A fundamental question in behavioral ecology and evolutionary biology and my research is understanding how and why environments influence the phenotypes upon which selection acts. My current research foci are twofold.

First, I seek to understand how early-life social experiences ‘get under the skin’ to affect future phenotypes and aging. To do this, I test hypotheses about how both the type and timing of early-life social experiences affect developmental plasticity, and what molecular and physiological mechanisms mediate these relationships.

Second, I am interested in how the allocation and acquisition of resources influence life history traits and fitness, and the role of behavior in these processes. Here, I test hypotheses investigating how socioecological factors and organismal constraints influence individuals’ life history traits and potential trade-offs that affect fitness.

A third research area that I am working to develop aims to utilize a natural experiment at my study site to understand how hyenas are affected by increasing urbanization. Here, I plan to test hypotheses investigating the contribution of evolutionary processes and phenotypic plasticity as drivers of behavioral and morphological response to changing environments and related fitness consequences.

Below, I provide additional details on each of these these topics.