We are excited to welcome two new lab members this fall.

Linyi Zhang is a new postdoc in the lab. She completed her PhD with Scott Egan at Rice. She is broadly interested in adaptation and speciation, and her past work focused on how divergent host use promotes reproductive isolation among sympatric populations of gall wasps. She is currently combing genome-wide association mapping and whole genome sequencing of natural butterfly populations to determine the causes and consequences of (potentially) fluctuating selection on polygenic traits.

Brian Kissmer began his PhD in the lab this fall. He is interested how the nature and repeatability of adaptation depends on the degree to which a population is maladapted to a novel environment. He is initially addressing this question using experimental evolution in Callosobruchus maculatus seed beetles.