Jon Allen Seger is an American evolutionary

ecologist Ecology () is the study of the relationships between living organisms, including humans, and their physical environment. Ecology considers organisms at the individual, population, community, ecosystem, and biosphere level. Ecology overlaps wi ...

, and Distinguished Professor of Biology at the

University of Utah The University of Utah (U of U, UofU, or simply The U) is a public research university in Salt Lake City, Utah. It is the flagship institution of the Utah System of Higher Education. The university was established in 1850 as the University of De ...

. He helped develop the theory of bet-hedging in biology. His work has appeared in leading scientific journals such as ''

Nature Nature, in the broadest sense, is the physical world or universe. "Nature" can refer to the phenomena of the physical world, and also to life in general. The study of nature is a large, if not the only, part of science. Although humans are ...

'', ''

Science Science is a systematic endeavor that builds and organizes knowledge in the form of testable explanations and predictions about the universe. Science may be as old as the human species, and some of the earliest archeological evidence ...

'', ''

Nature Genetics ''Nature Genetics'' is a peer-reviewed scientific journal published by Nature Portfolio. It was established in 1992. It covers research in genetics. The chief editor is Tiago Faial. The journal encompasses genetic and functional genomic studie ...

'', ''

Molecular Biology and Evolution ''Molecular Biology and Evolution'' is a monthly peer-reviewed scientific journal published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Society for Molecular Biology and Evolution. It publishes work in the intersection of molecular biology and evo ...

'', ''

Journal of Evolutionary Biology The ''Journal of Evolutionary Biology'' is a peer-reviewed scientific journal published monthly covering the field of evolutionary biology. It is owned by the European Society for Evolutionary Biology. The founding editor-in-chief was Stephen C ...

'', as well as popular magazines such as ''

Scientific American ''Scientific American'', informally abbreviated ''SciAm'' or sometimes ''SA'', is an American popular science magazine. Many famous scientists, including Albert Einstein and Nikola Tesla, have contributed articles to it. In print since 1845, it ...

''.

Biography

Dr. Seger attended

UC Santa Barbara The University of California, Santa Barbara (UC Santa Barbara or UCSB) is a public land-grant research university in Santa Barbara, California with 23,196 undergraduates and 2,983 graduate students enrolled in 2021–2022. It is part of the U ...

for his undergraduate studies, where he received a B.A. in English in 1969. Following college, he worked at the

National Museum of Natural History The National Museum of Natural History is a natural history museum administered by the Smithsonian Institution, located on the National Mall in Washington, D.C., United States. It has free admission and is open 364 days a year. In 2021, with 7. ...

on an assignment to help the museum establish public environmental education programs. He then enrolled at

Harvard University Harvard University is a private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1636 as Harvard College and named for its first benefactor, the Puritan clergyman John Harvard, it is the oldest institution of highe ...

, where he received his

EdM EDM or E-DM may refer to: Music * Electronic dance music * Early Day Miners, American band Science and technology * Electric dipole moment * Electrical discharge machining * Electronic distance measurement *Entry, Descent, and landing demonstrat ...

in 1972 and his PhD in Biology in 1980. Much of his early work concerned models of sex ratio evolution and a variety of social insects (such as the Vespidae wasps). This work often took the form of mathematical models built from 'first principles' (such as his 1986 paper written with Robert Trivers). Following his PhD he held

postdoctoral A postdoctoral fellow, postdoctoral researcher, or simply postdoc, is a person professionally conducting research after the completion of their doctoral studies (typically a PhD). The ultimate goal of a postdoctoral research position is to pu ...

positions at the

University of Sussex , mottoeng = Be Still and Know , established = , type = Public research university , endowment = £14.4 million (2020) , budget = £319.6 million (2019–20) , chancellor = Sanjeev Bhaskar , vice_chancellor = Sasha Roseneil , ...

(1981-1982), the

University of Michigan , mottoeng = "Arts, Knowledge, Truth" , former_names = Catholepistemiad, or University of Michigania (1817–1821) , budget = $10.3 billion (2021) , endowment = $17 billion (2021)As o ...

(1982-1983), and

Princeton University Princeton University is a private research university in Princeton, New Jersey. Founded in 1746 in Elizabeth as the College of New Jersey, Princeton is the fourth-oldest institution of higher education in the United States and one of the ...

(1983–86). He joined the faculty at the

in 1986.

Career

His latest work concerns applications of coalescent theory to population genetics, particularly the mtDNA of whale lice, although members of his lab work on a variety of applied and theoretical topics that range from evolutionary ecology and genetics to mathematical biology and coalescent theory. In addition, he recently received an NSF grant to continue his work on the so-called "missing heritability" problem. His whale lice work had already shown that a genome should have many weakly deleterious mutations of small effect taken on their own but potentially large effect when taken together. This implies that the "missing" genes sought by, for example, human geneticists aren't actually missing: there are simply a lot more genes have a very small effect on fitness by themselves but have can have a large effect when the effects are combined.

Awards

* 1987

MacArthur Fellows Program The MacArthur Fellows Program, also known as the MacArthur Fellowship and commonly but unofficially known as the "Genius Grant", is a prize awarded annually by the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation typically to between 20 and 30 indi ...

Works

*Seger J, Stubblefield JW (2002
"Models of sex ratio evolution"
In ''Sex Ratios: Concepts and Research Methods'' (ed ICW Hardy), pp 2–25. Cambridge University Press. *Johnson KP, Seger J (2001) "Elevated rates of nonsynonymous substitution in island birds". ''Molecular Biology and Evolution'' 18:874-881. *Morehead SA, Seger J, Feener DH Jr, Brown BV (2001) "Evidence for a cryptic species complex in the ant parasitoid Apocephalus paraponerae (Diptera: Phoridae)". ''Evolutionary Ecology Research'' 3:273-284. *Branscomb A, Seger J, White RL (2000) "Evolution of odorant receptors expressed in mammalian testes". ''Genetics'' 156:785-787. *Seger J (1999) "Is sex in the details?" ''Journal of Evolutionary Biology'' 12:1050-1052. *Eckhart, Vincent M., Seger, Jo
"Phenological and Development Costs of Male Sexual Function in Hermaphroditic Plants"
''Life history evolution in plants'', Editors Timo Olavi Vuorisalo, Pia Kristina Mutikainen, Springer, 1999, pp 195–213. Kluwer. *Herrick G, Seger J (1999) "Imprinting and paternal genome elimination in insects". In ''Genomic Imprinting: An Interdisciplinary Approach'' (Results and Problems in Cell Differentiation, vol. 25) (ed R Ohlsson) pp 41–71. Springer-Verlag. *Berrigan DB, Seger J (1998) "Information and allometry". ''Evolutionary Ecology'' 12:535-541. *Seger J, Stubblefield JW (1996) "Optimization and adaptation". In ''Adaptation'' (ed GV Lauder, MR Rose) pp 93–123. Academic Press. *Seger J, Eckhart VM (1996) "Evolution of sexual systems and sex allocation in plants when growth and reproduction overlap". ''Proc R Soc Lond B'' 263:833-841. *Richards MH, Packer L, Seger J (1995) "Unexpected patterns of parentage and relatedness in a primitively eusocial bee". ''Nature'' 373:239-241.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Seger, Jon Living people Year of birth missing (living people) University of Utah faculty American ecologists Evolutionary ecologists MacArthur Fellows Fellows of the American Association for the Advancement of Science Harvard Graduate School of Education alumni University of California, Santa Barbara alumni Theoretical biologists