George Uetz

George W. Uetz is a Professor of Biological Sciences at the University of Cincinnati, with a career spanning over five decades. His research focuses on animal behavior and ecology, particularly the behavioral ecology of spiders, including communication networks, sexual selection, and social behavior in colonial species. He has held leadership roles such as Department Head of Biological Sciences and Associate Dean for Research in the College of Arts and Sciences. Uetz's work integrates field studies and laboratory experiments to understand how environmental factors influence communication and social behaviors in spiders like wolf spiders (Lycosidae) and colonial web-building species.

Education: B.A. in Biology (Albion College, 1968), M.S. in Entomology and Applied Ecology (University of Delaware, 1970), Ph.D. in Ecology, Ethology, and Evolution (University of Illinois, 1976). He has supervised numerous students and collaborators, contributing to over 200 peer-reviewed publications. His grants include NSF-funded projects on sensory ecology, El Niño impacts, and spider communication networks.

Research interests emphasize multimodal signaling, predator-prey interactions, and the role of environmental stressors on spider behavior. Notable grants include a 2016 NSF award for studying seismic communication networks and a 2020 internal grant exploring neuroecology of reproductive trade-offs. Uetz has served as editor for Animal Behaviour and has held roles at the National Science Foundation and peer review committees.

His recent work investigates infection effects on spider communication, behavioral plasticity in response to environmental changes, and the evolutionary implications of multimodal signals. Uetz’s lab focuses on spiders as model systems for studying communication networks and ecological adaptations, with contributions to understanding how habitat structure and social context shape animal behavior.