1. The geometry of trade-offs 

Almost any idea in evolutionary biology depends on some sort of trade-off. Fitness in one aspect of an organism's life history must come at some sort of cost; otherwise, we would be surrounded by all-fit 'Darwinian monsters'. The determinants of these trade-offs or costs are still being explored. Are they created by antagonistic pleiotropy, by resource allocation constraints, by limitations of selection pressures?
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I have previously explored the nuances of a trade-off between development time and resistance to viral infection in the Boots lab's Plodia interpunctella model system. Through working with several long-term experimental evolution lines, I examined the genetic architecture, symmetry, and shape of the trade-off. I have also previously explored the dynamics of specialization and trade-offs between adaptation to different host genotypes in the P. interpunctella granulosis virus. 

As a postdoctoral research fellow, I am extending this line of my research to explore the genetics of trade-offs through Pareto front frameworks in yeast. I plan to explore the genetics of ecological specialization and the impact of timescales on Pareto fronts.

2. Heterogeneities influencing trade-offs

The complexity of natural environments and their many heterogeneities means that the evolution of any population will be determined by multiple interacting trade-offs. However, it is not yet clear how these trade-offs with interact. This part of my research program explores how trade-offs interact to influence the evolution of a single population or to influence evolution between coevolutionary partners.

One project of my dissertation worked in the Plodia and granulosis virus model system to explore how host range trade-offs interacted with life history trade-offs in the pathogen to change the effect of local adaptation on parasite exploitation rates. Another project of my dissertation used the Plodia system to examine how resource qualify affected the evolution of host resistance to viral infection and how time scales influenced how these trade-offs interacted.

Future work in my postdoc plans to look at how trade-offs interact between coevolutionary partners to determine diversification dynamics in bacteria phage co-evolution.

3. Collaborations

With my work testing theory in experimental evolution systems, I sit on the nexus of theory and empirical work. With my background in virus evolution, I've worked in labs informed by eco-evolutionary and population genetics perspectives. As such, I'm especially passionate about linking conversations and translating between fields. How can disparate perspectives be combined to form more unified understandings of the world around us?

I have been lucky enough to work in several collaborations with scientists of different trainings to link our perspectives. With mathematician Ryosuke Iritani, I helped biologically inform an adaptive dynamics model and find empirical examples in the literature to test its predictions. With field researchers Sarah Guth and Cara Brook, I helped link data analysis to theoretical literatures. I welcome more of these sorts of collaborations in the future!