I am broadly interested in the genetics of adaptation and speciation. How do new species form? How does adaptive variation arise and spread? How is morphological variation created through development and modified by natural selection? Is evolution predictable?
The focus of my lab’s...
In the Collin Lab we work to understand how environmental conditions, their natural variation and environmental change from the climate emergency shape marine ecosystems and biodiversity. Our current work focuses on three areas (1) Documenting the biodiversity of tropical marine invertebrates, (...
In our lab, we investigate sensory and cognitive mechanisms underlying animal behavior. Animals use a wide array of cues and signals to glean information about their environment. An animal’s sensory and perceptual systems filter incoming stimuli and define an animal’s Umwelt, or the...
My primary research focus is on Panamanian frogs that are likely extinct in the wild due to a fungal infection but are kept alive in captive breeding programs in Panama and the United States. Our lab has collected founding individuals for these amphibian colonies, devised methods to sustainably...
A massive coral bleaching event in Panama’s Guna Yala islands along the eastern Caribbean coast signals a major problem with rising ocean temperatures and their long-term effects.
Discover the captivating world of ant-following birds in our upcoming talk!
Frogs lay eggs both in the water and in jelly-like masses on plants. Could their flexible behavior help explain how vertebrates moved from life in ocean to life on land?
A new study from the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute (STRI) shows that red-eyed treefrog embryos hatch early when exposed to high ammonia levels — an environmental cue that it’s too hot and dry for the eggs to survive.
Research projects in our lab combine approaches from behavioral ecology, functional morphology, ethology and evolution of behavior. Our work focuses mostly on the ultimate and proximate causes of behavior in an ecological and social context, with an emphasis on how ecological or social...
A new study finds that leatherback sea turtles tend to migrate rather than forage when chlorophyll, primary productivity, and sea surface temperature levels are lower.
