Seagrasses form vast underwater meadows that provide habitat for countless other organisms and directly influence key ecosystem processes like carbon storage and erosion control.  But seagrasses are also under threat from human-caused changes in the environment such as warming temperature and cloudy water. Jay Stachowicz seeks to understand how genetic diversity within eelgrass, a seagrass found throughout the northern hemisphere, provides resilience to this species and the ecosystems it supports.

As a domesticated plant, maize has adapted to conditions in an environment shaped by humans. Thanks to its agricultural importance and longstanding genetic model, there is a wealth of data on both genotype and phenotype that can be used to understand how this adaptation occurred and is still occurring.

As crops have dispersed across the globe, they have had to adapt to a wide range of novel conditions. As climates change, crop plants will be forced to adapt or face local extinction.

Ben Sacks uses genetic and genomic tools to conduct research that advances both the persistence of wild mammal biodiversity and our basic understanding of mammal evolution and ecology.

Andrew Whitehead seeks to understand how genomes integrate cues from, respond to, and are shaped by the external environment. Students in his lab examine genomic responses to stress that occur over both physiological timescales (acclimation responses) and evolutionary timescales (adaptive responses).

Bee pollinators are critically important for agricultural and natural ecosystems. Together, wild and managed bee species contribute to the pollination of 80 crops with an estimated annual value of >$200 billion globally, >$29 billion for US agriculture, and >$9 billion for California.

What defines the limits to a species’ geographic range?

Fundamentally, a population fails to expand when it cannot achieve a positive growth rate beyond its current limits. The conditions under which this occurs can embody virtually all components of a species’ biology, making range limits an ideal testing ground for studies of the ecological and evolutionary impacts of nearly every imaginable form of rapid environmental change.