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Thermal ecology, physiology, and regional heterothermy of a diminutive snake

Understanding how temperature can impact function and fitness in ectothermic organisms is particularly important given rapid environmental change. However, most of our knowledge is limited to particular organisms and ecosystems, which limits the generality of our understanding. We study the diminutive ringneck snake at intermediate elevations in the southern Appalachians as an example of a species and ecosystem for which the thermal ecology and physiology are poorly known. Our work has given novel insight into the limits and dynamics of the thermal biology of ectotherms.

Christian L. Cox is an Associate Professor of Biological Sciences at Florida International University and a Research Associate with the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute. His lab studies the evolution of diversity in nature,  integrating evolutionary biology, physiology, transcriptomics, and genomics to understand both the evolution and function of phenotypic and genetic variation at different levels of biological organization – between sexes, within species, and among species. The Cox lab studies this diversity in ecosystems from the subtropics of south Florida to lowland tropical rainforest in central Panama and the arid highlands of Mexico and the American southwest.