Current projects
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Understanding the role of abiotic gradients in driving plastic and genetic variation in life cycle expression and individual performance
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Measuring the correlation between life cycle traits and genetic population structure
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Understanding the role of somatic mutations in the life cycle evolution of organisms with indeterminate growth
Ecology and evolution of complex life cycles
I study the eco-evolutionary forces that shape the complex life cycles in marine organisms. I am interested the interplay between genetic and plastic sources of variation in how partially clonal organisms allocated resources among growth, asexual, and sexual reproduction - and the consequences that variation in allocation strategy have for genetic population structure and mating system.
I am also working on a number of projects to understand the mechanisms that stabilize haplo-diplontic life cycles in marine algae as a post-doc in the Krueger-Hadfield Lab at UAB.