H. Allen Orr
evolutionary biologist
H. Allen Orr (born 1960) is an American evolutionary biologist specializing in the genetics of speciation and adaptation. He is the Shirley Cox Kearns Professor of Biology at the University of Rochester.
Education and career
Orr earned his bachelor's degree in biology and philosophy from the College of William and Mary and his Ph.D. in biology from the University of Chicago. At Chicago, Orr studied under Jerry Coyne. He performed postdoctoral research at the University of California, Davis.
Work
Orr is an evolutionary geneticist whose research focuses on the genetics of speciation and the genetics of adaptation, in particular on the genetic basis of hybrid sterility and inviability. How many genes cause reproductive isolation between species? What are the normal functions of these genes and what evolutionary forces drove their divergence? He studies these problems through genetic analysis of reproductive isolation between species of Drosophila.
In his adaptation work, Orr is interested in theoretical rules or patterns that might characterize the population genetics of adaptation.
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This entry incorporates text from “H. Allen Orr” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.