• Ph.D., Evolution, Ecology, and Organismal Biology. University of California, Riverside (2007-2012)
• B.S., Marine Biology. Ohio University (2001-2005) 

Broadly, I am interested in how stressors, or challenges, influence organismal function and life-history tradeoffs. Using animal and human subjects, I study how stress-response-related differences at various biological levels of analysis correspond to differences in health, behavior, reproduction, and fitness. More specifically, I focus on the behavioral, physiological, and fitness implications of plasticity in “stress-response” systems, mainly the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal/interrenal (HPA/I) axis. The HPA/I axis is evolutionarily conserved and its hormonal end products, the glucocorticoids, are critical for survival, and play an important role in many physiological and behavioral processes including reproduction, immune system regulation, energy metabolism, memory and cognition, and cardiovascular function. Many human diseases and psychopathologies (e.g., PTSD, anxiety disorders, depression, obesity, Alzheimer's Disease, eating disorders) present with HPA axis dysregulation for unknown reasons and by unknown mechanisms. These wide-ranging effects make the HPA axis a well-suited system for studying the physiological underpinnings of life history trade-offs and for investigating human health trajectories and disease etiology.  

Currently, my research program addresses two central themes: 1) how does variation in response to and recovery from stressors translate into functional consequences in organismal behavior, cognition, risk-taking, feeding, health, life history trade-offs, and/or fitness, and 2) how do sensory perception, genotype, diet, sex, life history stage, and interactions with the environment alter physiological and/or behavioral responses to stressors. Both questions are important for understanding animal life histories, ecological interactions, and evolutionary trade-offs, and both are relevant to human health and disease. 

My work is integrative and comparative, and I take an organismal approach to research (e.g., what are the functional, organism-level consequences of physiological responses). I have used multiple species, including crabs, lobsters, sharks, frogs, mice, and humans to answer questions relating to stress physiology, behavior, and trade-offs.