David Tallmon, Ph.D.

My general interests are in evolution, ecology, and conservation biology. My focus is on understanding the evolutionary and ecological dynamics of natural populations using demographic and genetic models, molecular genetic data, and field data. I have long-standing interest in combining population genomics and demographic information to infer important evolutionary and demographic parameters for wild populations. More recently, my post-docs and I have focused upon the role of phenotypic plasticity in adaptation.

I have used models based on likelihood and approximate Bayesian computation to infer demographic vital rates or effective population size with the goal of providing useful results and tools for conservation and evolutionary biology. As an example, some collaborators and I have recently developed an approach to infer effective size of a population using a single sample of microsatellite data and approximate Bayesian computation.

We focus on a number of different taxa in my lab, with current work on a handful of terrestrial and marine vertebrates and invertebrates, including: coastrange sculpins, giant Pacific octopus, red king crab, spruce grouse, file dogwinkles, ringed seals and boreal toads. I enjoy working with students who are highly-motivated, broadly interested in evolution and conservation, and focused on understanding population-level process using descriptive and manipulative approaches.