Julie Tolman Thompson
jmtolman@darkwing.uoregon.edu

University of Oregon
Center for Ecology & Evolution
1210 University of Oregon
Eugene, OR 97403-1210 USA

IGERT Trainee from 2001-2002

Research Interests

Julie earned her Ph.D. in 2002 and began a postdoctoral position in the lab of Patrick Phillips at the University of Oregon in the Fall 2003.

I am interested in the evolution and ecology of complex traits, specifically behavior. From a behavioral ecology perspective my research addresses questions about the interaction of sensory modalities during communication. Evolutionarily, my current research seeks to identify patterns convergent evolution of complex traits. My early research in multimodal behavior was originally motivated by the comparison of adaptive radiations in the lizard genera Liolaemus and Sceloporus. Through this research I have subsequently become interested in general questions concerning the pattern and process of convergent evolution. Convergent evolution is the recurrence of similarity of a trait or traits due to selection in taxa that have independent ancestral states. Identifying patterns of convergent evolution in complex traits may yield some insight to the process of adaptation where the convergent taxa can be thought of as natural "replicate experiments". The role that developmental and genetic mechanisms, which produce specific phenotypic traits, play in both the discovery and understanding of convergent evolutionary processes is largely unknown. I am addressing these general issues of convergence through three areas of research. First, I am developing a general framework to understand trait similarity between taxa. This framework is based on several axes that vary continuously: similarity in selective regime, similarity in mechanism (developmental and genetic), and phylogenetic independence. I am also developing a phylogenetic comparative method that can be used to examine patterns of trait evolution. Lastly, I will test current theoretical propositions and assumptions through an experimental evolution experiment. This experiment will examine the properties of phenotypic evolution under similar selective regimes and elucidate the changes in trait mechanism as a function of the difference in ancestral states between taxa.

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Publications

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