Ainsworth

Lisa Ainsworth

Our research aims to identify key mechanisms by which plants respond to specific elements of climate change and use those to maximize crop production in the future.

Allan

Brian Allan

I am broadly interested in the ecology of infectious diseases and particularly diseases that are transmitted to humans from wildlife through infected arthropods (e.g., ticks and mosquitoes). I am also interested in the consequences of human-mediated global change on the risk of exposure to these parasites and pathogens.

Anderson

Philip Anderson

In my research program I synthesize biomechanical, paleontological and evolutionary methods to answer broad, macroevolutionary questions regarding biodiversity and morphological evolution. The form-function relationship is central to understanding the diversity of life on Earth. How an animal’s phenotype (structure, morphology, physiology) interacts with its environment is a key component of evolutionary theory and is vital to understanding both microevolutionary concepts, such as adaptation, and macroevolutionary concepts, such as cladogenesis and biodiversity.

Bell

Alison Bell

Research in the Bell Lab is focused on understanding why individual animals behave differently from each other. In other words, why do individuals of the same species have different personalities? We study the proximate mechanisms underlying personality and the ultimate (evolutionary) consequences of personality using three-spined stickleback fish (mostly) as a model system.

Burgess

 

Steven Burgess

Over the next century the Midwest is predicted to have heavier early season rains, and warmer, drier summers. This is a problem, as our crops are not adapted to these conditions, resulting in yield losses at a time when we need to increase food supplies. However, hope is provided by the amazing ability of plants to adapt to climates across the globe, and a better understanding of these adaptations could aid crop improvement efforts. The Burgess Lab therefore combines physiology, biochemistry and synthetic biology to understand and combat the causes of yield losses resulting from climate change.

 

Caceres

Carla Cáceres

We focus on questions at the interface of population, community and evolutionary ecology. At its core, our research focuses on how biodiversity arises, how is it maintained, and what is its functional significance from the scale of organismal traits to ecosystems. To accomplish this, we study the organisms that inhabit lakes and experimental ponds across the US. Our lab focuses on three related areas of inquiry:

  1. How do ecological and evolutionary processes interact to shape life-history variation?
  2. How do feedbacks between genetic and species diversity influence metacommunity dynamics?
  3. How do ecological and evolutionary processes interact to shape the distribution and abundance of disease
Chen

Li-Qing Chen

The Chen lab interested in understanding the control of sugar flux in plants. We aim to increase crop yield and biofuel production or improve crop resilience to stress conditions by engineering sugar flux using a combination of in vivo biochemistry, cell biology, molecular genetics, and synthetic biology.

Dolezal

Adam Dolezal

The Dolezal Lab studies how ecological stressors, like nutrition, landscape composition/ecology, viral pathogens, and sublethal pesticide exposure interact to affect these pollinators. Working mostly in Midwestern agroecosystems dominated by row crop agriculture, his lab uses of a variety of approaches, including landscape ecology, ethology, physiology, and genomics to study these interactions and better understand how field-relevant stressors contribute to bee declines. Adam is also a first-generation college graduate, originally from Illinois, and a graduate of the University of Illinois, so he is passionate about helping students from diverse background achieve their goals in science.

Fischer

Eva Fischer

A central goal of integrative biology is to understand how genetic and environmental influences interact to produce well adapted phenotypes, but our understanding of how underlying mechanisms bias evolutionary outcomes remains limited. The goal of our research is to explore underlying mechanisms to understand how behaviors are generated, maintained, and modified by evolution. We use integrative approaches to address these questions across hierarchical levels of biological organization and timescales. Because fundamental principles governing brains and behavior are most apparent in evolutionary and developmental contexts, we combine lab and field studies to understand variation and adaptation in ecologically relevant behaviors. Currently, we work primarily with charismatic neotropical frogs.

Fuller

Becky Fuller

We are broadly interested in ecology and evolution as it applies to fishes. My students and I try to capitalize upon this variation to ask questions about:

  1. how natural and sexual selection vary over time and space,
  2. the extent to which variation among/within populations is attributable to genetic variation, phenotypic plasticity, and their interaction, and
  3. how variation in lighting environments and visual systems alters selection on coloration
Punyasena

Surangi Punyasena

The Punyasena Lab studies the influence of climate on the composition, structure, and long-term evolution of lowland Neotropical plant communities. We use the fossil pollen record to document plant response to past climate variability. Because pollen and spores are widespread in the terrestrial sediment record, we can use these microscopic fossils to study long-term trends in plant ecology and evolution.

Stone

Chris Stone

Research in the INHS Medical Entomology Lab focuses on the population biology, genetics, ecology, behavior, and control of mosquitoes, ticks, and vector-borne diseases. We also have projects exploring links between climate change and vector-borne diseases, as well as mosquito-virus interactions. Our lab works closely with the Illinois Department of Public Health on state-wide surveillance of ticks and tick-borne pathogens, and mosquitoes and emerging arboviruses.

Heath

Katy Heath

The Heath Lab answers a variety of exciting evolutionary and ecological questions, mostly by applying genetic and genomic techniques in natural populations of plants, fungi, and bacteria. We study how mutualisms coevolve and remain mutually beneficial over time and space, try to find out where plants were hiding during the last glacial cycle, ask how communities of decomposing fungi get together and rot wood that floats in streams, and ponder how plants cope with interacting with multiple root symbionts (bacteria & fungi) all at the same time. We work in the molecular lab, in the field, and in the greenhouse to answer these questions.

Ngumbi

Esther Ngumbi

I am interested in understanding the multifaceted uses of chemical signals (both volatile and non-volatile) by herbivores, natural enemies, plants and their associated microorganisms and insects. Moreover, my research on beneficial soil microbes seeks to find microbial-based solutions for improving crop production, alleviating drought stress in crop plants and sustainable pest management.

O'Dwyer

James O'Dwyer

The O’Dwyer Lab's focus is in ecological theory and complex systems, applied to a variety of taxonomic groups. We are interested in what kinds of theoretical models can explain patterns and phenomena in ecological communities, and in how to infer and validate these models with imperfect data. These data range from time series data, where species abundances are measured on relatively short, intragenerational timescales, to phylogenetic trees, where we use the deep evolutionary history of a group of organisms to infer processes, to spatially-explicit data at a snapshot in time. We are primarily a `dry’ lab, meaning that the tools we use are mostly computers, pencil and paper, and coffee.

Paige

Ken Paige

Current research centers on 1) the ecology and evolutionary biology of species interactions with an emphasis on overcompensation (enhanced fitness following herbivory). 2) conservation genetics, focusing on the ecological and evolutionary consequences of small population size. 3) phylogeographic analyses with a focus on understanding how organisms have responded to anthropogenic, geologic and climatic history and 4) the role of somatic mutation and chromosome amplification in allowing an individual plant to evolve and adapt to environmental challenges.

Suarez

Andy Suarez

In the Suarez Lab, we use ants as model organisms to address a variety of questions in ecology and behavior. Some of current projects include examining trade-offs in investment into worker size versus number, the evolution of queen fertility signals, and the biomechanics of force production in "trap-jaw" ants.

Yang

Wendy Yang

We are broadly interested in how human activities are changing how natural and managed ecosystems function and how ecosystem responses to global change can feedback to drive or slow future global change. Our research is in terrestrial biogeochemistry and ecosystem ecology with a focus on determining process rates and drivers of chemical transformations in the environment.