Research

Experimental manipulations in nature can provide unique insight into the process of adaptation in real time, though opportunities for such studies are rare.  Fortunately, I've had the chance to be involved in a few studies doing exactly this, introducing populations of threespine stickleaback into natural settings in Alaska and Haida Gwaii and tracking their evolutionary responses. Through these systems, we can explore how factors like genetic variation, demography, and environment impact the ability for populations to adapt to new environments.

Relevant publications:  Eckert et al. 2026. bioRxiv, Bolnick et al. 2026. Am Nat

I'm also interested in how the process of adaptation can give rise to ecological divergence and contribute to speciation. Again making use of our whole-lake transplant experiment in Alaska, we've explored how divergence among stickleback populations might influence mate choice and reproductive isolation when those populations are brought together experimentally.

Relevant publications:  Eckert et al. 2026. bioRxiv

Generating genetic data is becoming increasingly cheap and feasible, enabling efforts to compile genetic data to study patterns across broad geographic and taxonomic scales. I've been involved in several areas of research making use of such methods, including compiling genetic data from numerous stickleback studies to explore global patterns of adaptation and using herbarium specimens to study genetic change across many taxa.

Relevant publications:  Eckert et al. 2026. New Phyt, Eckert et al. 2026 BioScience