The BEEP Lab is driven by awe and curiosity about the natural variation in the world, and by the fascination of watching animals in action.

​​

​

Charles Darwin expressed this sense of wonder:​

​

“There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been originally breathed into a few forms or into one; and that, whilst this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being, evolved.” —

On the Origin of Species (1859)​

​​​​

I am an integrative evolutionary ecologist and animal physiologist leading the BEEP Lab. We combine field and laboratory approaches to uncover the evolutionary processes that generate and maintain sexual dimorphism and intrasexual polymorphism in behaviour, physiology, and morphology, and to trace how the thermal environment links oxidative stress and telomere dynamics to life-history trade-offs in painted dragons, garter snakes, and cane toads.