This volume is a reprinted collection of 69 classics from the Avise laboratory, chosen to illustrate a trademark brand of research that harnesses molecular markers to scientific studies of natural history and evolution in the wild. Spanning the early 1970s through the late 2000s,
these articles trace how the author and his colleagues have used molecular genetics techniques to address multifarious conceptual topics in genetics, ecology, and evolution, in a fascinating menagerie of creatures with oft-peculiar lifestyles. The organisms described in this volume range from blind cavefish to male-pregnant pipefishes and sea spiders, from clonal armadillos to natal-homing marine turtles, from hermaphroditic sea snails to hybridizing monkeys and tree frogs, from clonal marine sponges to pseudohermaphroditic mollusks to introgressing oysters, and from endangered pocket gophers, terrapins, and sparrows to unisexual (all-female) fish species to living-fossil horseshoe crabs, and even to a strange little fish that routinely mates with itself.