Overview
The Ballinger Lab is interested in understanding how and why organisms differ in the natural world. Our research is centered on natural populations of rodents, where we can leverage both ecological fieldwork and genomic tools to explore fundamental questions about how morphological, physiological, and behavioral diversity evolves. Our work spans ecology, evolution, physiology, and genetics, and integrates laboratory and field approaches to make connections between genotype, phenotype, and fitness.
Research Focus
We investigate both the molecular mechanisms and evolutionary forces that drive adaptive change in ecologically important traits. Current research in the lab focuses on traits such as hibernation physiology, body size and shape, and gene expression variation in wild rodent populations. We take an interdisciplinary approach spanning multiple scales of biological organization, from genomes and cells to organisms and populations. We integrate molecular techniques ranging from whole genome sequencing and transcriptomics to single-cell and CRISPR assays, along with population genomics, quantitative genetics, and lab-based behavioral and physiological assays. We also conduct field-based experiments to complement these approaches. Through this integrative framework, we identify the molecular changes contributing to adaptive variation, advance our understanding of biodiversity, and develop general principles for how evolution shapes complex traits in natural populations.
