Amy Angert...

Description Of Research

I am interested in understanding mechanisms of adaptation and how tradeoffs place constraints on the process of adaptive diversification. I examine how organisms adapt to their environment, what mechanisms limit adaptive evolution along environmental gradients, and how the interaction of natural selection with endogenous tradeoffs generates diversity across species and environments. The major focus of my research to date has been on investigating these processes at the margins of species geographic distributions, which present an interesting evolutionary conundrum because they are places where adaptive evolution seems to fail. I employ a variety of empirical approaches in both field and lab settings, and I place emphasis on the measurement of variation in physiological traits that govern the acquisition and allocation of resources for survival, growth, and reproduction. Although my research questions are applicable to all organisms, plants provide a nice study system because of their logistical tractability for experimentation, breeding, and field studies. I am interested in mentoring graduate students whose research questions are motivated by a strong interest in natural history and who share my interest in integrating field and lab studies.

Representative Publications