Sergey Gavrilets is a Russian-born American scientist, currently a Distinguished Professor of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology and Mathematics at the

University of Tennessee The University of Tennessee, Knoxville (or The University of Tennessee; UT; UT Knoxville; or colloquially UTK or Tennessee) is a Public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in Knoxville, Tennessee, United St ...

. Initially trained as a physicist, he established a successful career in theoretical evolutionary biology before shifting his focus to modeling human social and cultural evolution. He uses mathematical and computational models to study complex biological and social processes. He has made contributions to the study of

speciation Speciation is the evolutionary process by which populations evolve to become distinct species. The biologist Orator F. Cook coined the term in 1906 for cladogenesis, the splitting of lineages, as opposed to anagenesis, phyletic evolution within ...

sexual selection Sexual selection is a mechanism of evolution in which members of one sex mate choice, choose mates of the other sex to mating, mate with (intersexual selection), and compete with members of the same sex for access to members of the opposite sex ...

, fitness landscapes,

sexual conflict Sexual conflict or sexual antagonism occurs when the two sexes have conflicting optimal fitness (biology), fitness strategies concerning reproduction, particularly over the mode and frequency of mating, potentially leading to an evolutionary arms ...

social complexity In sociology, social complexity is a conceptual framework used in the analysis of society. In the sciences, contemporary definitions of complexity are found in systems theory, wherein the phenomenon being studied has many parts and many possible ...

evolutionary game theory Evolutionary game theory (EGT) is the application of game theory to evolving populations in biology. It defines a framework of contests, strategies, and analytics into which Darwinism, Darwinian competition can be modelled. It originated in 1973 wi ...

social norms A social norm is a shared standard of acceptance, acceptable behavior by a group. Social norms can both be informal understandings that govern the behavior of members of a society, as well as be codified into wikt:rule, rules and laws. Social norma ...

homosexuality Homosexuality is romantic attraction, sexual attraction, or Human sexual activity, sexual behavior between people of the same sex or gender. As a sexual orientation, homosexuality is "an enduring pattern of emotional, romantic, and/or sexu ...

, and

cultural evolution Cultural evolution is an evolutionary theory of social change. It follows from the definition of culture as "information capable of affecting individuals' behavior that they acquire from other members of their species through teaching, imitation ...

. He was the Associate Director for Scientific Activities at the National Institute for Mathematical and Biological Synthesis during the life of the NSF award (2008-2021) and the Director of the Center for the Dynamics of Social Complexity (DySoC) (2018-2022). In 2017, he was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. His book, Fitness Landscapes and the Origin of Species (2004), synthesizes how mathematical modeling contributes to understanding the processes underlying the emergence of new species. Gavrilets has contributed to the book ''Evolution: The Extended Synthesis'' (Edited by Massimo Pigliucci and Gerd B. Müller, 2010)."Evolution, the Extended Synthesis"
Retrieved July 1, 2018.

Publications

Books * *

References

Year of birth missing (living people) Living people University of Tennessee faculty 21st-century American biologists Extended evolutionary synthesis Moscow State University alumni {{biologist-stub