RESEARCH INTERESTS
My research is focused on understanding how stress can drive evolution. That is, to understand how selective pressures act to reinforce or attenuate the machinery of stress responses, and how their components have been co-opted to enable survival in novel environments. As cellular stress responses play critical roles safeguarding homeostasis, their limits act to define species’ modern distributions and their resilience in the face of environmental change.
I approach this research using the diverse group of animals that have been stuck in the cold, as these include living things experiencing distinct modalities of environmental stress. Freezing temperatures imposes stringent selective pressures that can be found in perennially cold regions like the poles, but also seasonally in many temperate habitats. By contrast, the reduction in thermal variability experienced by those species now endemic to perennially cold habitats can allow the atrophy of stress responding pathways. Losses that may now limit the capacity of species to adapt to future warming. |