Evolution

The Evolution group within the Department of Biological Sciences includes a strong and highly interactive faculty with national and international reputations in the fields of population and evolutionary biology.  The Evolutionary Biology group works closely with the Ecology group to understand the ecological context of evolutionary change and the evolutionary response to changing ecological environments.   Our research programs include population genetics, conservation genetics, phenotypic and molecular evolution, phylogenetics, evolutionary development of sensory systems, speciation, experimental evolution and evolutionary genomics.  Our diverse research questions include understanding the evolutionary responses by populations to changing environments and the drivers and consequences of biodiversity across levels of biological organization.  We study evolutionary responses to both natural and human-driven environmental change at local, regional and global scales and at multiple time scales. .  Our research systems range from marine to freshwater to terrestrial and include studies on birds, plants, and a wide range of invertebrates.  Many of our research studies are conducted in the field from environments from all over the Earth, including the Rocky Mountains and the southwestern and southeastern United States, from the Arctic to the Antarctic, open-ocean habitats and coastal systems of the United States, Europe and Asia.