Karl Kjer

Karl M. Kjer (born November 19, 1959) is an American entomologist, taxonomist, and molecular biologist.

Background

In 1992, Kjer received his Ph.D. in entomology at the University of Minnesota. During his post-doctorate at BYU, he studied homology on ribosomal RNA. He started teaching at Rutgers University in 1996.[1] In 2015, he accepted an endowed Chair in Insect Systematics at University of California, Davis, but resigned in 2016 citing "health and family reasons."[2] In 2017, Kjer was convicted of one count of invasion of privacy after secretly recording a 19-year-old woman while she showered in his home.[3][4]

Research

Kjer studies Trichoptera phylogeny, and is contributor to the Trichoptera Barcode of Life Database. The database is part of the Consortium for the Barcode of Life, a project which hopes to collect barcodes for all of life.[5] The database had 61,000 individuals in 5,800 species as of 2015, representing about half the genetic diversity of Trichoptera. He showed that substitution rates are the most important factor in site-specific rate estimation, and that codon partitioning is a poor method of differential weighting.[6] Kjer, along with Bernhard Misof and Xin Zhou, lead the 1KITE initiative, which studies insect evolution through both phylogenomic sequencing and morphology.

References

1. "6th International Barcode of Life conference". August 2015.
2. Resignation: Dec. 2, 2017
3. Luke Nozicka (September 12, 2017). "Man who secretly filmed teen in shower avoids jail". True Jersey.
4. Hannah Holzer (June 7, 2018). "Former UC Davis professor filmed individuals showering without their consent, stored footage on university-owned hard drives". The California Aggie.
5. "Trichoptera Barcode of Life – Participants". International Barcode of Life Project. 2012.
6. Kjer KM, Honeycutt RL (2007). "Site specific rates of mitochondrial genomes and the phylogeny of eutheria". BMC Evol Biol. 7: 8. doi:10.1186/1471-2148-7-8. PMC 1796853. PMID 17254354.