Common species are rare. A vast majority of biodiversity consists of specialist species. How then do common species arise and how are they able to persist across heterogeneous environments? To address these questions, the lab studies broadly distributed generalist species both in mainland North America and throughout the Caribbean. For example, we use Lesser Antillean anoles across islands as evolutionary replicates to study parallel local adaptation to landscape level variation. Ongoing projects in the lab include understanding landscape epigenetics, determining the influence of microhabitat buffering on landscape level patterns, and testing for parallelism across levels of biological organization.

Niche differentiation as an outcome of competition has long been posited as a major driver of diversification. A central theme of my research is understanding the contexts in which competition can act as the dominant driver of divergence. Research in this area spans several systems including the tadpole communities across Texas, Caribbean anoles, and novel communities of introduced species. By exploring both interspecific and intraspecific competition under various context, I aim to build a multifaceted understanding of when competition does and does not lead to diversification. Current projects in this area include the interaction between interspecific and intraspecific competition and determinants of competitive outcomes in novel communities.

The Caribbean forms one of the world’s biodiversity hotspots and has been a foundational system for our understanding of ecology and evolution. Our conservation work strives to contribute to capacity building in local communities and to provide information of applied value to stakeholders. Projects in this area are aimed at understanding how contemporary land use change influence local adaptation, population structure, and species interactions as well as resolving the cryptogenic species problem (species are those whose native and non-native ranges are unknown). The Caribbean poses a particular challenge to accurate assessments of species distributions due to the network of anthropogenically-interconnected insular systems in close geographic proximity whose human influence dates to prehistory.

The lab is in the process of reviving an interest in behavioral responses to the environment. In particular, research into kin aggregation behaviors in reptile species typically considered 'asocial' and drivers of female ornament evolution. Relatively little attention has been paid to social behavior in most reptile species. Yet, increasing evidence suggests that reptiles can be cryptically social including through kin aggregation during specific life history events. We are studying sleeping aggregations in anoles to examine factors that drive this behavior. In a similar vein, study of ornamental signaling traits have traditionally focused on the less choosy sex, typically males. However, mounting evidence suggests that such signaling traits may be co-opted in females by sex-specific selection. New research in the lab will address when and why this occurs.