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Research > BAUER
FEllowS PROGRAM
 
Lauren O'Connell
My research focuses on understanding the genomic contributions to phenotypic diversity within ecologically relevant traits. We use poison dart frogs (family Dendrobatidae) as a model system for understanding the genomic contributions to biological diversity, as they display tremendous variation in behavior and color pattern morphology.
Poison dart frog species vary in mating strategies and parental care systems. It is rare in the animal to kingdom to find many parental care systems (especially male-only parental care) within closely related species. In many of the Dendrobates species, only males care for offspring, while other species display female-only care or biparental care. Moreover, there are also population differences in parental care strategies within a species. We are interested in the genetic, neural, physiological, and ecological traits driving these differences between and within species as well as how variation in parental care affects offspring development, behavior, and genomic architecture/gene expression.
Aposomatic signaling advertises the poison dart frog unpalatable taste to predators, yet there can be many different color morphs within a species, representing an evolutionary paradox. We are also interested in the genomic contributes to color patterns within species as well and how the pleiotropic genes underlying color patterns influence behavior.
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O'Connell Lab website
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