My lab studies the evolutionary genetics of animal behaviors. Traditional ideas about the battle between“nature” and “nurture” have largely collapsed as scientists across fields have uncovered bidirectional feedbacks between individuals, their genotypes, and their environments. Yet we still lack a unified conceptual framework for understanding how these feedbacks influence behavior, fitness, and population-level processes such as genetic variation and evolution – leaving us with inadequate tools for predicting behavioral evolution. My lab uses ecologically-relevant behavioral analysis, quantitative genetics and genomics, and artificial evolution in a rigorous model system – the fruit fly Drosophila melanogaster (and related species) – to contribute to meeting these challenges. Using tools available in flies, we can replicate and manipulate individuals and entire social groups, within and among generations, to understand genotype-environment feedbacks in individual development, within social networks, and over generations.
I completed my A.B. at Princeton University, my PhD with Andy Sih in the Population Biology Graduate Group at the University of California, Davis, and my postdoc with Sergey Nuzhdin at the University of Southern California. My full CV is here.
I am the Director of the Ecology & Evolutionary Biology (EEB) Graduate Program, a Faculty Affiliate for the Center for the Study of Women, Gender, and Sexuality (CSWGS) and a member of the School of Natural Sciences Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion leadership group.
Gihan graduated with a Bsc from University of Colombo in Sri Lanka. He is interested in the interplays between behavioral plasticity and evolutionary genomics. He joined the lab in Fall 2023.
My research focuses on how differences in individual social preference and group composition influences whether animals fall for traps, and how this could lead to the rapid evolution of social traits. In the Saltz lab, I am using fruit flies falling for a common evolutionary trap (i.e., apple cider vinegar traps) to identify how a trap could cause the evolution of social behavior and other correlated traits.
I received my PhD from the University of California, Davis in 2021 before joining the lab as an NSF Postdoctoral Research Fellow in Biology.
My research primarily explores how individuals make decisions on how to with conspecifics. By using Drosophila melanogaster as a study system, I can incorporate genotypic variation into my investigation of how individuals interpret, produce, and use social signals to inform their own social behaviors, in addition to investigating the evolutionary feedbacks created by social information use on population-level processes. I received my B.S. in Biology with a minor in Genetics from Texas A&M University in 2018 before joining the Saltz Lab in 2019.
Patricia graduated from Rice in 2023 and is now leading a large project investigating GxE for social behaviors
Research interests include sniffing, shedding an unbelievable amount, telling everyone her feelings, and being a Good Girl.
Anna graduated from Rice in 2021 and orchestrated a large scale project to study the evolution of aggression. She is now a research scientist in Yijie Geng's lab at University of Washington.
My research addresses how interactions between natural selection and social selection shape the structure and evolution of social groups. Integrating quantitative genetics, social network theory, nutritional geometry, and the genetic tools available with the Drosophila melanogaster study system, I seek to understand how ecological forces interact with social behaviors, to shape the social environment individuals experience. I received my B.S. from the University of Virginia in 2013, joined the Saltz Lab at Rice in 2015, and advanced to PhD candidacy in 2017.
now in medical school!
My research focuses on how and why variation in learning exists between and within species - particularly how differences in individual environmental experience combine with differences in the neural mechanisms of memory and recall to produce variation in learning ability. Through comparison of the model organisms D. sechellia and D. simulans, I am seeking to increase understanding of the genetic basis of variation in learning - coupling learning assays with quantitative genetics approaches. I received my B.S. in Biology from Texas A&M in 2012 and worked in industry before joining the Saltz lab in 2016, earning her PhD in 2021. Now, Madeline is a Postdoctoral Researcher in the Hongjie Li lab at Baylor College of Medicine.