Our lab is focused on asking questions about how adaptive and neutral evolutionary process structure genomic, epigenomic, and phenotypic variation within an environmental context. Right now major research themes and questions revolve around the evolution of replicated phenotypic forms across environmental gradients in adaptive radiations, spatio-temporal landscape epigenomics and genomics, the adaptive potential of introgression, and the genomic basis of ecologically relevant traits. Our research uses “multi-omics” approaches to infer how environmental change over time structures diversity among populations, species, and communities. Our work is heavily dependent on field-based work, natural history knowledge, and museum collections.
Landscape genetics/genomics has generally focused on patterns and processes revolving around contemporary environments. We are extending inference using temporal series samples to better understand how recent spatio-temporal environmental change has structured patterns of neutral and adaptive genetic diversity among populations.
We are using landscape level epigenomic data to infer the distribution of epigenetic variation along environmental gradients. This approach, landscape epigenomics has the potential to provide new insight into how organisms adjust to their environments.