The Snail Darter and the Politics of Taxonomy
The Institute of the Environment and Sustainability's Fall 2026 Lecture, presented by Yale Professor Thomas Near
Featuring Professor Thomas Near
Professor of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Yale University
Bingham Oceanographic Curator of Ichthyology, Peabody Museum of Natural History
About the lecture
Professor Near’s talk will trace how taxonomy, the naming and classification of species, is entangled with law, policy, and politics.
The Snail Darter is a small freshwater fish whose discovery in the 1970s halted construction of the Tellico Dam via the Supreme Court case Hill v. TVA and reshaped the Endangered Species Act.
New genomic evidence and reexamination of phenotype shows it is neither a distinct species nor a subspecies, but a population of the more widespread Stargazing Darter described in the 19th century.
Professor Near argues that thorough and accurate species discovery and delimitation is a critical component of biological conservation because it identifies targets for the commitment of limited resources.
The Snail Darter is one of the first and best-known examples of the “conservation species concept,” where a population is treated as a distinct species to trigger conservation action, such as listing as Threatened or Endangered under the Endangered Species Act.
This talk offers a look at the hidden tensions between principled motivations to protect biodiversity, scientific accuracy, and the practical demands of conservation law.
Bio
Thomas J. Near is an American evolutionary ichthyologist and Professor of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at Yale University, where he also serves as the Bingham Oceanographic Curator of Ichthyology at the Peabody Museum of Natural History. He earned his B.A., B.S., and M.S. degrees from Northern Illinois University before completing his Ph.D. in Ecology, Ethology, and Evolution at the University of Illinois in 2000. After a postdoctoral fellowship at the University of California, Davis, and an assistant professorship at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, he joined the Yale faculty in 2006.
At Yale, Near served as Chair of the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology from 2018 to 2024 and as Head of Saybrook College from 2015 to 2026. His leadership earned him the 2024 FAS Dean’s Award for Inclusion and Belonging for diversifying faculty recruitment and supporting first-generation, low-income students. In 2024, he was named Director of Undergraduate Studies for the department and elected a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.
Near’s research centers on the phylogenetics, speciation patterns, and adaptive radiation of teleost fishes, with a focus on Antarctic notothenioids and North American freshwater fishes, including darters and sunfishes. Through fossil-calibrated molecular clocks and genomic sequencing, his laboratory has significantly clarified marine and aquatic lineage evolution. Over his career, he has published more than 200 peer-reviewed scientific papers and described numerous new fish species and higher taxa.
Note
Reception: 5 p.m. to 6 p.m.