Congratulations Dr. Allison Pierce for successfully defending your thesis! 

Dr. Allison Pierce

Ph.D. Thesis Defense Ph.D. Candidate,
CU Denver Dept. of Integrative Biology
Dr. Michael Wunder’s Lab

When: Nov. 3rd, at Noon

Where: Denver Campus, Science Building, Room 2001

Life history trade-offs of seasonal migration: A theoretical foundation for understanding the migration ecology of an inland shorebird (Charadrius Montanus)

Life history theory proposes that when resources are limited organisms develop behavioral, physiological, and/or anatomical adaptions to optimize fitness trade-offs between current and future reproduction. Seasonal animal migration comprises a suite of behavioral and physiological adaptations to cope with seasonally abundant resources by periodically relocating to locations with more favorable conditions. This suggests that seasonal bioenergetic constraints may play an important role in the adoption and maintenance of migratory behavior and that migration is an important part of an animal’s life history strategy to mediate fitness tradeoffs. Despite extensive research into the bioenergetics and evolution of seasonal animal migration, associations between migratory behavior and life history are often unpredictable due to lack of strong theoretical foundations and incongruity between empirical findings. I present my dissertation research in which I developed a theory-based simulation model of bioenergetic feedbacks between seasonal migration and metabolism to generate hypotheses about co-variation between migratory behavior and life history. I then used these predictions as a conceptual framework to identify eco-evolutionary drivers of migration in a migratory shorebird species of conservation concern, the Mountain

Everyone is welcome to join the seminar.