Expertise:
Behavioral Ecology, Evolution, Migratory Behavior in Birds, Animal Adaption, Animals and Changing Environment, Evolutionary Process, Bird Song Divergence, GeneticsElizabeth 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:
- “Male competition drives song divergence along an ecological gradient in an avian ring species,” Evolution, 72: 2360–2377, 2018
With C.C.R. Smith, S.M. Flaxman, N.C. Kane, A.K. Hund, B.M. Sheta and R.J. Safran, “Barn swallow demographic inference using approximate Bayesian computation and whole genome data shows signal for founder event during the Holocene,” Molecular Ecology, 27: 4200-4212, 2018 - With A.K. Hund, A. Churchill, A. Faist, C. Havrilla, S. Love Stowell, H. McCreery, J. Ng and C. Pinzone, “Transforming Mentorship in STEM by Training Scientists to be Better Leaders,” Ecology & Evolution, 8:9962-9974 PDF, 2018
- With M.R. Wilkins, G.I. Semenov, A. Rubtsov, N.C. Kane and R.J. Safran, “Genomic variation across two barn swallow hybrid zones reveals traits associated with divergence in sympatry and allopatry,” Molecular Ecology, 26: 5676–5691, 2017
- “Geographic variation in male territory defense strategies in an avian ring species,” Animal Behaviour, 126: 153-162, 2017
- With L.B. Symes, T.C. Mendelson and R.J. Safran, “The role of ecology in speciation by sexual selection: a systematic empirical review,” Journal of Heredity, 105: 782-794, 2014
- With M. Alcaide, T.D. Price and D.E. Irwin, “Genomic divergence in a ring species complex,” Nature, 511: 83-85, 2014
- With A.L. Bontrager and T.D. Price, “Cross-generational effects of climate change on expression of a sexually selected trait,” Current Biology, 22: 78-82, 2012
Interviews:
- “Teamwork makes the dreamwork: success in Western Malaysia,” MilesObrien.com, May 4, 2018
- “Field work is an important part of biological research. Here is how I prepare,” MilesObrien.com, April 3, 2018
Education:
B.S., Biology, Duke University
Ph.D., Evolutionary Biology, University of Chicago