Welcome to the Stroud Lab!

Why are there so many species, and why do they live where they live?

We are an evolutionary ecology lab with broad interests, unified by a single theme: that ecology and evolution are not separable. We use field studies to directly investigate behavior, ecology, and physiology in the wild, and use these insights to understand patterns of biodiversity across space and through time. This epitomizes the central ambition of the lab: bridging the process-pattern divide in ecology and evolution by collecting data in nature that explain large-scale patterns of diversity.

A major theme of the lab is investigating how natural selection operates in the wild, and the mechanistic role it plays in shaping the phenotypes we observe. Nearly all of our work is built on lizards, and mostly on Anolis lizards (anoles), which are a fabulous study system. Anoles are diverse, they live at high densities, often in multi-species communities of five or more species competing in the same square meter of forest, their natural history and ecology-form-function relationships are exceptionally well documented across more than 400 species and 40 million years of diversification, and, most usefully of all, they are easy to watch and catch. Full genome sequences and CRISPR-Cas9 tools are now available for anoles, and we can drive to a very large number of study sites across the southeastern United States, which makes the logistics of both comparative and long-term field work tractable in a way they rarely are.

Our work incorporates techniques from behavioral ecology, computer science, biomechanics, thermal physiology, evolutionary genetics, and macroevolution, connecting short-term microevolutionary and ecological dynamics measured in real time to the long-term patterns that manifest across continents and clades. Our research is rooted in collecting data in the field, and combining those insights with theoretical models and large-scale comparative datasets. Our primary field sites span the south eastern United States--especially Florida--as well as the Caribbean and mainland Central and South America. In the field, we combine targeted field sampling of populations with long-term mark-recapture studies that let us measure natural selection directly. Back at Georgia Tech, we are developing new approaches to advance cutting-edge field studies, such as developing new machine-learning approaches for high-throughput phenotyping and quantification of the structural environment, as well as both employing existing, and developing our own, wearable sensors for passive behavioral data collection....welcome to the world of lizard backpacks!

Finding solutions to the biodiversity crisis will require understanding not just which species exist, but why they exist where they do and how rapidly they can respond to a changing world. We are eager to apply our work in ways that help answer these questions.

You can read more about our research on the Publications page!