Ecological Genetics | First-year Research Immersion

Making It Up as They Go Along—Using Genetics to Investigate How Plants and Animals Cope With Our Changing World

This research stream focuses on understanding how surrounding ecological environments have evolutionary consequences for organisms. Thus, students ask questions aimed to better understand the reciprocal interactions between ecology and evolutionary processes over time and space. For example, they study how plants and animals from different locations differ in their life cycle timing, thermal tolerance, and genetics.

A diagram showing a forest ecosystem and a farming area bordered by roads & highlighting ways that organisms are affected by changes like climate change, pollution, and land use change. Climate change shifts the reproduction and growth of butterflies and birds and negatively affects crops and livestocks. Agricultural chemicals kill beneficial insects and disrupt bee pollination of crops and wild plants. There is also plastic, road salt, and light pollution near the roads. Deer over-population and land use change disrupt the spread of wildflower seeds by ants. — Ecological Genetics studies the important interactions among plants, animals (including humans), and the environment

Besides investigating the links between genotype, phenotype and environment, students explore how humans change the environment and the consequences that these anthropogenic pressures have for the evolution of populations and species. In many cases, the results obtained from this topic have practical implications as management for threatened species or developing control strategies for invasive species.

Ecological genetics is a multidisciplinary stream which intersects the disciplines of genetics, physiology, ecology and evolution using state-of-the-art techniques in genomics, transcriptomics, ecophysiology, field ecology and bioinformatics.

Research Themes

Global Change	Conservation & Restoration
Evolution & Speciation	Community Ecology

Research Educator

Christina Baer

Ecological Genetics, Research Assistant Professor

First-year Research Immersion Program

cbaer@binghamton.edu

607-777-5523

S3 141

Research Interests

Invertebrate community ecology
Global change ecology
Invertebrate behavior and natural history

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Dr. Christina Baer is the Research Educator for Ecological Genetics. She researches how organisms’ behaviors and traits influence their interactions with each other and the environment. She studies how effective different traits are as defenses against predators and how other traits can predict organisms’ responses to human-caused environmental changes such as climate change. Her research focuses on insects and other invertebrates because they are both easy to manipulate and are some of the most diverse animals on the planet. She uses a combination of molecular taxonomy, phylogenetics, physiology, field experiments, and behavioral observations to answer these questions.

Research Techniques

The visual includes three columns with field work on left, lab work in middle, and data skills on the right. The fieldwork includes community ecology, field sketching, videography, and documenting life cycles. Lab work includes DNA and RNA as well as experiments testing the effects of droughts, warming, and pollution. Data skills includes RStudio for statistical analysis and data visualization along with databases such as iNaturalist. — In the ecological genetics stream, students learn a variety of field, lab and data skills.

Research Projects

Cohort 11 (2024-2025)
- Algal responses to heavy metal pollution
- Convergent evolution in pigmentation across multiple species through the MC1R gene
- Differences in the haplotype diversity of Plethodon salamanders by location
- Influences of fungal hyphae on soil bacteria migration
- Using eDNA to monitor invasive terrestrial insect species
Cohort 10 (2023-2024)
- Comparing pesticide ingredients and honey bee population decline
- Do deer exclosures aid spring ephemeral restoration in the Binghamton University Nature Preserve?
- Fall webworm host plant use in extreme heat
- Genetic variation in a potential diapause gene in Rhagoletis pomonella
- The effect of soil salinity on milkweed and monarch caterpillars
Cohort 9 (2022-2023)
- Designing primers to differentiate Mimulus ringens
- Impacts of salinity on ranavirus and eDNA degradation
- Parasitoid-host relationships regarding travel to an expanded range
- Selective logging and secondary invasions of multiflora rose (MFR) in the Binghamton University Nature Preserve
- Ranavirus and Bd in groundwater: A study in the Binghamton University Nature Preserve
- The latitudinal effect of drought on Arabidopsis thaliana plant growth
Cohort 8 (2021-2022)
- Hsp70 regulation in Aedes albopictus under different temperature treatments
- Impact of invasive plants (Phragmites australis) on native wetlands
- Light pollution’s effects on opsin gene expression in dragonflies
- The relationship between water quality and pathogen infection in amphibians
Cohort 7 (2020-2021)
- Effect of diapause on PERIOD expression in Rhagoletis pomonella
- Investigating geographic variation in caterpillar silk genes
- The effect of long wavelength (LW) light on opsin gene expression in dragonflies
- The effects of polyethylene microplastics on arugula
- Thermal tolerance of Aphaenogaster picea and A. rudis ants: a genetic and physiological lens
Cohort 6 (2019-2020)
- Analyzing native and introduced lines of Arabidopsis thaliana through the CSR profile as a predictor of invasiveness
- Effects of heavy metal pollution on genetically diverse plant populations
- Genetic differences in the PERIOD gene of Rhagoletis pomonella
- Is the SVP gene differentially expressed in populations of Mimulus ringens?
Cohort 5 (2018-2019)
- Blinded by the light: how light pollution affects the development of Xenopus laevis
- Climate change impact on seed establishment of a critically endangered species
- Population structure of Mimulus ringens across a latitudinal gradient
- Variation in drought response in locally adapted populations of Arabidopsis thaliana