Rate My Professor John Avise

John Avise is a distinguished evolutionary geneticist and Professor Emeritus of Genetics at the University of Georgia (UGA), where he held faculty positions for 30 years until retiring in 2005. Beginning as Assistant Professor of Zoology in 1975, he progressed to Associate Professor in 1979 and Professor of Genetics in 1984, later becoming Distinguished Research Professor. His academic journey began with a B.S. in Natural Resources from the University of Michigan (1970), followed by an M.A. in Zoology from the University of Texas at Austin (1971), and a Ph.D. in Genetics from the University of California, Davis (1975). At UGA, Avise's research focused on applying molecular markers—including allozymes, mitochondrial DNA sequences, and nuclear microsatellites—to elucidate the ecology, mating systems, population structure, gene flow, hybridization, phylogeography, speciation, and phylogenetics of natural animal populations, spanning marine, freshwater, and terrestrial vertebrates and some invertebrates.

Avise's prolific scholarship includes more than 360 peer-reviewed articles and over 30 books, such as Molecular Markers, Natural History, and Evolution (Chapman & Hall, 1994; 2nd ed., Sinauer, 2004), Phylogeography: The History and Formation of Species (Harvard University Press, 2000), Conservation Genetics: Case Histories from Nature (Chapman & Hall, 1996, co-edited), The Hope, Hype, and Reality of Genetic Engineering (Oxford University Press, 2004), Evolutionary Pathways in Nature (Cambridge University Press, 2006), and the multi-volume In the Light of Evolution series co-edited with Francisco J. Ayala (National Academies Press, 2007–2017). He pioneered the field of phylogeography. Among his numerous honors are Fellowships in the National Academy of Sciences (1991), American Academy of Arts and Sciences (1994), American Philosophical Society (2011), and American Association for the Advancement of Science (1985); the Lamar Dodd Award from UGA (1988); Molecular Ecology Prize (2006); Alfred Russel Wallace Award (2007); and presidencies of the Society for the Study of Evolution (1994), American Genetic Association (2000), and Society for Molecular Biology and Evolution (2004).