Deborah Roach

The projects in my lab focus on life history evolution and natural selection across different life stages. Graduate student projects range from research into the consequences of selection across different life stages, to plasticity responses across the life cycle, to factors limiting selection at species ranges. I also have a large ongoing project with Plantago lanceloata that was designed to study the demography of aging. Aging can be quantified as either an increase in mortality as individuals in a population get older, or as a decline in physiological functioning. For evolutionary biologists, aging presents a paradox because it is a phenomenon that is clearly disadvantageous to individuals yet natural selection is ineffective at removing it from populations. Two questions arise: First, how universal is aging? In other words is it found in natural populations? Is it found in plants? Secondly, if a species is identified that can escape aging, what unique biological features allow it to do so? For more information on research interests, visit my lab website.