Research In Evolutionary Ecology
July 2012
Paper accepted at BMC Evolutionary Biology on the prevalence and ecological causes of disruptive selection.
Paper accepted at American Naturalist on the effects of predation on the evolution of life histories and matrotrophy in the live bearing fish Gambusia hubbsi.
May 2012
Accepted a Postdoctoral Fellowship at the National Institute for Mathematical and Biological Synthesis (NIMBioS) for this fall.
News
Contact Information
North Carolina State University
Department of Biology &
W.M. Keck Center for Behavioral Biology
127 David Clark Labs, Raleigh NC, 27695
email: ryan_martin@ncsu.edu
tel: (919) 513-7552
I am an evolutionary ecologist primarily interested in understanding how ecological processes promote the evolution of biological diversity. I am currently investigating the ecological and evolutionary mechanisms that underlie ongoing phenotypic divergence between populations of the Bahamas mosquitofish (Gambusia hubbsi) and between populations of Bigmouth sleeper (Gobiomorus dormitor) inhabiting inland blue holes on Andros Island, the Bahamas.
For my dissertation at the University of North Carolina, I examined how divergent selection driven by resource competition, promotes the evolution of coexisting alternative morphs in spadefoot toad tadpoles. I also explored the proximate and ultimate causes of divergence in phenotype and resource use (i.e., character displacement) between two species of spadefoot toads (the plains spadefoot, Spea bombifrons and the Mexican spadefoot, S. multiplicata) where they co-occur.
