Project Title: Illuminating the true form and variability of selection in nature
This project is awarded under the Postdoctoral Research Fellowships in Biological Informatics Program for 2006. The main goal of this project is to develop a Bayesian framework for addressing historically challenging questions in evolutionary biology. The fellow will employ Bayesian methods to estimate selection, disentangle the factors driving temporal variation in selection coefficients, and characterize the within and among system variability in the strength of selection. To address these questions, she will utilize a previously unexploited long-term data set on threespine stickleback body size and previously published estimates of selection generated from long-term selection studies.
The fellow will carry out her postdoctoral training with Marc Mangel at the University of California at Santa Cruz where she will develop quantitative skills including Bayesian statistics. She will take courses in applied mathematics, attend seminars in quantitative ecology, and immerse myself in quantitative projects. This training will prepare for a career dependent on complementary use of empirical data sets, evolutionary theory, and sophisticated quantitative approaches to advance work in evolutionary biology.
