Message from the AGA President 2014:

Dear Members of the American Genetic Association, I am happy to report that the American Genetic Association (AGA) had another outstanding year in 2013. Membership soared by 19%, buoyed by addition of nearly 100 new individual and student members, which reflects the new (but ongoing) policy of providing complimentary one-year memberships to attendees of the annual AGA meeting and AGA-sponsored workshops. The AGA's flagship publication, Journal of Heredity, made an important change to increase accessibility: all authors can now publish one 8-page article per year without page charges. As in the past, AGA members still receive 10 free pages, and all articles become freely available online 12 months after publication. The AGA welcomes newly-elected officers Katie Peichel (President-elect), (Council) for their long service to the society. Each year the AGA Council awards the Stephen J. O'Brien Award for best student-authored article published in the Journal of Heredity. The award, which comes with a 1-year AGA membership and a $1,500 cash prize, honors Dr. O'Brien, who was the journal's Editor-In-Chief from 1987–2007. This year, the award was presented to Melody Porlier for her article, " Habitat-linked population genetic differentiation in the blue tit Cyanistes caeruleus " (supervisors, Dr. Dany Garant and Dr. Anne Charmentier). In presenting their recommendation to the Council, the Award Committee had the following comments: " We evaluated whether candidate articles were substantial, novel and synthetic in their approaches. This was a large, nicely written study of fine-scale landscape genetics. The strong sampling strategy and data analysis of multiple markers give clear results of genetic structure linked with habitat preference. " Please urge your students to submit their work to the journal and to identify themselves as candidates for this award by checking the appropriate box during online submission. The AGA also supports a variety of special events conducted around the world, with emphasis on courses, workshops and conferences oriented toward graduate students and post docs. This year, 5 events received full or partial support, with close to $80,000 awarded in total. Any event that would advance the purpose of the Association is potentially eligible for sup-port—please visit the AGA website, Approximately 150 attendees enjoyed the many excellent talks and posters on the subject of speciation. Gavrilets' contributions have emphasized questions at the interface of evolution, social science, mathematics and computational science. His insightful research contributes to the unification of speciation theory through synthesis and development of original …