Grace, Jacquelyn Assistant Professor

As a behavioral ecophysiologist, I am broadly interested phenotype-environment matching at the proximate and ultimate levels, and especially, the role of hormones in mediating behavioral and physiological plasticity. The big questions of my research are:



(1) How do animals perceive potentially informative cues?



(2) What are the physiological mechanisms that mediate between these cues and phenotypic change?



(3) What are the long-term fitness consequences of these changes?



My research utilizes avian systems to answer these questions, with recent study species including house sparrows, Nazca boobies, and Caspian terns. At Texas A&M I am expanding this research to include wetland systems where habitat change and pollution may be cues that induce phenotypic change.