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Section of Ecology, Behavior & Evolution
Research in the Section of Ecology, Behavior, & Evolution is focused on investigating ecological and evolutionary processes operating at the level of populations, species, and communities. Major foci include understanding the processes structuring the distribution and abundance of organisms, behavioral adaptations to environmental and social challenges, the processes and patterns of evolutionary change, and the application of all of these areas to the conservation of biodiversity. Researchers in this section use a variety of approaches, including DNA techniques for assaying genetic variation and estimating genealogical relationships among taxa, field experiments for hypothesis testing, telemetry and satellites for assessing patterns in species distributions, paleobiological data for quantifying the history of biodiversity, and computer simulations of evolving systems. Unlike other subdisciplines, which concentrate on a few model taxa, evolutionary biologists use data from many different organisms from all over the world to test hypotheses about biological diversity. The unifying theme underlying all of these studies is that an evolutionary approach is needed to solve most biological problems.
