Predicting ectotherm life cycles
Move. Adapt. Die. Ectotherms have adapted their entire life cycle to the rhythm of the seasons. The egg stage is a critical part of insect life cycles that must resist or tolerate environmental fluctuations. How immobile eggs do so and how these mechanisms change in their function or importance over geographical gradients is a complex story.
My past and ongoing research focuses on disentangling the effects of microclimatic variation and inter- and intra-specific variation in physiological traits on life history phenotypes and phenology. The relative effects of environmental and individual variation on phenology.
Jacinta Kong
Postdoctoral Fellow
My research interests include species distributions, phenology & climate adaptation of ectotherms.
Publications
Linking thermal adaptation and life-history theory explains latitudinal patterns of voltinism
Abstract Insect life cycles are adapted to a seasonal climate by expressing alternative voltinism phenotypes—the number of generations …
Summer egg diapause in a matchstick grasshopper synchronises the life cycle and buffers thermal extremes
Abstract The phenological response is among the most important traits affecting a species' sensitivity to climate. In insects, strongly …
Talks
Society for Experimental Biology Annual Meeting
Thermal adaptation and plasticity of egg development generates latitudinal patterns in insect life cycles under seasonal climates
