• Evolutionary ecology of polyphagy
   

• Self-medication by polyphagous caterpillars
   

• Community consequences of tri-trophic interactions
   

• Community ecology of the invasive gypsy moth caterpillar
   

• Evolutionary ecology of geographic variation in host use

My research is ultimately aimed at understanding adaptation in ecological traits, organization of ecological communities and evolutionary diversification. Toward this end, I study the ecological and evolutionary processes driving trophic interactions between terrestrial plants, insect herbivores, and carnivores that eat insect herbivores (tri-trophic interactions). These organisms collectively account for over 50% of all 1.75 million described species on Earth. I am interested in the significance of tri-trophic interactions for generating biodiversity (e.g., Singer and Stireman 2005), as well as testing empirically particular evolutionary and ecological hypotheses by using information at several levels of biological organization. Consequently, this work is often collaborative, involving the domains of community ecology, evolutionary ecology, chemical ecology, behavior, neurophysiology, biochemistry, systematics, conservation biology and natural history.