Downs Ecological Physiology Lab
Lab focus:
Scaling & trade-offs in animal physiology; mostly immune defenses; mostly an ecological or evolutionary context.
PI: Cynthia J. Downs - Assistant Professor
COME WORK WITH MY RESEARCH GROUP AT ESF!!!!
I'm currently hiring graduate students to work in my new lab at ESF.
Topics:
How does nutritional condition mediates immune defenses in wild ungulates?
How do immune responses scale with body size in terrestrial vertebrates?
Physiological trade-offs in vertebrates.
How do environmental conditions influence host competence and disease spread?
Your proposed topic in animal physiology.
Contact me at cjdowns<at>esf.edu to inquire.
Research Overview
My lab investigates how the diverse physiological traits expressed by animals alter an animal’s interaction with its environment and mediates the animal’s ecology, population dynamics, and evolutionary trajectories. My research is largely focused at the organismal level, but because organismal-level phenotypes are not independent of each other, of the mechanisms that mediate expression of phenotypes, or of ecological and evolutionary history, I integrate studies across biological levels. Specifically, my program seeks to understand (1) mechanisms that mediate physiological traits and trade-offs, (2) how physiological traits determine life histories and population dynamics, and (3) how environmental conditions affect physiological phenotypes. Much of my work asks questions in the area of ecological immunology. Ultimately, I seek to understand the interplay among levels of biological organization that lead to expression of a physiological phenotype and the consequences of individual variation in determining physiological phenotypes. To investigate these topics, I use diverse techniques from multiple disciplines including experimental evolution, immunology, population ecology, and comparative physiology to collect data at different levels of organization (e.g., molecular, organisms, populations).
