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.

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).

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.