Dispersal is a fundamental process that affects all aspects of an organism’s biology including its distribution, genetic structure, demography, and reproduction. Ant-mediated seed dispersal has evolved multiple times in ...

Maintenance of genetic variation in the face of strong natural selection is a long-standing problem in evolutionary biology. Two extreme examples of this are the guppy (Poecilia reticulata) and the bluefin killifish (Lucania ...

The main goal of my dissertation research was to investigate how maternal effects influence offspring productivity in common grackles ( Quiscalus quiscula). Maternal effects are largely considered adaptive, but my research ...

Arctic climate is warming at a rate disproportionately faster than the rest of the world. Changes have been observed within the tundra that are attributed to this trend, including active layer thickening, shrubland expansion, ...

The field of life-history evolution is aimed at understanding the diversity of fertility and longevity patterns observed in nature. These patterns are influenced by the interplay of traits that directly affect the fitness ...

Anthropogenic climate change is leading to dramatic fluctuations of essential climate dynamics and has become a major threat to modern ecosystem services and biodiversity because of its magnitude and rate of change. Climate ...

Predators directly interact with their prey. These direct interactions can indirectly alter the interactions between prey and other community members. For example, predators can alter prey life history, behavior, or ...

A fundamental goal of evolutionary biology is to understand how novel traits arise. Eusociality represents an extreme form of social organization which has evolved independently a number of times across insects and is ...