Ectothermic vertebrates are ideal organisms to investigate thermal constraints on physiological processes, as their body temperature can be manipulated by changing environmental temperatures. My projects have investigated thermoregulation in lizards. This includes investigations of how physiological thermal tolerance scales with body size and oxygen availability across several species of Sceloporus lizards in collaboration with the PERL lab at Cal Poly, and the influence of seasonal acclimation on thermal tolerance, preference, and performance in  chameleons in collaboration with the USDA Wildlife Services Florida Field Station. I  am also interested in how thermal physiology scales up to landscape levels by assessing the utility of different thermal traits in species distribution modelling and climate forecasting approaches. I have used island-based species that are introduced to the mainland USA as case studies to explore how plasticity in thermal traits influences model predictions.

Currently, I am investigating the consequences of thermoregulation on the pathogenicity of chytridiomycosis in plethodontid salamanders in collaboration with the Longo Lab at University of Florida. Through this project, I am evaluating the trade-offs between thermoregulation, metabolism, and functional immune expression during infection with an ecologically relevant pathogen combining fieldwork, experimental manipulation, and functional genomic techniques. I aim to continue work that investigates how thermal constraints influence functional immunity in different species by employing functional microbial inhibition assays, changes in cellular capacity, and differential expression of immune genes.