Dr. Richards-Zawacki received her PhD with L. Lacey Knowles in 2007 from the University of Michigan, performed her post-doctoral research at the Smithsonian Institute and UC Berkeley, held a position as Assistant Professor at Tulane University, and joined the department in 2015.
Dr. Richards-Zawacki’s research spans ecology, evolutionary biology, and conservation with an organismal focus on amphibians. Her lab is interested in developing and using new techniques to monitor changes in living systems in response to anthropogenic stressors, like climate change and disease, as well as understanding the role of natural selection in speciation. Visit her lab website (www.rzlab.pitt.edu) or check out the RIBBiTR BII project (www.ribbitr.com) for a deeper dive into the research foci of the lab.
My research lies at the intersection of ecology and evolutionary biology, in that I approach questions about how changes in climate and habitat shape organisms and communities in a way that considers their evolutionary implications. My work integrates studies of molecular, morphological, ecological, and behavioral variation, and I focus mainly on amphibians because their diversity provides an exciting backdrop for exploring the interplay between ecology and evolution across a wide range of spatial and temporal scales. The questions I ask address:
- How climate and host/pathogen evolution shape the dynamics of wildlife diseases
- The effects of changes in climate on species distributions and diversity
- How reproductive isolation evolves during speciation
- The natural history and conservation of endangered amphibians.