After going to Cal as an undergrad I got my PhD at the University of Utah in 2004. I lived in Peru for much of my PhD work, conducting field work near Iquitos Peru, in some of the most species-rich forests on earth. I studied the evolution of habitat specialization by plants to different soils and the role of herbivores and plant defenses in influencing this process. I continued this work for my postdoc at the University of Michigan Society of Fellows and then was hired by UC Berkeley in 2007. I have continued my work on tropical diversity and also have built up a research program...
I am an evolutionary biologist broadly interested in the ecology, evolution, and genomics of adaptive radiation in fishes. My lab uses field experiments, natural history, population genomics, behavioral ecology, functional morphology, quantitative and functional genetics, and phylogenetic methods to dissect this process at the mesoevolutionary scale in rapid radiations of three or more species.
For full research description, please visit Christopher's Faculty Profile.
My background was originally in physics; my PhD focused on theoretical ecology. My interest in issues of stochasticity and uncertainty has lead me to focus on problems around decision-making under great uncertainty, with connections to economists, computer scientists, and social scientists, in a interdisciplinary field we now think of as data science. I am passionate about teaching and have long been involved in the open science movement, including as founder of two widely recognized projects, https://ropensci.org and...