John Avise

Who is John Avise?

John Charles Avise is an American evolutionary geneticist, conservationist, ecologist and natural historian. He is a Distinguished Professor, Ecology & Evolutionary Biology, University of California, Irvine, and was previously a professor in the Department of Genetics at the University of Georgia.

Born in Grand Rapids, Michigan, he has been elected to the National Academy of Sciences and is a winner of the Brewster Medal from the American Ornithologists' Union. Avise was the first to use the term phylogeography and is widely credited with early development of the discipline. The primary research focus of his laboratory shifted in the late 1990s to study the genetic parentage and mating systems of fishes and other creatures. He was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1994.