Dr. Holly Lutz 

Dr. Vincent Cassone 

Dr. Zinan Wang | Wang Lab

Dr. Jalene LaMontagne | LaMontagne Lab

Dr. Kenneth Wright | Wright Lab

Dr. Jake Ferguson | Ferguson Lab

Abstract:
Population cycles are a common phenomenon though there has been relatively little work assessing how environmental variability can impact these populations. In this talk, I explore how stochastic variation can drive lower total system variance as environmental fluctuations become more variable. 

This effect arises due to the influence of an unstable or stable equilibrium, often driving short-term transient dynamics that lead to qualitative changes in the long-run dynamics. I explore these effects in four ecological examples to illustrate the range of impacts of these effects on ecological systems. These results illustrate the complex interactions between stochasticity and nonlinear dynamics with significant implications for predicting how complex populations will respond to changing environments.

Dr. Robbie Burger | Burger Lab

Abstract:
Life is extraordinarily diverse — from fast-living microbes to long-lived giants, from communities in local green spaces to the global biosphere, and across timescales spanning Earth’s deep history to rapid environmental change today. Why do some animals live fast while others live slow? How do the dynamics of epidemics scale with population size? And why does biodiversity follow similar — or surprisingly different — patterns across mountains, cities, and islands?

In this talk, I’ll explore how data and theory reveal general scaling principles linking biological pattern and process from metabolism and life history to epidemics and biodiversity. Drawing on research with students and collaborators, I’ll show how scaling across levels of biological organization can reveal unexpected patterns, challenge established ideas, and open new questions. I’ll conclude with the Equal Fitness Paradigm, a framework that connects metabolism, life history, and demography through a common energetic currency and points toward new ways of understanding of how life persists and changes across scales.

Dr. Wendy Hood | Hood Lab

Bio:
Dr. Wendy Hood is an evolutionary physiologist, professor and curator of mammals at Auburn University. She has published extensively on nutritional constraints on lactation and reproductive performance as well as on the evolution of milk composition. 

The current focus areas of her lab group are:

1.  Understanding how mitochondria and their bioenergetic capacity impact intraspecific variation in life history and performance.
2.  Developing research models that recapitulate phenotypes expressed in wild populations. 

She has received grant funding from the National Science Foundation and the National Institutes of Health and is a recipient of the prestigious NSF CAREER award. Her research group has studied species across diverse taxa, currently including mice (laboratory and wild-derived Mus), lab rats, Tigriopus copepods, migratory and non-migratory birds and butterflies.

Abstract:
Twice a year, migratory birds fly thousands of kilometers on a fuel budget that pushes vertebrate physiology to its limits. Mitochondria, the cellular engines behind that effort, are surprisingly understudied in this context. Using white-crowned sparrows, including a long-distance migratory subspecies (Gambel's) and a non-migratory subspecies (Nuttall's), we examined two complementary axes of mitochondrial performance: respiratory function and remodeling. 

Sampling across matched non-migratory, pre-migratory and active migratory periods, we found that Gambel's consistently exceeded Nuttall's in mitochondrial volume (citrate synthase) and respiratory capacity (OXPHOS and basal respiration), particularly before and during migration, along with elevated remodeling markers (e.g., NRF1, OPA1, Drp1) that were specific to the flight muscle (pectoralis). 

Nuttall's values most closely resembled Gambel's non-migratory baseline, suggesting migratory capacity reflects an induced, season-specific state rather than a fixed subspecies trait. Together, these findings reveal seasonal mitochondrial respiratory and structural remodeling as an integrated strategy supporting migration's energetic demands, offering a mechanistic view of how animals dynamically reconfigure cellular energy systems under fluctuating performance demands.