Research

Evolutionary Processes in the Wild

            What processes generate the biodiversity we see in the world?  How do genes and the environment interact to produce the phenotypic variation that occurs within and among populations?  We pursue a mechanistic and integrative understanding of evolutionary processes in the wild by drawing together information ranging from ecological community structure to quantitative genetic variation to sub-cellular molecuar functions.  Despite the broad range of projects in our lab, it is all rooted in evolutionary ecology, and unified by the goal of understanding how adaptive and non-adaptive evolutionary processes produce the biodiversity seen in nature.  This goal has taken us from field demography through quantitative genetics, to genomics, functional genetics, epigenetics, physiology, and back again.  

Our Favorite Organisms

            For many years and the forseeable future, our primary model system has been the crustacean Daphnia.  This system allows us to juxtapose ecological and genetic data in our explorations of adaptation and divergence as they proceed in the wild because Daphnia are uniquely amenable to field work, lab experiments, and genetic analysis.  Daphnia are also ecologically important and have been a key model since the dawn of experimental ecology.  Much of our work involves comparisons of populations along the pond-lake gradient, focusing on the divergence of Daphnia into temporary ponds and large permanent lakes.  Other work relies on long-term lab experiments conducted in the absence of selection, which allows us to study the origin of genetic variation.

Our Favorite Traits

            Many of the traits we study are linked to aging, the progressive decline of performance that accompanies the unavoidable increase in adult age as time passes. Thus much of our work falls into the realm of life history evolution and trade-offs in resource acquisition and allocation.  Our work in this area helps us understand variation of lifespan, reproduction, and growth in the context of environmental variation of resource availability.  The rest of our research is tied to vision and eyes, with a focus on eye size and using as many vision-related puns as possible.  Our research on eyes aims at understanding the evolution of complex structures and the ongoing evolutionary change associated with acquisition of information from the environment.  We are interested in understanding the costs and benefits of eyes, in terms of both physiological performance and evolutionary fitness.

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Publications

Jeff Dudycha - Bibliography