Andrew Weitz, PhD

Assistant Professor

About

Andrew Weitz, PhD, is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Anthropology at Western Washington University. Dr. Weitz completed his PhD in Integrative Biology in 2018 at the University of California, Berkeley. He completed his BS in Ecology and Evolutionary Biology in 2011 at the University of California, Santa Cruz. Dr. Weitz also completed postdoctoral research appointments at ETH Zürich (2019) and at Western Washington University (2023) prior to joining the Department of Anthropology.
 
Dr. Weitz’s research focuses on understanding the past, present, and future of human-ecological interactions, with particular attention to local Coast Salish forests. He takes an integrative approach to this research by utilizing methods in stable isotope biogeochemistry, dendrochronology, paleoclimatology, forest ecophysiology, and comparative morphology.
 
More broadly, his work focuses on human and environmental evolutionary ecology to advance our understanding of how people have been shaped by environmental change across deep evolutionary timescales, how people have been shaping their local environments throughout more contemporary timescales, and how the ecosystem services that our local environments provide will be impacted in the future in response to anthropogenic climate change.

Education

PhD, Integrative Biology, University of California, Berkeley
BS, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, University of California, Santa Cruz

Selected Publications

  • Monson, T.A., Weitz, A.P., Brasil, M.F., and Hlusko, L.J. (2022). Teeth, prenatal growth rates, and the evolution of human-like pregnancy in later Homo. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 119(41), e2200689119 https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2200689119
  • Weitz, A.P., Dukic, M., Zeitler, L., and Bomblies, K. (2021). Male meiotic recombination rate responds to seasonal temperature fluctuations in wild populations of autotetraploid Arabidopsis arenosa. Molecular Ecology, 30(19), pp.4630-4641 https://doi.org/10.1111/mec.16084
  • McLaughlin, B.C, Blakey, R., Weitz, A.P., Feng, X., Ackerly, D.D., Dawson, T.E, Brown, B.J., and Thompson, S.E. (2020). Weather underground: Subsurface hydrologic processes mediate tree vulnerability to extreme climatic drought. Global Change Biology, 26(5), pp.3091-3107 https://doi.org/10.1111/gcb.15026
  • Feng, X., Ackerly, D.D., Dawson, T.E., Manzoni, S., McLaughlin, B.C., Skelton, R.P., Vico, G., Weitz, A.P. and Thompson, S.E. (2019). Beyond isohydricity: the role of environmental variability in determining plant drought responses. Plant, Cell & Environment, 42(4), pp.1104-1111 https://doi.org/10.1111/pce.13486
  • Morueta-Holme, N., Oldfather, M.F., Olliff-Yang, R.L., Weitz, A.P., Levine, C.R., Kling, M.M., Riordan, E.C., Merow, C., Sheth, S.N., Thornhill, A.H. and Ackerly, D.D. (2018). Best practices for reporting climate data in ecology. Nature Climate Change, 8(2), p.92 https://doi.org/10.1038/s41558-017-0060-2
  • Parker, I.M., Saunders, M., Bontrager, M., Weitz, A.P., Hendricks, R., Magarey, R., Suiter, K. and Gilbert, G.S. (2015). Phylogenetic structure and host abundance drive disease pressure in communities. Nature, 520(7548), p.542 https://doi.org/10.1038/nature14372