My research interests center around two core and related questions: 1.) How do (abiotic) environments determine whether and where animals persist?, and 2.) How do animals respond, at cellular to organismal to population levels, to environmental challenges? In tackling these questions, I have worked with diverse animals that live in diverse environments: from tropical frogs and orchid bees to subtropical hummingbirds to north temperate agricultural pests and pollinators to Rocky Mountain stoneflies, Sierra Nevada fruit flies and Himalayan bumble bees . Regardless of the organism, I combine detailed characterization of the environments they live in with physiological experiments to measure function in those environments and often with modeling to broaden findings to other systems.

I received my BS in Zoology from University of Texas, Austin, my PhD from the University of Washington, Seattle, and then did postdocs at UW and the University of Califronia, Berkeley before joining the faculty at the University of Wyoming in 2009.

My graduate research aims to link individual glucocorticoid (GC) hormone levels to population-level dynamics via process-informed quantitative integration. In particular, my work incorporates statistical techniques such as structural equation modeling, robust design survival models, and integrated population models to provide explicit descriptions of the connections between drivers of GC elevation, individual physiology, and population-level changes. The goal of my research is to describe organism-level trade-offs and GC thresholds in response to multiple drivers and provide a methodology for determining which GC measures are the most predictive of wildlife health. Ultimately, I hope to create a practical framework for researchers and conservation managers to use in assessing wildlife health through GC levels.

I am currently a PhD candidate in the lab of Dr. Creagh Breuner at the University of Montana, where I also received my Bachelor of Science in Wildlife Biology in 2019. My undergraduate studies sparked my interests in ornithology, physiology, and population modeling, which are the major driving forces behind my current graduate research.

I study the ecology and evolution of birds. One of my main interests, relative to OSyM, is the influence of climate change on the breeding ecology of birds. I recently co-edited the second edition of "Effects of Climate Change on Birds" (OUP). A major theme of the volume is that we know little about the mechanisms (physiological, behavioral and demographic) that will impact birds in the future as temperatures increase. I am particularly interested in how trophic interactions will affect birds, specifically how changes in insect abundance and phenology will affect the timing of breeding and reproductive success of birds. Predictive models are relatively uncommon in this area, but may be important for understanding responses to climate change.

I grew up in Connecticut where I became interested in birds and nature at a young age. I gained BS and MS degrees in Wildlife Biology, before switching to Zoology for my PhD at the Univ. of Alberta (1989). I did post-doctoral work on birds at the Queen's Univ., Australian National Univ. and Louisiana State Univ before settling at the Univ. of Wisc. Milwaukee in 1996. I have been studying the ecology and evolution of birds, primarily warblers, swallows and grouse ever since.

As an ecological physiologist my lab focues on physiological and organism-level responses of wildlife to various environmental stimuli. My research program focuses on two major lines of inquiry. First, how do parents influence the developmental environment of their young and what are the phenotypic implications for their offspring? Second, how do organisms respond physiologically to biotic and abiotic (e.g., environmental contaminants and disease) factors in their environment and what are the implications for survival and reproduction? We combine lab, field, and modeling techniques to investigate research questions relevant to ecological immunology and disease ecology, parental care, bioenergetics, stress physiology, and life history theory.

I'm an Associate Professor at the University of Arkansas in the Department of Biological Sciences. I completed my BS at the University of South Carolina and my MS and PhD at Virginia Tech. After earning my PhD in Fish and Wildlife Conservation, I took a postdoctoral position with Dr. Michael Romero at Tufts University, Two years later, I was hired as an Assistant Professor at Oklahoma State University. My academic partner was in a tenure track position at the University of Arkansas. As we embarked on starting a family, I moved homes and labs to be an Assistant Professor at the University of Arkansas. I was promoted to Associate Professor and awarded tenure in the fall of 2020. I live in Fayetteville, AR with my spouse, two little girls (ages 6 and 1), a dog, a cat, and a myriad of fish. In my free time I like to swim and snorkel in rivers of NWA, hike, and do anything crafty.

The Extavour Lab studies evolution and ecology of development: EvoEcoDevo. They primarly use insects, including Drosophia in their research.

Cassandra Extavour is a native of Toronto, where she attended the University of Toronto Schools and went on to obtain an Honors BSc at the University of Toronto with a specialist in Molecular Genetics and Molecular Biology, a Major in Mathematics and a Minor in Spanish. She obtained her PhD with Antonio Garcia Bellido at the Severo Ochoa Center for Molecular Biologyat the Autonomous University of Madrid. She performed postdoctoral work first with Michalis Averof at the Institute for Molecular Biology and Biotechnology in Crete, Greece, and subsequently with Michael Akam at the University of Cambridge. At Cambridge she received a BBSRC Research Grant and became a Research Associate in the Department of Zoology. In 2007 she established her independent laboratory as an Assistant Professor in the Department of Organismic and Evolutionary Biology at Harvard University, where she was promoted to associate professor in 2011 and to full professor in 2014.

Robert Full’s primary interests reside in the area of comparative biomechanics and physiology. His research program quantifies whole animal performance in general and locomotion in particular as it relates to an animal's structure, physiology, and behavior. He uses biomechanical, computer simulation (dynamic musculo-skeletal modeling), physical modeling (robot and artificial muscle construction), isolated muscle, biochemical, whole-animal exercise physiology and field-tracking techniques to seek general design principles for species which have evolved different solutions to the problems of locomotion and activity in general. The study of arthropod, amphibian and reptilian locomotion continues to offer an excellent opportunity for comparison. Animals such as crabs, cockroaches, ants, beetles, scorpions, centipedes, lizards, geckos and salamanders show tremendous variation in body shape, gas transport system, leg number, musculoskeletal arrangement and mode of movement. He uses these "novel" biological designs as natural experiments to probe for basic themes concerning the relationship between morphology, body size, energetics, dynamics, control, stability, maneuverability, maximum speed and endurance. An understanding of the diverse biological solutions to the problems of locomotion contributes to the development of a general theory of energetics, neuro-mechanics and behavior. Full collaborates closely with engineers, mathematicians and computer scientists by providing biological principles to inspire the design of multi-legged robots, artificial limbs and muscles, novel control algorithms, and self-cleaning, dry adhesives.

Robert Full received his doctoral degree from SUNY Buffalo, conducted a post doc at The University of Chicago and is a Howard Hughes Medical Institute Professor of Integrative Biology and Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at the University of California at Berkeley. Professor Full is the Director of the Poly-PEDAL Laboratory and the Center for interdisciplinary Bio-inspiration in Education and Research (CiBER).

Prior to graduate school most of my experience was in marine ecology, but while taking classes I became fascinated with biogeochemistry. Though I still consider myself an ecologist, my interests have broadened to encompass how ecological responses to environmental change modulate energy and resource flows in marine systems.
My dissertation research is on sediment responses to the diel oxygen cycle. Oxygen availability is a fundamental parameter that governs sediment function by driving the metabolism and behaviors of organisms inhabiting sediments. Though sediment systems have been well studied under steady-state oxygen conditions, both high and low, very little is known about how they respond to fluctuations in oxygen. Yet the diel oxygen cycle, in which oxygen peaks during the day due to photosynthesis then drops at night from respiration, is extremely common in the shallow marine systems that are critical sites of nutrient and organic matter cycling. The diel cycle affects both biogeochemical processes in sediments and the behavior and activity of sediment macrofauna that influence those processes, sometimes quite dramatically. We know that macrofaunal responses to hypoxia vary considerably among taxa, but how those behaviors change with fluctuating oxygen is almost entirely unknown. This is a major hole in our understanding of sediments’ role in coastal marine systems. The goal of my dissertation is to investigate how the diel cycle drives short-term change in behaviors and resulting sediment function, and whether it may influence estimates of diagenesis over the long term.

I graduated with a BS in Biology and a Marine Science minor from William and Mary in 2014, and began a marine science graduate program in 2015. I am now a Ph.D. candidate at the University of South Alabama at the Dauphin Island Sea Lab studying coastal sediment responses to the diel oxygen cycle.

Most of the research in my laboratory involves the evolution of complex traits. Through empirical, theoretical, and methodological studies, we are also helping to develop the field of evolutionary physiology (e.g., see Annual Review of Physiology [1994] 56:579-621; BioEssays [2021] 44:e2100167). Physiology is the study of how organisms work. Evolution is the study of how organisms have changed (genetically) across generations. Thus, evolutionary physiology is the study of how and why the way organisms work has changed over time. For example, does the way an organism work constrain the way it may evolve? Answers to such questions require a deep understanding of both proximate and ultimate mechanisms, including phenotypic plasticity and early-life effects. Accordingly, my graduate students come through the Evolution, Ecology, and Organismal Biology Graduate Program in the Department of E.E.O. Biology, as well as the Neuroscience Graduate Program, Genetics, Genomics & Bioinformatics Graduate Program, and the Graduate Program in Biomedical Sciences. As physiology cannot properly be understood in isolation from genetics, morphology, biochemistry, and behavior, my general approach is integrative and hence crosses traditional boundaries between disciplines.

Ph.D.: University of California, Riverside
Postdoctoral Research: University of Washington
Faculty: University of Wisconsin-Madison
Faculty: University of California, Riverside