My research examines how environmental variation shapes animals’ phenotypes in the wild by linking hormonal mechanism with behavioral and ecological outcomes. Animals respond to changes in their environments – whether physical, social or chemical – via shifts in hormonal signaling, which ultimately mediate behavioral and developmental responses. Students in my laboratory use integrative and comparative experimental approaches to investigate how hormonal mechanisms generate phenotypic variation in free-ranging animals, and explore the importance of those mechanisms for basic questions in evolutionary biology and behavioral ecology, as well as for emerging problems in animal conservation, including how chemical pollutants in the environment can impact wildlife health by disrupting hormonal signaling.
Articles
Gene transcripts encoding hypoxia-inducible factor (HIF) exhibit tissue- and muscle fiber type-dependent responses to hypoxia and hypercapnic hypoxia in the Atlantic blue crab, Callinectes sapidus (with Kristin M. Hardy, Chandler R. Follett, and Louis E. Burnett), Comparative Biochemistry and Physiology, Part A: Molecular & Integrative Physiology (2012)
Hypoxia inducible factor (HIF) is a transcription factor that under low environmental oxygen regulates the...
Tissue-specific thyroid hormone regulation of gene transcripts encoding iodothyronine deiodinases and thyroid hormone receptors in striped parrotfish (Scarus iseri) (with Kaitlin M. Johnson), General and Comparative Endocrinology (2011)
In fish as in other vertebrates, the diverse functions of thyroid hormones are mediated at...
Physical habitat and social conditions across a coral reef shape spatial patterns of intraspecific behavioral variation in a demersal fish (with Meagan N. Schrandt, Kristin M. Hardy, and Kaitlin M. Johnson), Marine Ecology: An Evolutionary Perspective (2011)
As coral reef ecosystems decline in health worldwide, reef-associated fishes are being impacted by changes...
Adaptive Divergence in the Thyroid Hormone Signaling Pathway in the Stickleback Radiation (with Jun Kitano, J. Adam Luckenbach, Seiichi Mori, Yui Kawagishi, Makoto Kusakabe, Penny Swanson, and Catherine L. Peichel), Current Biology (2010)
During adaptive radiations, animals colonize diverse environments, which requires adaptation in multiple phenotypic traits
Diurnal rhythms of behavior and brain mRNA expression for arginine vasotocin, isotocin, and their receptors in wild Amargosa pupfish (Cyprinodon nevadensis amargosae) (with Lauren J. Wagstaff and Nina M. Gardner), Marine and Freshwater Behaviour and Physiology (2010)
Amargosa pupfish (Cyprinodon nevadensis amargosae) occupy remote desert habitats that vary widely in environmental conditions...