My research interests are in the area of animal physiological ecology and evolutionary physiology. More specifically, I am interested in how anatomical and physiological capacities meet environmental demands.
Animals often meet changes in demand with changes in the size of organs and organ capacity.
This approach demands an appreciation of both mechanistic physiology and ecology, and requires both field and laboratory research. At present I work primarily in desert and montane systems, using rodents as study species. Limits to metabolic energy output elicited by lactation, cold exposure, and exercise in laboratory mice, house mice and deer mice. Effects of sub-lethal parasites on host physiology during lactation, cold exposure and food restriction in mice. My work on deer mice is carried out, in part, at the University of California's White Mountain Research Station in the White Mountains of Eastern California.