Our work leverages long-term data, field-based experiments, and data syntheses to investigate fundamental and applied questions in ecology and evolution. Major research themes are listed below, and more information on our field-based research program in Algonquin Park is found on other pages on this site.

Social Behaviour in Freshwater Turtles
Freshwater turtles have long been viewed as largely asocial, yet growing evidence reveals that social interactions can play an important role at all life stages. My research group examines the ecological and evolutionary drivers of social behaviour in freshwater turtles, with a particular focus on communication, coordination of behaviour, and the fitness consequences of aggregation. Drawing on field and experimental studies, our work has shown that hatchlings use acoustic signals to coordinate digging during nest emergence, that vocalizations can facilitate beneficial interactions among siblings in subterranean nests, and that turtles form non-random social associations in basking and nesting contexts. We also investigate the causes and consequences of high-density nesting aggregations, including how environmental constraints and social benefits shape reproductive strategies. Together, our research aims to understand when, why, and how social behaviour emerges in a lineage traditionally considered solitary, and to place turtle sociality within a broader framework of behavioural ecology and life-history evolution.

Thermal Performance of Ectotherms
Our lab investigates the thermal performance of ectotherms by integrating ecological, physiological, and evolutionary perspectives to understand how temperature shapes organismal function from embryos to adults. We quantify how incubation environments—natural and anthropogenic—alter thermal regimes experienced by developing embryos, and how these temperatures influence fitness. Building on thermal ecology frameworks, we examine how thermal tolerance and physiology covary with ecological lifestyle and geographic gradients, including latitudinal and altitudinal clines in body size, and we explore how temperature interacts with oxygen to influence the evolution of body size and developmental strategies. Ultimately, we aim to develop general principles linking thermal environments, physiology, and life-history evolution in ectotherms, with implications for persistence under rapid environmental change

The Evolution of Temperature-Dependent Sex Determination
A central goal of our work is to uncover when and why incubation temperature generates sex-specific fitness advantages that favor the evolution and persistence of temperature-dependent sex determination (TSD). Using a combination of field studies, experiments, and theory, we examine how temperature influences embryonic survival, growth, and later-life performance, and how these effects differ between males and females. Our research powerful evolutionary models predicting that sex-specific thermal sensitivities can simultaneously explain patterns of embryonic mortality and observed sex ratios. Long-term datasets further allow us to assess the resilience of sex ratios under ongoing climate warming, revealing how natural variation in nesting environments can buffer populations from extreme biases. Many study projects and theses revolve around this topic.

Population Ecology and Long-Term Monitoring
My research group investigates population dynamics of long-lived amphibians and reptiles, using long-term datasets to understand how individual-level processes and human-mediated environmental change shape population trajectories over decades. Our work shows that small but consistent differences among individuals in growth and survival can accumulate to produce large variation in lifetime reproductive output, with important consequences for population growth and persistence. We are particularly interested in why some populations fail to recover after major disturbances, and how delayed demographic responses arise in species with long generation times. Another major theme of our research is evaluating the population-level consequences of anthropogenic habitat alteration, such as nesting in human-modified environments, where potential costs to adult survival may interact with benefits to early life stages. By linking individual heterogeneity, stage-specific survival, and long-term population trends, our goal is to identify the life-history processes that most strongly govern resilience or decline, and to provide general insights into the conservation and management of long-lived ectotherms

Maternal Effects and Early Life Traits

My group explores the adaptive significance of maternal effects using data synthesis and experiments, and I am interested in collaborating with theoreticians to understand why investment in offspring varies within and across species. For example, we do not understand why high-condition mothers produce high-condition offspring in broad taxa. And yet, this pattern underpins substantial individual differences in reproductive success and life histories. Similarly, some individuals and populations exhibit remarkable variation in investment per offspring over space and time, but the ultimate drivers of this variation remain enigmatic. Similarly, I am interested in exploring how intraspecific covariance of maternal phenotype and fitness traits (egg size, clutch size) varies with mating system, as a system for testing how male mating strategy affects female fitness in wild populations.