Skip To Main Content
Cal Poly Pomona Experts Guide

BROWSE EXPERTS

by name, by topic, or by college/division
Elizabeth S.C. Scordato

Elizabeth Scordato is an evolutionary biologist interested in the causes of large-scale phenotypic and genomic variation, and the consequences of this variation for population divergence and speciation. She is particularly interested in how mate choice, migratory behavior, and anthropogenic landscape modification shape gene flow and reproductive isolation among populations.

Scordato focuses on birds and has led research expeditions studying barn swallows to Russia, China, Mongolia, Egypt, Morocco, and most recently to Malaysia, Japan and Fiji. Her National Geographic-funded research has examined the role human activity – particularly the spread of agriculture and development of town centers – in facilitating range expansions and hybridization in barn swallows in China and Mongolia. She has also led field expeditions to study greenish warblers in India, Kyrgyzstan and Russia. She uses a combination of traditional fieldwork and cutting-edge genomic analysis to understand how human activity shapes evolutionary processes.

Recent Grants and Fellowships:

  • California State University Program for Education and Research in
  • Biotechnology, “Adaptation to anthropogenic environments: comparative
  • genomics of commensal avian species,” $15,000
  • National Science Foundation, Young Investigator travel award to attend International Society for Behavioral Ecology meeting, $1000, 2016
  • Principal Investigator, National Geographic Society, Committee for Research and Exploration, “Patterns of divergence and hybridization in barn swallows: the role of human geography,” $20,000, 2014-15
  • National Science Foundation, Doctoral Dissertation Improvement Grant, $13,700

Selected Publications:

Interviews:

Education:

B.S., Biology, Duke University

Ph.D., Evolutionary Biology, University of Chicago

Back to top