I am broadly interested in how animal migration can foster speciation. Specifically, my dissertation research is focused on the behavioral and physiological mechanisms of population divergence in seasonal sympatry. Seasonal sympatry is a population distribution that occurs when two diverging populations, which differ in migratory phenotype, overlap in distribution for part of the year.

I study these mechanisms in the dark-eyed junco, a songbird that exhibits seasonal sympatry. Resident and migrant populations exhibit overlapping distributions during the winter and early spring, but are otherwise allopatric. Residents initiate breeding prior to the departure of the migrants in the spring, presenting an opportunity for interbreeding. Alternatively, assortative mating preferences and population differences in reproductive timing, or allochrony, may prevent gene flow. ​

The Ketterson lab Junco Crew in 2014

In my dissertation research I aim to address the following questions:

1. Do seasonally sympatric populations mate assortatively? Is assortative mating driven by male and/or female mate preferences in seasonal sympatry?
   
2. Might differences in reproductive timing act as pre-zygotic isolating barriers enabling population divergence? 

1. Mate Preferences in Seasonal Sympatry

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2. Reproductive Timing as a Temporal Barrier 

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