Contact Information
ekfischerlab.com
Research Areas
Research Interests
Integrative approaches to brains, behavior, and evolution
Research Description
The goal of our research is to explore underlying mechanisms to understand how brains and behavior can be both strikingly flexible and remarkably robust, and how these phenomena simultaneously give rise to widespread similarities and prodigious diversity in animal behavior. We use integrative approaches to address these questions across hierarchical levels of biological organization (from gene networks, to neural circuits, to physiology, to behavior) and timescales (from immediate, to developmental, to evolutionary). We believe that fundamental principles governing brains and behavior are most apparent in evolutionary and developmental contexts, and we therefore combine lab and field studies to understand variation and adaptation in ecologically relevant behaviors.
Education
Postdoctoral Fellow (2017-2020) Stanford University, Stanford CA
Postdoctoral Fellow (2015-2017) Harvard University, Cambridge MA
PhD (2009 - 2015) Colorado State University, Fort Collins CO
BA (2003 - 2007) Cornell University, Ithaca NY
Additional Campus Affiliations
Assistant Professor, Evolution, Ecology, and Behavior
Affiliate, Carl R. Woese Institute for Genomic Biology
Recent Publications
Westrick, S. E., Laslo, M., & Fischer, E. K. (2022). THE NATURAL HISTORY OF MODEL ORGANISMS: The big potential of the small frog Eleutherodactylus coqui. eLife, 11, [e73401]. https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.73401
Fischer, E. K., Hauber, M. E., & Bell, A. M. (2021). Back to the basics? Transcriptomics offers integrative insights into the role of space, time and the environment for gene expression and behaviour. Biology Letters, 17(9), [20210293]. https://doi.org/10.1098/rsbl.2021.0293
Fischer, E. K., Song, Y., Hughes, K. A., Zhou, W., & Hoke, K. L. (2021). Nonparallel transcriptional divergence during parallel adaptation. Molecular ecology, 30(6), 1516-1530. https://doi.org/10.1111/mec.15823
Fischer, E. K., & O'Connell, L. A. (2020). Hormonal and neural correlates of care in active versus observing poison frog parents. Hormones and Behavior, 120, [104696]. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.yhbeh.2020.104696
Fischer, E. K., Alvarez, H., Lagerstrom, K. M., McKinney, J. E., Petrillo, R., Ellis, G., & O'Connell, L. A. (2020). Neural correlates of winning and losing fights in poison frog tadpoles. Physiology and Behavior, 223, [112973]. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.physbeh.2020.112973