Rate My Professor Jon Seger

Jon Seger is an Emeritus Professor in the School of Biological Sciences at the University of Utah. He earned a B.A. from the University of California, Santa Barbara in 1969, an Ed.M. from Harvard University in 1972, and a Ph.D. in Biology from Harvard University in 1980. His doctoral thesis, advised by Robert Trivers, was titled "Models for the Evolution of Phenotypic Responses to Genotypic Correlations That Arise in Finite Populations." Following his Ph.D., Seger held postdoctoral positions at the University of Sussex in Brighton, England (1981-1982), the University of Michigan (1982-1983), and Princeton University (1983-1986). In 1986, he joined the Department of Biology at the University of Utah as a professor and later became a Distinguished Professor.

As an evolutionary ecologist, Jon Seger combines fieldwork with mathematical modeling to study how natural selection and other evolutionary forces generate biological diversity across levels of organization. His research encompasses the evolution of sexual reproduction, including parental investment, sex ratios, mate choice, mating systems, recombination rates, genetic imprinting, host-parasite and predator-prey interactions, and life histories. He has particular interests in the evolutionary ecology of Hymenoptera, such as insect sociality, sex allocation in solitary wasps of the genus Philanthus, and the structure of bee communities. More recent work focuses on mitochondrial population genomics of whale lice (Amphipoda, Cyamidae) and the impact of mildly deleterious mutations as obstacles to adaptation. Seger received a MacArthur Fellowship in 1987. His numerous publications have appeared in journals including Genetics, Nature, and the Journal of Evolutionary Biology. Notable papers include "Gene genealogies strongly distorted by weakly selected mutations in constant environments" (Genetics, 2010, with Smith WA et al.), "Partner choice and fidelity stabilize co-evolution in a Cretaceous-age defensive symbiosis" (PNAS, 2014, with Kaltenpoth M et al.), and "Ocean warming threatens southern right whale population recovery" (Science Advances, 2021, with Agrelo M et al.). He has served on the editorial boards of Behavioral Ecology, the American Naturalist, and Evolution.