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.

I am an ecological physiologist and behavioral ecologist interested in stress and development. Most of my current work occurs in box-nesting species of passerines.

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As a disease ecologist, my overarching motivation is to understand how parasites and their hosts interact, shape one another, and move through the world. My work focuses on natural host–parasite systems, where infection and immunity unfold across time, life stages, and ecological contexts.

My research lies in disease ecology, where I study how immunity and infection vary through time, both seasonally and across host life stages, in natural systems. I completed my PhD at the University of Jyväskylä (Finland), focusing on the behavioral ecology of poison frogs. More broadly, I am motivated by understanding how organisms exist in and perceive their environments, and I find particular joy in asking questions and designing experiments that illuminate their lived realities. Outside of academia, I enjoy being outdoors, writing stories, and painting.

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).

My research integrates evolutionary biology, computational modeling, and phylogenetics to investigate how organismal traits diversify and evolve. A major thrust of my work involves the extraordinarily species-rich plant genus Impatiens, where I examine the divergence of morphological traits and the genomic underpinnings of speciation. I use phylogenomic, statistical, and trait-based data to build integrative models that explain diversity patterns and evolutionary dynamics. I am also interested in developing and refining mathematical models that describe how traits evolve—an effort that spans traditional evolutionary theory and modern computational tools. I have created software such as PhyloM, which infers relationships among taxa based on measured traits, offering a phenotypic complement to sequence-based phylogenetics. However, I now seek to move beyond distance-based inference toward mechanistic models of trait evolution—such as Brownian motion and Ornstein-Uhlenbeck processes—that can ground observed trait divergence in biological processes. My long-term goal is to collaborate with systems modelers to better understand the evolutionary trajectories of measurable traits in organisms, using a synthesis of theory, empirical data, and simulation. OSyM represents an ideal community to foster these collaborations and to contribute to a broader understanding of trait evolution within an organismal systems framework.

I am a Professor in the Biomedical Sciences Program at Midwestern University, Glendale, AZ, with training in fisheries science, statistics, quantitative genetics, and computational biology. My career has consistently bridged organismal biology and modeling, both in research and teaching. I teach courses in Genetics, Statistics, Evolutionary Medicine, and Precision Medicine, and mentor graduate students on topics ranging from species delimitation to trait evolution. My research focuses on using analytical and computational tools to understand biological diversity through an evolutionary lens. Much of my work has centered on the plant genus Impatiens, where I investigate character evolution, trait divergence, and the genomic basis of speciation. My background enables me to develop tools that allow researchers to draw biological insight from complex data. For example, I developed PhyloM, a program that infers phenotypic trees from measurement or binary trait data, which has applications across many organismal systems. I also co-advise studies in vertebrate physiology, plant biodiversity, and microbial ecology—often contributing evolutionary or statistical modeling frameworks. Through this integrative approach, I aim to model how organism-level traits evolve and interact with genetic, developmental, and environmental systems, making me strongly aligned with OSyM’s mission to promote systems-based approaches to organismal biology.