Research Program

Broadly, my program of research addresses how stressors influence organismal physiology and behavior. More specifically, I focus on the behavioral, physiological, and fitness implications of plasticity in the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis and associated physiological systems to address both basic and applied research questions. The HPA axis is evolutionarily conserved, and its hormones are critical for survival. These hormones (e.g., cortisol, corticosterone, corticotropin-releasing factor) play vital roles in many physiological and behavioral processes, and influence reproduction, immune system regulation, memory and cognition, emotional processing, feeding, and cardiovascular function. Many human diseases and psychopathologies (e.g., PTSD, anxiety disorders, depression, obesity, diabetes, Alzheimer’s Disease, Parkinson’s Disease) present with HPA axis dysregulation for unknown reasons and by unknown mechanisms. Using animal and human studies, I aim to understand how stressor-related responses, at various biological levels of analysis, correspond to differences in health, behavior, and evolutionary fitness.

My overall research program is founded on two complementary central questions:

  1. how does response to and recovery from stressors translate into functional consequences for organismal behavior (e.g., cognition, risk-taking, feeding), life history trade-offs, health, and evolutionary fitness?

  2. how do individual variation (e.g., sensory perception, genotype, diet, sex, life history stage), and interactions with the biotic and abiotic environment alter physiological and behavioral responses to stressors?

Both questions are important for understanding animal life histories, ecological interactions, and evolutionary trade-offs, and are also relevant to human health and disease.

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For more information, see the Projects page

Exciting outstanding quesitons in the field of stress physiology and glucocorticoid (GC) functions:

  1. What is a “good” stress response?

  2. Does HPA axis function map on to actual performance and fitness measures?

  3. What are the contexts in which we observe variation in GC-fitness relationships?

  4. What role does stresor type and what role do mutliple stressors or interacting aspects of stressors play?

  5. How does situational context (e.g., environmental risk, life history stage, nutritional status) impact GC-fitness relationships

  6. What is the impact of residual reproductive value on GC-fitness relationships?

Sources for outstanding questsions: Harris, 2020; Schoenle et al., 2018; Lattin et al., 2016; Taff and Vitousek, 2016; Crespi et al., 2013; Breuner et al., 2008; Wingfield and Sapolsky, 2003; Ricklefs and Wikelski, 2002

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