John N Thompson
| Title | Professor |
| Division | Physical & Biological Sciences |
| Department | Ecology & Evolutionary Biology |
| Phone | 831-459-4741 |
| Web Site | Thompson Laboratory homepage Selected Publications |
| Office | A421 Earth & Marine Sci Bldg |
| Campus Mail Stop | EE Biology / EMS |
| 1156 High Street Santa Cruz, CA 95064 |
Research Interests
Coevolution and the Organization of BiodiversityResearch in my laboratory is on the ways in which coevolution among species organizes the earth's biodiversity. The goal is to understand how the web of life is organized across broad geographic landscapes as species coevolve with each other within and across biological communities. Our work includes studies of species interactions in many types of environments, from relatively pristine landscapes to others that are becoming increasingly fragmented and modified by introduced taxa. We use a wide range of ecological, genetic, molecular, and evolutionary approaches to study how the interacting species may coevolve in different ways in different habitats, and how interactions continue to evolve amid environmental change.
We are currently evaluating the geographic structure and evolutionary dynamics of a variety of species interactions distributed throughout western North America, including those between plants and their pollinators and herbivores. We are asking how interacting species differ in local adaptation, how local coevolutionary hotspots shape the overall genetic structure and evolutionary trajectories of interactions, and how the evolution of polyploidy in plant populations leads to the diversification of plant species and interactions with other taxa.
Biography, Education and Training
B.A., Washington & Jefferson College, PennsylvaniaPh.D., University of Illinois, Urbana