Degrees
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Ph.D., University of Washington, Biology
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B.S., University of Washington, Zoology
I seek to answer questions about how organisms and populations got to be the way they are as a result of evolutionary processes.
My primary interests are ecology and evolutionary biology. My research addresses the process of adaptive evolution, its mechanistic basis, and its ecological consequences for populations, communities and ecosystems. I study the phenotypic and genetic mechanisms by which populations of organisms adapt to their environment, and the impacts that evolution in critical species has on ecological communities and ecosystem properties. My study systems include natural freshwater ecosystems and model laboratory microcosms, with a particular emphasis on the water flea Daphnia. I employ diverse methods including field sampling and manipulative laboratory experiments with freshwater zooplankton, population genetics and genomics, gene expression profiling, and mathematical modeling. In my Ph.D. research with Ben Kerr at the University of Washington in Seattle, I investigated ultraviolet radiation tolerance in populations of Daphnia melanica inhabiting shallow subalpine ponds in the Olympic Mountains. I continue to study the ecology and genomics of these and other D. melanica populations as part of an ongoing collaboration with Mike Pfrender at Notre Dame University and others.
In my postdoctoral work in Nelson Hairston’s laboratory at Cornell University, I explored how the impacts of evolutionary change within populations can scale up to impact communities and ecosystems
Student Research
If you interested in conducting research in my lab see details below: