen (born 1965, Vlaardingen) is a Dutch evolutionary biologist, ecologist, and permanent research scientist at Naturalis Biodiversity Center in Leiden and a professor of evolution and biodiversity at Leiden University. He has published numerous articles about evolution and ecology and six popular science books.

Key takeaways

Menno Schilthuizen belongs to biology; place it in that map before memorising details.
Learn the definition first, then one example that makes the definition concrete.
Connect Menno Schilthuizen to a quantity you can measure, compute or draw — that is where exam questions come from.
Reproduce the core statement of Menno Schilthuizen from memory before moving on to harder problems.

Reference excerpt

Menno Schilthuizen (born 1965, Vlaardingen) is a Dutch evolutionary biologist, ecologist, and permanent research scientist at Naturalis Biodiversity Center in Leiden and a professor of evolution and biodiversity at Leiden University. He has published numerous articles about evolution and ecology and six popular science books. In particular, his studies have concerned land snails and beetles. His Nature's Nether Regions, on the evolution of genitalia, was published by Penguin in May 2014. Translations have appeared in Dutch, German, Chinese, Greek, Japanese, French and Italian. His book, Darwin Comes to Town, is on "urban evolution", evolutionary adaptation in cities, and has appeared in 2018 in English (with Quercus [UK] and Picador [USA]), and also in Chinese, Dutch, German, Greek, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Norwegian, Polish, Russian, and Spanish. French and Turkish translations are in preparation. Besides his academic positions, Schilthuizen works as an independent science communicator via his own company, Studio Schilthuizen. Recently, together with biospeleologist Iva Njunjić, he has begun the organisation Taxon Expeditions (and its nonprofit, Taxon Foundation), which organise field courses for citizen scientists to Borneo, Montenegro, Panama and other wild places, but also to urban centres like Amsterdam, and allows non-biologists to be involved in the discovery and naming of new species.

Education and career Menno Schilthuizen graduated from and received his PhD at Leiden University. From 1995 to 2000 he worked at Wageningen University. From 2000 to 2006 he worked at the Institute for Tropical Biology and Conservation in Sabah, Malaysian Borneo, where he studied land snail ecology and evolution in tropical forests, caves, and limestone habitats. In January 2007 he became deputy director of research at Naturalis Museum, Leiden. He stayed at this post for one and a half years, and then became permanent research scientist there. From 2007 to 2012, he was honorary professor of insect biodiversity at University of Groningen. He now holds a professorship in Character Evolution and Biodiversity at Leiden University.

Books Frogs Flies & Dandelions: The Making of Species, 2002. Oxford University Press. 254 pages. ISBN 978-0-19-850392-7 The Loom of Life: Unravelling Ecosystems, 2008. Springer. 168 pages. ISBN 978-3-540-68051-2 Nature's Nether Regions: What the Sex Lives of Bugs, Birds, and Beasts Tell Us About Evolution, Biodiversity, and Ourselves. 2014. Viking / Penguin. 256 pages. ISBN 978-0-67-078591-9 Darwin Comes to Town, 2018. Quercus Books Wie Wat Bewaart, 2020. Unieboek Het Spectrum. (in Dutch, with Freek Vonk) The Urban Naturalist, 2025. MIT Press

Selected articles Schilthuizen et al., 2020. Craspedotropis gretathunbergae, a new species of Cyclophoridae (Gastropoda: Caenogastropoda), discovered and described on a field course to Kuala Belalong rainforest, Brunei. Biodiversity Data Journal, 8: e47484. Kerstes, N.A.G., T. Breeschoten, V. Kalkman & M. Schilthuizen, 2019. Snail shell colour evolution in urban heat islands detected via citizen science. Communications Biology, 2: 264. Merckx et al., 2015. Evolution and endemism on a young tropical mountain. Nature, 524: 347-350. Schilthuizen, M., 2005. 'On the origin of reproductive isolation'. BioEssays, 27: 669-670. Schilthuizen, M., 2000. 'Dualism and conflicts in understanding speciation'. BioEssays, 22: 1134-1141.

References

External links Homepage of Studio Schilthuizen Personal page at Naturalis Homepage of Taxon Expeditions Author page at Amazon Homepage of Taxon Foundation

Illustrations

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with Menno Schilthuizen

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what Menno Schilthuizen claims or describes in one sentence, then invent the smallest concrete situation in which that sentence is true. In biology, the smallest case is usually a single object, a single equation or a single measurement. Check that every symbol or term in your sentence has a meaning in that case.

Example 2 — changing one variable

Take the situation from Example 1 and change exactly one quantity: double it, halve it, or set it to zero. Predict what should happen to Menno Schilthuizen before you calculate. Comparing your prediction with the result is the fastest way to find out whether you understand the idea or only the words.

Example 3 — an exam-style question

Typical questions about Menno Schilthuizen ask you to (a) state it precisely, (b) apply it to given data, and (c) explain a limitation. Practise writing all three answers in under five minutes; the third part is what separates a full-mark answer from an average one.

Applications of Menno Schilthuizen

In research: Menno Schilthuizen appears in biology research whenever the underlying quantities have to be modelled precisely. Papers usually cite it as a starting assumption and then explore where it breaks down.
In technology and industry: Engineering practice reuses Menno Schilthuizen in design rules, simulations and safety margins. Knowing the idea lets you read a specification sheet and understand why the numbers look the way they do.
In the classroom: Menno Schilthuizen is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics 1965 births, Academic staff of Leiden University, Academic staff of the University of Groningen, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for Menno Schilthuizen outside the textbook — in sport, cooking, traffic, electronics or the sky above you. An example you found yourself is remembered far longer than one you were given.

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How to study Menno Schilthuizen in 20 minutes

Read the reference excerpt below once, without taking notes.
Close the page and write down what Menno Schilthuizen means in your own words.
Compare your version with the excerpt and mark what you missed.
Work through the three examples above with pen and paper.
Explain Menno Schilthuizen out loud to somebody else — or to Teacher Smith in the lgStudy chat.

Frequently asked questions

What is Menno Schilthuizen in simple terms?

Why does Menno Schilthuizen matter?

Because it connects several biology ideas at once: it gives you a definition you can apply, a quantity you can calculate, and a way to check whether a result is plausible.

How should I study Menno Schilthuizen?

Read the excerpt, restate it from memory, then work through the examples and applications listed on this page. The five-step study plan above takes about twenty minutes.

What does this page cover?

It gives you a compact reference excerpt plus original lgStudy explanations, examples, applications and study material on Menno Schilthuizen.