Geoff Attardo and his students examine the reproductive biology of insect vectors of human disease. He currently investigates the effects of wildfire-derived changes on mosquito habitats to better understand impacts on the biology and physiology of these important disease vectors.

Rachael Bay studies interactions between human-induced changes in the environment and evolutionary processes. This includes how animals respond to changes in their environment that are caused by humans as well as how evolution might mitigate some of the negative impacts of human-induced change. She uses a combination of ecological and physiological experiments and large-scale genomic and environmental data to understand patterns of evolution associated with anthropogenic impacts across a wide range of non-model animals. Her work ultimately can be used to create forward-looking conservation management decisions.

Elizabeth Crone studies population ecology, especially of plants and insects, and plant-animal interactions. She focuses on how environmental changes translate to changes in population dynamics: For example, is there a simple, linear matching of changes in resources to abundance of consumers, or do interactions among individuals and species moderate these responses? Current research focuses largely on insect population viability in changing environments, with some continuing work on plant population dynamics and mast-seeding. 

Plant ecologist Val Eviner investigates the mechanisms that underlie ecosystem resilience to multiple environmental changes. These include drought, fire, nutrient deposition, and invasive species. She also studies how to manage and restore these mechanisms, focusing on seedbanks, plant-soil interactions, and ecosystem services.

Nann Fangue seeks to understand the physiological specializations that allow animals to survive and thrive in complex environments. She studies aquatic species, including sturgeon and salmonids, to understand whether these organisms have sufficient physiological capacity or plasticity to maintain successful performance in the face of anthropogenic environmental perturbations such as climate change. This research couples molecular, biochemical, physiological, and whole-organism measures of performance framed in an ecological context, to elucidate connections between environment, physiology, and ecosystem function.

Jenny Gremer's research focuses on understanding plant responses to variable and changing environments, the mechanisms driving those responses, and the consequences for population and community dynamics. She investigates how species’ traits interact with the environment to affect performance and how those patterns influence population and community dynamics. She uses a combination of physiology and demography to understand processes such as life history evolution, population dynamics, and the maintenance of diversity in communities.

Kate Laskowski investigates the causes and consequences of behavioral diversity and plasticity. In her research, she explores how evolution has shaped the developmental processes that generate behavioral variation. She seeks to understand how individuals integrate cues from their genes, parents, and experiences to build their phenotypes from both ultimate and proximate perspectives.

Emily Meineke studies insect-plant interactions under human influence. Her research focuses on species that are of cultural importance, such as street trees, crops, crop wild relatives, and plants that support rare insect species. Her work combines experiments, observations, community science, and biological collections to address key hypotheses in ecology.

Gail Patricelli studies the sounds, smells, colors, dances, electrical fields, and seismic vibrations that animals use to communicate. She addresses the function of these signals and why they take on such diverse and complex forms, using an integrative approach that examines functional, environmental and mechanistic influences on signal content and design. One of the central goals of her research is to understand how signals are influenced by the social and environmental contexts in which they are used. She has pioneered new techniques and technologies for the detailed observation and experimental manipulation of both visual and acoustic signals in the field, including biomimetic robots and microphone arrays.

Mikaela Provost studies fish, fisheries, and the influence of environmental change on population dynamics of harvested marine species. Her research uses theoretical and empirical approaches to address applied problems in fisheries management and marine conservation, including how human fishing communities respond to changes in fish populations.