Jack W. Sites, Jr.

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Jack Walter Sites, Jr. (born August 6, 1951 in Clarksville , Tennessee ) is an American herpetologist and evolutionary biologist .

Life

Sites worked as a seasonal naturalist with the Tennessee Department of Conservation during the summers of 1970 and 1971. In August 1973 he married Joanne Lawson. From this marriage a daughter was born. In 1973 he received his Bachelor of Science degree from Austin Peay State University in Clarksville. From 1973 to 1975 he was teaching assistant there and in 1975 he graduated with a Master of Science degree. From 1975 to 1976 he was a vertebrate zoologist with The Nature Conservancy's Tennessee Heritage Program . From 1976 he was a student research assistant at the Department of Wildlife & Fisheries Sciences at Texas A & M University in College Station , Texas , where he worked with the doctoral thesis in 1980 chromosomal, allozyme, and morphological variation in a selected portion of the Sceloporus grammicus complex for Ph.D. received his doctorate. During his postdoctoral period from 1980 to 1982, he was visiting professor in the Department of Biology at Texas A&M University. From 1982 to 1986 he was an associate professor at the Zoological Department, from 1986 to 1992 he was an associate professor and since 1992 he has held the Maeser Chair in Biology at Brigham Young University in Provo , Utah . Since 1982 he has been curator of amphibians and reptiles at the Monte L. Bean Life Science Museum at Brigham Young University.

Sites' interests and projects include herpetology, speciation & species delimitation, hybrid zone dynamics, the origins of parthenogenesis , phylogeography , systems biology , integrative taxonomy , nature conservation and population genetics , biodiversity and public relations . His excursions and research trips took him to the southern Appalachian Mountains , the cypress swamps of the Everglades , the Chihuahua Desert in Texas , the canyon, desert and mountain regions of the western United States, Hawaii , Alaska , Mexico , Venezuela , Ecuador and the Galapagos Islands , the Amazon , Australia , New Zealand , Panama , Costa Rica , Brazil , Namibia , South Africa , French Guiana , Argentina ( Patagonia ), Chile and Peru .

Sites is a member of the National Center for Science Education (since 2000), the Chelonian Research Foundation (since 1996), the American Association for the Advancement of Science (since 1990), the American Society of Ichthyologists and Herpetologists (since 1975), and the Society for the Study of Amphibians and Reptiles (since 1975). From 1980 to 2009 he was a member of the Society of Conservation Biology .

Sites was involved in the first descriptions of over 30 species of lizard , including taxa from the genera Alexandresaurus , Bronchocela , Cnemaspis , Cyrtodactylus , Dryadosaura , Liolaemus and Vanzosaura . In 2017 he was one of the first to describe the La Pera climbing rat ( Ototylomys chiapensis ).

Dedication names

In 2011 and 2013, the Argentine herpetologist Luciano Javier Ávila and his colleagues named the Patagonian lizard species Phymaturus sitesi and Liolaemus sitesi from the group of iguanas in honor of Sites.

literature

  • Jack W. Sites, Jr. American Men & Women of Science: A Biographical Directory of Today's Leaders in Physical, Biological, and Related Sciences, Gale, 2008. Gale In Context: Biography, accessed January 10, 2020

Web links
personal data
SURNAME Sites, Jack W. Jr.
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Sites, Jack Walter junior (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American herpetologist and evolutionary biologist
DATE OF BIRTH August 6, 1951
PLACE OF BIRTH Clarksville , Tennessee