American Society of Naturalists

A membership society whose goal is to advance and to diffuse knowledge of organic evolution and other broad biological principles so as to enhance the conceptual unification of the biological sciences.

2021 American Naturalist Student Paper Award

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Brown and white snowshoe hares
Brown and white snowshoe hares

The American Naturalist 2021 Student Paper Award is for work that was published in 2020 and that was performed primarily by the first author and primarily while she or he was an undergraduate or graduate student. There were 45 eligible papers. The Editors of the journal, in consultation with Associate Editors, examine all student-authored papers in the journal to select an outstanding contribution that advances the journal’s goals of changing the way people think about organismal biology (including but not limited to ecology, evolution, and behavior) by providing new conceptual insights.

The recipient of the 2021 Student Paper Award is Matthew R. Jones, for his paper “The origin and spread of locally adaptive seasonal camouflage in snowshoe hares” (196:316-332), co-authored with L. Scott Mills, Jeffrey D. Jensen, and Jeffrey M. Good. The editors recognized this paper an excellent example of how careful genomic and geographic analyses can be applied to understand big-picture questions about the processes generating adaptation in the face of environmental change.