Historically, there has been much thought as to how an individual’s environment and ecology (e.g., its resources, competitors, predators and pathogens) influence them, both developmentally and evolutionarily, to produce adaptive traits (Baldwin 1896; Schmalhausen 1949; Waddington, 1959). However, few empirical studies and even fewer examples from natural populations provide convincing evidence for plasticity’s role in the origins and diversification of such traits. The general goal of my research is to fill this lacuna by answering questions such as,
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1)How do novel or changing environments affect the expression of genetic variation in natural populations?
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2)What role does inherited epigenetic variation play in adaptation to novel or changing environments?
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3)How are developmental pathways altered by environmental signals to produce morphological diversity, and how has this variation become stabilized among lineages?
My doctoral research in Dr. David Pfennig’s laboratory was conducted using natural populations of spadefoot toads that have evolved novel resource-use traits and exhibit diverse feeding strategies. Currently, I am working with Dr. Nanette Nascone-Yoder to understand how endogeneous and environmental signals create macroevolutionary diversity in gut morphology among anuran larvae from different clades.
