Education
Doctor Seger attended University of California Santa Barbara for his undergraduate studies, where he received a Bachelor of Arts in English, and Harvard University, where he received his Doctor of Philosophy in Biology.
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Jon Seger
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His work has appeared in leading scientific journals such as Nature, Science, Genetics, Molecular Biology and Evolution, Journal of Evolutionary Biology, as well as popular magazines such as Scientific American. 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).
He is also the co-author of an influential article on the theory of bet-hedging.
In addition, he recently received an National Science Foundation grant to continue his work on the so-called "missing heritability" problem. His whale lice work had already shown that a genome should have lots of 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.
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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.
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United States
Education
Awards
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1987 MacArthur Fellows Program
The MacArthur Fellows Program, MacArthur Fellowship, or 'Genius Grant' is a prize awarded annually by the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation typically to between 20 and 40 individuals, working in any field, who 'show exceptional merit and promise for continued and enhanced creative work' and are citizens or residents of the United States.The MacArthur Fellows Program, MacArthur Fellowship, or 'Genius Grant' is a prize awarded annually by the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation typically to between 20 and 40 individuals, working in any field, who 'show exceptional merit and promise for continued and enhanced creative work' and are citizens or residents of the United States.