Learn more about our projects
Pollution
Understanding the effects of pollution on human and ecosystem health is a major goal of science and medicine. The biological and medical consequences of endocrine disrupting compounds (EDCs) has been of particular interest, due to broad human exposure via food/environmental sources and their widespread biological effects on cognitive function, morphology, and sexual development.
In collaboration with the Parrott Lab at the University of Georgia, we investigate these compounds as drivers of evolution and adaptation, using the American alligator. Our goal is to better understand the interplay of proximate (molecular) and ultimate (evolutionary) mechanisms in systemic dysfunction in the face of chronic EDC exposure.
Ivory Trade
The oldest elephants in Mozambique’s Gorongosa National Park bear the indelible markings of the civil war that gripped the country for 15 years: Many are tuskless.
They’re the lone survivors of a conflict that killed about 90 percent of elephants in the region, slaughtered for ivory to finance weapons and for meat to feed the fighters. Hunting gave elephants that didn’t grow tusks a biological advantage in Gorongosa. Recent figures suggest that about a third of younger females—the generation born after the war ended in 1992—never developed tusks.
In collaboration with X, we study the genetic underpinnings of tusk loss in Gorongosa’s elephants.
Cities
Large-scale urbanization is one of the most difficult challenges to wildlife in the Anthropocene epoch. Cities now host the majority of a growing human population, and the magnitude and geographic extent of urbanization will continue to intensify. A major consequence of urbanization is ecological homogenization - urban environments are more similar to each other than they are to adjacent undisturbed surroundings. This similarity begs the question: Do species that successfully colonize cities follow predictable evolutionary paths?
In collaboration with Dr. Kristin Winchell, we are using the Puerto Rican crested anole to conduct an in-depth exploration of physiological, regulatory and genomic adaptation to urban heat islands.