Greer Dolby
University of Alabama at Birmingham, AL·Ecology & Evolution
Across the middle of the Baja California peninsula in Mexico, dozens of species show the same split between northern and southern populations. Why so many plants and animals diverged in the same place is unknown.
- Fields
Ecology & Evolution
Earth & Environmental Science
Genetics
- Topics
Baja California
population genomics
phylogeography
- Grants
- 1 known grant, last ended Sep 2026
What they work on
- Test whether a Pliocene marine seaway isolated northern and southern populations by mapping and dating structural, stratigraphic and volcanic features in mid-peninsular Baja California with geochronologic methods.
- Use low-coverage genomes of flowering plants, reptiles and mammals to find population genomic signatures, loci under local adaptation and spatial patterns of genetic variation across the divergence zone.
- Test whether Pleistocene glacial refugia or monsoon-driven rainfall timing drove divergence, using niche models for modern and glacial climates, seasonal gene expression and tests of present-day niche divergence.
More about the research
Answering it addresses a broad question in Earth and life sciences: how tectonic activity, rainfall patterns and ice-age climate cycles shape evolution and biodiversity. This collaborative project combines geological, ecological and genomic data to find out. It considers that several processes may have acted at once while producing a similar pattern, an idea the team calls pseudocongruence.
Why it matters
This is basic research into what drives species to diverge. By linking genomes to dated geological and climate events, it could provide strategies and predictive models for how landscape and climate change shape biodiversity, which may later be applied to deeper timescales and other regions.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Closest labs
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Clemson University, SC·Ecology & Evolution·Early-career
Identify the genetic architecture and molecular mechanisms behind a polygenic, male-specific wing color and pattern mimicry trait in a model butterfly, using functional and quantitative genomics.
Nicholas Mason
Louisiana State University, LA·Ecology & Evolution·Early-career
Sequence whole genomes from populations of about 30 bird species in Andean Polylepis forests and grasslands to measure how connected populations are across isolated forest patches.
John E Pool
University of Wisconsin-Madison, WI·Ecology & Evolution
Develop a genomic authentication pipeline that detects contamination in Drosophila lab stocks and characterizes their genomes, applying it to 200 widely studied stocks.
The school
University of Alabama at Birmingham: 45 labs on PI Pages, $866M a year on research, 166 research doctorates a year.
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