Paul Schmidt

As a research group, we are broadly interested in the ecological and evolutionary dynamics of populations that experience environmental heterogeneity over various spatial and temporal scales.  We seek to understand mechanistically how natural selection works in heterogeneous environments, the context dependency and many constraints on this process, and how this ultimately produces an adaptive response.   Our research combines extensive sampling of natural populations and –omics level characterizations, laboratory-based classical and molecular genetics, and experimentation conducted in both the field and laboratory.   Much of our work is centered on testing the functional significance of identified molecular polymorphism: establishing concrete links between allelic variation, physiologically mediated performance, and the differential fitness of genotypes among environments.