Emilie C. Snell-Rood
 Assistant Professor, Ecology, Evolution, and Behavior
will join EEB Department - January 2011
Ph.D., University of Arizona, Tucson, 2007
Contact Information
Phone: 812-856-1783
Fax:
E-mail: emcsnell@indiana.edu
Current home page: http://www.indiana.edu/~ecsnellr/
Graduate Faculty Memberships
Research Interests
Organisms face environments that vary spatially and temporally, within and between generations. This variation is even more pronounced in the face of human impacts such as habitat destruction, the spread of invasive species, and climate change. A general understanding of why species and populations vary in their responses to environmental change therefore has a major impact on basic questions in evolutionary biology, with applications to conservation, agriculture, and public health.
I take a developmental approach, considering both environmental and genetic inputs, to predict how individuals and genotypes respond to varying environments. To do so, I integrate techniques across a range of systems, in particular insects (currently, butterflies and beetles). I use methods from animal behavior, developmental and molecular biology, neurobiology, and physiology, integrating ideas across fields such as behavioral ecology, animal cognition, life history theory, quantitative genetics, population genetics, and sexual selection.
Currently, I focus on understanding why organisms vary in their degree of phenotypic plasticity, both in behavioral and morphological traits. I consider hypotheses about the costs of learning and information acquisition, whether relaxed selection may limit the evolution of alternate developmental pathways, and the role of the timing of information acquisition in limiting the range of phenotypic plasticity. I am also interested in how phenotypic plasticity promotes survival in novel environments, the factors that promote the accumulation and release of cryptic genetic variation in changing environments, and the role that behavior plays in buffering environmental variation.
Selected Publications
Snell-Rood, E. C., and Daniel R. Papaj. 2009. Patterns of Phenotypic Plasticity in Common and Rare Environments: A Study of Host Use and Color Learning in the Cabbage White Butterfly Pieris rapae. Am. Nat. 173:615-631.
Snell-Rood, E. C., D. R. Papaj, and W. Gronenberg. 2009. Brain size: a global or induced cost of learning? Brain, Behavior and Evolution 73:111-128.
Snell-Rood, E. C., and A. V. Badyaev. 2008. Ecological gradient of sexual selection: Elevation and song complexity in finches. Oecologia 157: 545-551.
Snell-Rood, E. C., and D. R. Papaj. 2006. Learning signals within sensory environments: does host cue learning in butterflies depend on background? Animal Biology 56: 173-192.
Snell-Rood, E. C., and D. A. Cristol. 2005. Prior residence, per se, increases social status in wintering flocks of White-throated Sparrows. Ethology 111:441-454.
Badyaev, A. V., and E. C. Snell-Rood. 2003. Rapid evolutionary divergence of environment-dependent sexual traits in speciation: a paradox? Pp. 315-319 in W. J. Bock and R. Schodde, eds. Proceedings of XXIII International Ornithological Congress. Beijing. Acta Zoologica Sinica 52 (Supplement). Beijing.
Snell-Rood, E. C., and D. A. Cristol. 2003. Avian communities of created and natural wetlands:
bottomland forests in Virginia. Condor 105: 303-315.
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