Michael Ghiselin

Michael T. Ghiselin (born May 13, 1939) is an American biologist, and philosopher as well as historian of biology currently at the California Academy of Sciences.

Ghiselin received his B.A. 1960 from the University of Utah and a Ph.D. from Stanford University in 1965. He became a Postdoctoral Fellow at Harvard University (1964–65) and moved on to become Postdoctoral Fellow at the Marine Biological Laboratory in 1965. There he stayed until 1967 as he was appointed Assistant Professor of Zoology at the University of California, Berkeley and later was picked as a Guggenheim Fellow (1978–79). Ghiselin served as Research Professor of Biology at the University of Utah (1980–83) and was MacArthur Prize Fellow from 1981 to 1986. Since 1983 the scientist is Senior Research Fellow at the California Academy of Sciences.

Ghiselin is famous for his work on sea slugs, and has had both a species (Hypselodoris ghiselini) and the defensive chemical that it contains (ghiselinin) named after him. In 2009 he co-authored a major study on chemical defense: Cimino, Guido and Michael T. Ghiselin Chemical Defense and the Evolution of Opisthobranch Gastropods. In 1969 he proposed the size-advantage model to explain sequential hermaphroditism. In some fish species, he reasoned, males can maximize their reproductive success by breeding with a harem of females rather than breeding only once as a female. In other species, where the fish live in pairs, it is to an individual's advantage to be male when small and to turn into a female when it is larger.

He also works on the history and philosophy of evolutionary biology. His historical publications have dealt mainly with Darwin and the history of comparative zoology. They include such topics as the influence of alchemy on nineteenth century zoology and the history of the Zoological Station at Naples, Italy.

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