Jody Hey is an evolutionary biologist at Rutgers University

Rutgers University

Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey , is the largest institution for higher education in New Jersey, United States. It was originally chartered as Queen's College in 1766. It is the eighth-oldest college in the United States and one of the nine Colonial colleges founded before the American...

. In the 1980s and 1990s he did research on natural selection and species divergence in fruit flies (Drosophila

Drosophila

Drosophila is a genus of small flies, belonging to the family Drosophilidae, whose members are often called "fruit flies" or more appropriately pomace flies, vinegar flies, or wine flies, a reference to the characteristic of many species to linger around overripe or rotting fruit...

). More recently he has worked on the divergence of cichlid fishes

Cichlid

Cichlids are fishes from the family Cichlidae in the order Perciformes. Cichlids are members of a group known as the Labroidei along with the wrasses , damselfish , and surfperches . This family is both large and diverse. At least 1,300 species have been scientifically described, making it one of...

 from Lake Malawi

Lake Malawi

Lake Malawi , is an African Great Lake and the southernmost lake in the Great Rift Valley system of East Africa. This lake, the third largest in Africa and the eighth largest lake in the world, is located between Malawi, Mozambique, and Tanzania...

, on chimpanzee

Chimpanzee

Chimpanzee, sometimes colloquially chimp, is the common name for the two extant species of ape in the genus Pan. The Congo River forms the boundary between the native habitat of the two species:...

s and on human populations. His research on divergence and speciation

Speciation

Speciation is the evolutionary process by which new biological species arise. The biologist Orator F. Cook seems to have been the first to coin the term 'speciation' for the splitting of lineages or 'cladogenesis,' as opposed to 'anagenesis' or 'phyletic evolution' occurring within lineages...

 also lead him to study the difficulties of identifying species

Species problem

The species problem or species concept is a mixture of difficult, related questions that often come up when biologists identify species and when they define the word "species"....

.

Hey has also conducted mathematical and statistical research in population genetics. He is the author of several computer programs that are used by other biologists for questions in population genetics

Population genetics

Population genetics is the study of allele frequency distribution and change under the influence of the four main evolutionary processes: natural selection, genetic drift, mutation and gene flow. It also takes into account the factors of recombination, population subdivision and population...

. In 2004 Hey and Rasmus Nielsen produced the computer program IM, which implements a method for fitting an isolation-with-migration model to a pair of closely related populations or species. They updated this method with a new program in 2007 called IMa.

In 1998 Hey received a Guggenheim fellowship.

In 2008 Hey was elected to the presidency of the Society for Molecular Biology and Evolution

Hey on the species problem

Although a geneticist and evolutionary biologist, Hey has also published on philosophical and historical aspects of the species problem

Species problem

The species problem or species concept is a mixture of difficult, related questions that often come up when biologists identify species and when they define the word "species"....

. He has argued that the difficulties of defining species cannot be addressed without also appreciating people's motivations and tendencies with regard to categorization. Hey has also questioned the development of, and debate over, multiple species concepts

Species

In biology, a species is one of the basic units of biological classification and a taxonomic rank. A species is often defined as a group of organisms capable of interbreeding and producing fertile offspring. While in many cases this definition is adequate, more precise or differing measures are...

 that were inspired by Ernst Mayr

Ernst Mayr

Ernst Walter Mayr was one of the 20th century's leading evolutionary biologists. He was also a renowned taxonomist, tropical explorer, ornithologist, historian of science, and naturalist...

.

Links to online articles

• Why Should We Care about Species? Scitable by Nature Education
• Journal Articles

Books

• Genes Categories and Species Oxford 2001
• Systematics and the Origin of Species: On Ernst Mayr's 100th Anniversary National Academies Press 2005