Robert Boria
( He/Him/His )Fields: Ecology and Evolution
Specialties: Phylogeography, species distribution, and phylogenetics
Research Description:
Dr. Boria’s lab seeks to understand how biodiversity will change in the future due to natural and anthropogenic impacts, a primary focus of both ecology and evolutionary biology. By understanding the historical processes influencing the current geographic distribution of biodiversity, we can determine the relative importance of different factors shaping biodiversity, now and in the future. Specifically, his lab studies how populations have responded to past climate change and how the historical distributions and past areas of climate refugia for small mammals will influence future climate change responses. His research utilizes an interdisciplinary approach (e.g., field and museum sampling, wet lab, bioinformatics, ecological niche modeling, phylogenetics, and spatial mapping,) to understand the current distribution of genetic diversity within small mammal species. Dr. Boria’s lab will also focus on how urbanization around the San Francisco Bay has affected the evolutionary history of small mammals (from populations to communities).