Mark Haussmann
Bucknell University, PA·Ecology & Evolution
Every animal has a limited energy budget to spend on growing, maintaining its body and reproducing. Because energy is limited, spending more on one usually leaves less for the others.
- Fields
Ecology & Evolution
Physiology
Biology
- Topics
life history evolution
life history trade-offs
resource allocation
- Grants
- 1 known grant, through Nov 2026
What they work on
- Identify the molecular, cellular and whole-body performance traits that explain why some Leach's storm-petrels show the expected trade-off between reproducing and surviving while others escape it, guided by a 70-year population record.
- Test whether storm-petrels that both reproduce well and live long achieve this through higher foraging efficiency, as theoretical models of differences in resource gathering predict.
- Determine whether individual trade-off strategies in storm-petrels are fixed or shift with environmental conditions, using experimental manipulations in the wild population.
More about the research
Biologists call this a trade-off. Yet in many species, some individuals seem to do it all: they reproduce well and still live long, with few apparent costs. Theoretical models suggest these individuals may simply gather more resources, but how this happens is poorly understood. Explaining it would help answer a central question in ecology and evolution: why animals in the same population follow such different life strategies.
Why it matters
This is basic research on how animals balance reproduction against survival. It aims to show how molecular and cellular processes, together with foraging ability, relate to longevity in a wild, long-lived seabird. The findings could inform broader theory on aging and on why individuals in a population follow different life strategies, including how flexible those strategies are when environments change.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Closest labs
Michal Polak
University of Cincinnati, OH·Ecology & Evolution
Test for trade-offs between evolved resistance to mite ectoparasites and major life-history traits such as reproductive output in the fruit fly Drosophila melanogaster.
Raisa Hernandez Pacheco
California State University-Long Beach, CA·Ecology & Evolution
Characterize physical and cognitive traits across the lifespan in rhesus macaques at Cayo Santiago and test whether these traits vary with individuals' social status.
Randi Rotjan
Tufts University, MA·Ecology & Evolution
Measure how symbiotic state, from nearly algae-free white colonies to algae-rich brown ones, affects reproductive investment in the Northern Star Coral Astrangia poculata.
The school
Bucknell University: 1 labs on PI Pages, $6M a year on research.
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