Rate My Professor Malcolm Schug

Malcolm Schug is Professor and Department Head of Biology at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro, where he has been a faculty member for 26 years. His research interests lie in evolutionary genetics and animal behavior. He studies a variety of animals using genetic, behavioral, and molecular approaches. Specific foci include population genetics, molecular evolution, behavioral ecology, and genomics. Schug has examined microsatellite mutation rates, genetic structure, and mating isolation in Drosophila species such as Drosophila melanogaster, Drosophila simulans, Drosophila ananassae, and Drosophila pseudoobscura. He has also investigated paternity, parental care, and condition-dependent control of paternity in purple martins, as well as genetic diversity in mosquitofish populations.

Schug's publications appear in journals including Genetics, Molecular Biology and Evolution, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Nature Genetics, and Animal Behaviour. Key papers include "Low mutation rates of microsatellite loci in Drosophila melanogaster" (1997), "Equilibrium distributions of microsatellite repeat length resulting from a balance between slippage events and point mutations" (1998), "The mutation rates of di-, tri-, and tetranucleotide repeat microsatellites in Drosophila melanogaster" (1998), "What molecules can tell us about populations: choosing and using a molecular marker" (1998), "Microsatellite variation in Drosophila melanogaster and Drosophila simulans: A reciprocal test of the ascertainment bias hypothesis" (1998), "The distribution and frequency of microsatellites in Drosophila melanogaster" (1998), "Quantitative trait loci for sexual isolation between Drosophila simulans and D. mauritiana" (2004), and "The genetic structure of Drosophila ananassae populations from Indonesia, Australia, and the South Pacific" (2007). He received National Science Foundation funding for the project "Preparing College Students who Enter from High School or Community College with Insufficient Preparation in Biology and Mathematics." Schug was honored on the All-SoCon Faculty and Staff Team. As department head, he oversees programs for over 1,000 undergraduate majors and 40 graduate students, with faculty research funded by NSF, NIH, USDA, and state agencies in areas including genetics, ecology, evolution, disease ecology, and environmental health science.