Published fundamental work on Drosophilae population genetics; work on abnormal abdomen in D. mercatorum ranges from molecular biology through population genetics and ecology; analysis of DNA from global human populations that reveal patterns of human evolution over past million years; current studies include evolution of HIV virus in AIDS patients.

Dr. Templeton is professor of biology and genetics at Washington University, a research associate at the Missouri Botanical Garden, and vice president for conservation of the Missouri Chapter of The Nature Conservancy. His work involves the application of molecular genetic techniques and statistical population genetics to a variety of evolutionary problems. The first is the measured genotype approach to ecological and quantitative genetics. Because many genes have a known biochemical function, it is possible to identify candidate loci that may directly influence some phenotype of interest. Genetic variability at these loci is surveyed molecularly and tested for phenotypic associations. He is using this approach to study natural selection in various species, to examine the role of lipid metabolic genes in coronary artery disease in humans, and to investigate the evolution of the HIV virus within infected patients. So much variation is detected at candidate loci at the molecular level that it is often difficult to identify the handful of mutations that are associated with significant phenotypic effects. He has developed novel uses of evolutionary analysis to solve this problem. He has also extended this evolutionary analytical approach to separate the effects of current population structure from past events that occurred in the history of the species, including humans. Such studies have shown that races do not exist in a biological sense in the human species. These evolutionary analyses also provide a rigorous method for identifying species (populations of organisms that behave as distinct evolutionary and ecological lineages) and to define the important ecological and genetic events that are associated with the process of speciation. Finally, he applies these genetic and evolutionary techniques to problems arising in conservation biology and is involved in a variety of conservation projects at the local, national, and international levels.