Professor Donald Natvig has been named a 2012 Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), an honor bestowed upon AAAS members by their peers. He is among a prestigious group of 702 new members awarded this honor because of scientifically or socially distinguished efforts to advance science of its applications.

Natvig, a pro­fes­sor in the Depart­ment of Biol­ogy, was selected for sig­nif­i­cant con­tri­bu­tions to myco­log­i­cal research, eco­log­i­cal and com­par­a­tive genomics and for ini­ti­at­ing the Neu­rospora Genome Project as an undergraduate-training project. He was also rec­og­nized as edi­tor of Mycolo­gia, a jour­nal that pub­lishes papers on all aspects of fungi, includ­ing lichens.

Some of Natvig’s lat­est research ranges from genome evo­lu­tion in mush­rooms to insights from the genome and assem­bled chro­mo­somes of Coprinop­sis cinerea; the effect of pre­cip­i­ta­tion vari­abil­ity on net pri­mary pro­duc­tion and soil res­pi­ra­tion in a Chi­huahuan desert grass­land; diver­sity and dis­tri­b­u­tion of soil fun­gal com­mu­ni­ties in a semi­arid grass­land; and pre­cip­i­ta­tion vari­abil­ity and fire influ­ence the tem­po­ral dynam­ics of soil CO2 efflux in arid grasslands.