Postdoc positions available! For details, please go here.

Welcome to the Dijkstra lab at Central Michigan University!

We study how social competition and metabolic state shape brain function, stress resilience, and evolutionary processes. Using African cichlid fish as our primary model system, we combine behavioral, physiological, and neurogenomic approaches to study how animals cope with the energetic challenges of territoriality and reproduction.

Research spotlight: 

• Social stress and the brain (media coverage) - how dominance interactions influence brain oxidative stress. 

• Sexual selection and male coloration - mate choice and male-male competition drive plasticity in a sexual signal.

• Why do mothers eat their babies? (media coverage) - managing the metabolic stress of mouthbrooding, and our follow-up study.

recent lab News

• March 2026 - MIRA R35 is now official! This $1.87M grant from NIH will support bioenergetics research in fish models.

• March 2026 - Lab tech and postdoc positions posted (see 'join the lab' or evoldir job posting). There is funding for ~5 years.

• March 2026 - Peter gives a talk for the Greater Akron Aquarium Society. 

• February 2026 - Coping style and zebrafish brain project highlighted by CMU! This project is a collaboration with the Wong Lab at the University of Nebraska at Omaha (funded by INBRE), with first paper now in preprint.

• December 2025 - Abigail Medler joins the lab as a Masters student! Abby graduated from Saginaw Valley State University. She will study behavioral decision making in cichlid fish.

• December 2025 - Peter gives seminars at KU Leuven (Belgium), Wageningen University (The Netherlands), and University of Basel (Switzerland). Visited labs of Hugo Gante (Leuven), Alexander Kotrschal (Wageningen), and Walter Salzburger (Basel).

• November 2025 - Peter visits the Seehausen lab in Bern (Switzerland) to discuss our NSF project on the genetic basis of aggression biases in Lake Victoria cichlid fish. 

• November 2025 - Peter gives seminar at the Ohio Cichlid Association. 

• November 2025 - Peter gives a departmental seminar at Case Western Reserve University.  All the graduate students (Tyler, Olivia, Ethan, Farjana) were part of this visit and contributed to two guest lectures in Dr. Oldfield's classes! 

• October 2025 - Peter gives a departmental seminar at Hope College (Holland, MI), hosted by Dr. Jimena Golcher-Benavides.

• September 2025 - Lab receives a 5-year NSF grant! Our lab will lead this $1.8M collaborative NSF grant on the genetic, developmental, and neurogenomic basis of aggression biases in cichlid fish. This is a collaborative grant with three PIs (Peter Dijkstra [lead], Hans Hofmann, Ryan Wong). International partners include Dr. Ole Seehausen in Switzerland and Dr. Mary Kishe in Tanzania. (Grant summary and Media highlight) 

Link to news archive