Andrew Simons

Biography

Andrew Simons Professor Degrees: B.Sc. (Guelph), M.Sc. (McGill), Ph.D. (Dalhousie), Postdoc (North Carolina State)

Research Interest

For detailed information, please visit the lab website (link above).  My students and I focus on how organisms adapt to changing environments.  We use a variety of organisms both in the field and under controlled environments to address fundamental questions about the evolution of adaptive phenotypic plasticity and bet-hedging traits under fluctuating environments. Especially useful as model organisms are monocarpic (i.e. reproduce once per lifetime) plants, such as Lobelia inflata; and plants with rapid generation times such as Spirodela polyrhiza, a member of the duckweed subfamily (Lemnoideae) which are the smallest flowering plants on the planet. We are concerned, too, with the genetic mechanisms underlying expression of life-history traits.