Kathleen Lotterhos
Northeastern University, MA·Ecology & Evolution·Early-career
As climate changes quickly, which species will cope and which will struggle? The answer depends partly on genetic changes that let populations adapt, often to several environmental pressures at once.
- Fields
Ecology & Evolution
Genetics
Computer Science
- Topics
Drosophila suzukii
spotted wing Drosophila
invasive species
- Grants
- 2 known grants, through Nov 2027
What they work on
- Quantify genetic variation in cold tolerance, overwintering survival and post-winter reproduction, and the reaction norms of these traits in summer and winter morphs, using Drosophila suzukii flies from Vermont and Kentucky.
- Use whole genome resequencing to test whether D. suzukii maintains persistent overwintering populations and how far seasonal adaptive tracking shapes its genetic structure.
- Simulate a metapopulation experiencing fluctuating stressors to explore how plasticity, local adaptation and adaptive tracking evolve, and project how overwintering reaction norms change under climate scenarios.
- Evaluate and refine machine learning algorithms on simulated genomic datasets, including genome evolution under high gene flow in multivariate environments.
- Train machine learning models on Eastern oyster single nucleotide polymorphism genotypes to predict each oyster's environment, then test whether those predictions forecast fitness in common garden field conditions.
More about the research
Both projects here combine genomics, computer simulations and experiments on real organisms to understand and predict adaptation, one using an invasive fruit fly and the other the Eastern oyster.
Why it matters
Spotted wing Drosophila costs US agriculture up to $500 million a year, and predicting how it adapts to milder winters could help growers anticipate its spread into northern regions. Better ways to match oyster genotypes to environments could guide restoration, farming and assisted gene flow efforts, and results are being shared with the oyster industry and with students through learning modules.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Collaborative Research: ORCC: Climate change responses in a globally invasive insect: Quantifying the roles of local adaptation, seasonal adaptation, and phenotypic plasticity
NSF · Dec 2024 – Nov 2027
CAREER: Evaluation of machine learning algorithms for understanding and predicting adaptation to multivariate environments with a Model Validation Program (MVP)
NSF · Jul 2021 – Dec 2026
Closest labs
Joaquin Nunez
University of Vermont, VT·Ecology & Evolution
Quantify genetic variation in cold tolerance, overwintering survival, and post-winter reproduction in Drosophila suzukii from Vermont and Kentucky, and measure how these traits shift between summer and winter morphs.
Carly Kenkel
University of Southern California, CA·Ecology & Evolution
Test whether differences in staghorn coral shape plasticity are driven by changes in calcification and fine-scale skeletal deposition, using a lab water-flow experiment on clonal replicates of Acropora cervicornis genotypes.
Jonathan Puritz
University of Rhode Island, RI·Ecology & Evolution
Determine how eastern oyster larvae respond to short-term combinations of low dissolved oxygen, coastal acidification and low salinity, using factorial laboratory exposures at early and late larval stages and tracking survival alongside genotype.
The school
Northeastern University: 27 labs on PI Pages, $347M a year on research, 251 research doctorates a year.
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