Research

General Interests

• Evolutionary and ecological consequences of phenotypic plasticity (primary interest)
• Marine invertebrate life-history evolution (secondary interest)

Current Work

Morphological plasticity to multiple types of predators

I am currently interested in how organisms response when exposed to multiple inducing agents. In particular, I am testing whether prey exposed to a single type of predator respond differently compared to when prey are exposed to multiple predators. I currently working with the whelk Nucella lamellosa as the prey, and the seastar Pisaster ochraceous and the crab Cancer productus as the predators.

Evolutionary consequences of plasticity

I am working on a model that investigates how different costs of plasticity can alter rates of evolutionary change. Initial modeling suggests that plasticity the type of cost can greatly affect rates of evolution.

Interpreting experimental evidence for adaptive phenotypic plasticity

There is an increasing interest in experimentally testing whether phenotypic plasticity is adaptive. However, currently most tests are very difficult to interpret because of plausible alternative explanations. I am developing methods for distiguishing among these alternative explanations, which will allow for much stronger interferences about whether particular examples of plasticity are adaptive.