I am an evolutionary geneticist, studying variation and adaptation in an ecological context. My favorite questions are Why should animals care who their mates a re? Is evolution predictable? What is the relationship between variation and adaptation? What maintains genetic variation?

In my lab, we use Drosophila melanogaster, the fruit fly, as the subject for studies of mutation and variation under natural sexual and artificial select ion. These experimental studies are combined with complementary theoretical work to help us understand what we find. We are currently studying the relationship between natural and sexual selection, mutation-selection balance as a force maintaining genetic variation, the evolution of wing shape in the genus Drosophi la, evolution of variance-covariance matrices, the detection of evolutionary constraints, and the use of fluctuating asymmetry as an indicator of developmen tal stability.