Rob Dunn
William Neal Reynolds Distinguished Professor
Senior Vice Provost for University Interdisciplinary Programs
Education
Ph.D., Ecology and Evolution, University of Connecticut (2003)
Research Interests
Most of the living world remains poorly or totally unknown. In my lab we study the species around us in our everyday lives, species we tend to think of us as well known. Most of those species are not well known and so there are many things to discover in your backyard, in your bedroom, or even on your roommate. Some days I work to study these species myself, bending down to figure out whether the fungus on my neighbor’s foot is a new species. More often I spent my time working with students and other researchers to help along their own discoveries. I also write about the world around us, which is a chance to share the stories of the scientists who have devoted their lives to understanding species, organs, cells, genes or ecosystems that influence us every day. In my building alone I am surrounded by biologists who study prairie voles, rare butterflies, fish ovaries, dinosaurs with long, long, claws, the decisions we make when threatened with death, alcoholic fruitflies, fungus farming beetles, and much, much more. It is a good job, this thing called science, silly at times, serious at others, but nearly always good.
Web Resources
Publications
- Insect biomass shows a stronger decrease than species richness along urban gradients, INSECT CONSERVATION AND DIVERSITY (2024)
- Morphological Strategies in Ant Communities along Elevational Gradients in Three Mountain Ranges, DIVERSITY-BASEL (2024)
- Domestication shapes the pig gut microbiome and immune traits from the scale of lineage to population, Journal of Evolutionary Biology (2023)
- Field and laboratory guidelines for reliable bioinformatic and statistical analysis of bacterial shotgun metagenomic data, CRITICAL REVIEWS IN BIOTECHNOLOGY (2023)
- Hidden diversity: comparative functional morphology of humans and other species, PEERJ (2023)
- Nature's chefs: Uniting the hidden diversity of food making and preparing species across the tree of life, BioScience (2023)
- Quantifying the human cost of global warming, NATURE SUSTAINABILITY (2023)
- Sourdough starters exhibit similar succession patterns but develop flour-specific climax communities, PEERJ (2023)
- Urban Jungle, SCIENCE (2023)
- Using FastID to analyze complex SNP mixtures from indoor dust, JOURNAL OF FORENSIC SCIENCES (2023)