John Hoogland

Professor John Hoogland completed his Bachelor of Science (1971) and Ph.D. (1977) at the University of Michigan. After completing a postdoc at the University of Minnesota (1979) and serving as an Assistant Professor at Princeton University for several years, John joined the Appalachian Laboratory of the University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science in 1985, where he is currently a Professor of Wildlife Ecology. Since he first saw them when he was a graduate student in 1974, prairie dogs have fascinated John. Over the last 44 years, he has devoted his career to finding answers to questions about the conservation, ecology, and social behaviour of these amazing grassland rodents. Read more from Hoogland’s piece by Scientia, “Prairie Dogs are Charming and Cute, but they are also Serial Killers.”

Awards during John’s career include the Peter Okkelberg Award for outstanding achievement in biology (1971), the American Society of Mammalogists Alma Shadle Award (1976), the Harry Frank Guggenheim Career Development Award (1986), and the Prairie Dog Protector of the Year Award (2015). Citations to John’s research number more than 5,000, and span more than 120 journals. His discoveries have been reported in hundreds of newspapers around the world, 10 textbooks, nine radio programs, 11 television programs, and also more than 50 popular magazines such as Atlantic, Audubon, National Geographic, National Wildlife, New Scientist, Ranger Rick, Science News, and Smithsonian.

MY RESEARCH WITH PRAIRIE DOGS