Paul R. Manger

Paul R. Manger is a professor in Anatomical Sciences at the University of the Witwatersrand. Manger's research focus is on the evolution of brain and behaviour – neuroethology – of African mammals. Manger, his colleagues, and students examine the structure of African and other mammalian brains to investigate how brains change and how they stay the same in different phylogenetic lineages and in mammals showing major morphological variations. In this sense, Manger has studied brains from very small mammals (such as Mus minutoides, with a brain weighing in at 275 mg) through to the brains of African elephants (which weigh it at around 5 kg). These studies are building a fundamental understanding of the processes of brain evolution and how they relate to behaviour in the mammals. In order to undertake this type of broad-based comparative neuroscience, Manger has established the first major brain bank in the southern hemisphere, and has collected the most well prepared specimens of mammal brains from over 300 species, allowing for the use of modern neuroanatomical methods. In addition to this, Manger and colleagues are studying sleep in free-roaming mammals, and use sleep as one of the key behaviours that can be related to evolution of the structure of the brain. This line of research is providing numerous novel understandings of the brain and behaviour in mammals. Perhaps the most controversial work published by Manger is that regarding evolution of the brain of whales and dolphins, where he proposes a thermogenetic hypothesis for the evolution of large brains in cetaceans, rather than the standard intellect-based hypotheses. While this work has earned him some derision, ongoing research in his laboratory continues to support the thermogenesis hypothesis, with many researchers in the field beginning to accept this concept as an instructive example in understanding brain evolution. Manger obtained his BSc Hons in 1989 from the University of Queensland, Australia. After completing his PhD at the University of Queensland in 1994, research the neural and behavioural basis of electroreception in the platypus and echidna, he was employed as a post-doctoral fellow at the University of California, Irvine in the laboratory of the late Prof. E.G. Jones. Following this, Manger did post-doctoral stints at the University of California, Davis and University of California, Los Angeles, before being employed as a Guest researcher at the Karolinksa Institute in Stockholm, Sweden. Manger was employed at the level of Senior Lecturer in the School of Anatomical Sciences, University of the Witwatersrand in 2002, was promoted to Reader in 2006 and finally to Full Research Professor in 2012. Manger is currently Field Editor for the newly launched journal Frontiers in Mammal Science.