Contact Information
ekfischerlab.com
Research Areas
Research Interests
Integrative approaches to brains, behavior, and evolution
Research Description
The goal of our research is to explore underlying mechanisms to understand how brains and behavior can be both strikingly flexible and remarkably robust, and how these phenomena simultaneously give rise to widespread similarities and prodigious diversity in animal behavior. We use integrative approaches to address these questions across hierarchical levels of biological organization (from gene networks, to neural circuits, to physiology, to behavior) and timescales (from immediate, to developmental, to evolutionary). We believe that fundamental principles governing brains and behavior are most apparent in evolutionary and developmental contexts, and we therefore combine lab and field studies to understand variation and adaptation in ecologically relevant behaviors.
Education
Postdoctoral Fellow (2017-2020) Stanford University, Stanford CA
Postdoctoral Fellow (2015-2017) Harvard University, Cambridge MA
PhD (2009 - 2015) Colorado State University, Fort Collins CO
BA (2003 - 2007) Cornell University, Ithaca NY
Additional Campus Affiliations
Assistant Professor, Evolution, Ecology, and Behavior
Assistant Professor, Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies
Affiliate, Carl R. Woese Institute for Genomic Biology
External Links
Recent Publications
Moss, J. B., Tumulty, J. P., & Fischer, E. K. (2023). Evolution of acoustic signals associated with cooperative parental behavior in a poison frog. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 120(17), Article e2218956120. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2218956120
Terrill Sondag, E. E., Stewart Merrill, T. E., Drnevich, J., Holmes, J. R., Fischer, E. K., Cáceres, C. E., & Strickland, L. R. (2023). Differential gene expression in response to fungal pathogen exposure in the aquatic invertebrate, Daphnia dentifera. Ecology and Evolution, 13(8), Article e10354. https://doi.org/10.1002/ece3.10354
Westrick, S. E., Moss, J. B., & Fischer, E. K. (2023). Who cares? An integrative approach to understanding the evolution of behavioural plasticity in parental care. Animal Behaviour, 200, 225-236. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.anbehav.2022.10.005
Westrick, S. E., Laslo, M., & Fischer, E. K. (2022). The Natural History of Model Organisms: The big potential of the small frog Eleutherodactylus coqui. eLife, 11, Article e73401. https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.73401
Fischer, E. K., Hauber, M. E., & Bell, A. M. (2021). Back to the basics? Transcriptomics offers integrative insights into the role of space, time and the environment for gene expression and behaviour. Biology Letters, 17(9), Article 20210293. https://doi.org/10.1098/rsbl.2021.0293