Learning from Nature: How to Win and Survive

Whether you're a contestant in Survivor or a yellow-bellied marmot living in the Rocky Mountains, you have big decisions to make. How many friends do you need to survive the night, will that change tomorrow? Is it a better strategy to have a few close friends, or to switch it up? Being socially flexible can benefit social species, an animal might be friendly one day and asocial the next, and marmots can teach us about keeping our furry friends happy and healthy. You may just leave with a desire to change your social strategies to outwit, outplay, and outlast in your current social scene.

California’s native oaks are foundational to ecosystems across the state as providers of food and habitat for wildlife, but are threatened by development and climate change. To conserve oak species, we need to understand how they can respond to these environmental changes. My research uses information stored in their DNA to understand how oaks can persist in the present and future.