Dr. Carolyn Tepolt
Assistant Scientist – Biology
Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute
Biological invasions are agents of significant and ongoing global environmental change, and can have devastating ecological and economic consequences. They also offer a rare opportunity to study rapid adaptation in nature. Invasive species, by definition, are highly adept at surviving and thriving in novel environments. I integrate ecology, physiology, and genomics to explore the dynamics of rapid adaptation in marine systems using species invasions as natural experiments. In the invasive European green crab, temperature appears to have shaped physiology and genomics on both long and short time scales. In the white-fingered mud crab, an invasive body-snatching parasite impacts host crab populations very differently depending on their co-evolutionary history.
Polycom availability with Darling Marine Center, Gulf of Maine Research Institute, and Bigelow Laboratories
Host: Nishad Jayasundara