Emily L. Behrman

Diverse behaviors have evolved that control how an animal interacts with its environment and other organisms. My lab uses the fruit fly Drosophila to study fundamental questions of how behavior evolves at the level of genes and neurons, which we complement with field ecology to understand how behavior affects evolution in natural populations. Our research program spans different evolutionary timescales—from rapid evolution across seasons to differences among species—to understand the constraints and flexibility of the genetic and neural mechanisms underlying behavioral evolution.