Distinguished Professor Sakaluk to Lecture Nov. 28

Scott K. Sakaluk, who was named a distinguished professor at Illinois State University in 2006, will present the Distinguished Professorship Lecture at 7 p.m. Wednesday, Nov. 28, in the Center for the Performing Arts Concert Hall. 

Admission is free and open to the public.  A reception will follow the program

Sakaluk’s topic will be “Evolutionary battles of the sexes,” the evolutionary conflict that ensues whenever the reproductive strategy pursued by one sex reduces the fitness of the other.   His lecture will illustrate some of the evolutionary outcomes of sexual conflict by discussing research on the mating systems of three insect species – decorated crickets, sagebrush crickets and burying beetles.

Sakaluk is an internationally renowned scholar and a master teacher who has been on the Illinois State faculty since 1987.  Considered a pioneer in behavioral ecology, he has made fundamental discoveries in his field, earning the respect of his colleagues around the world as the foremost expert in his research area. 

A native of Marathon, Ontario, Canada, (on the northeast shore of Lake Superior), Sakaluk completed his Ph.D. in Zoology at the University of Toronto.  Sakaluk had a postdoctoral fellowship at University of Arizona from the National Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada.  His undergraduate and master’s degrees are from Brock University, at which he wrote his first published paper.  Four years later, as a doctoral student, Sakaluk had a paper published in the prestigious journal, Science.