I am a comparative and evolutionary physiologist with a strong interest in the physiological mechanisms underlying gas exchange in vertebrates. Specifically, I study physiological mechanisms and compromises between gas exchange, acid/base-regulation, and neural function. In my research, I use the retina within the eye as a model organ, as this is the most metabolically active tissue in the body but lacks blood vessels (to avoid light scattering), providing an ideal model organ to understand limitations and compromises to gas exchange in tissues. Here, I integrate methodologies from cardiorespiratory- and electro-physiology with cutting-edge OMICs tools to understand how oxygen diffuses in tissues and how metabolic processes and tissue functions change along O₂ diffusion gradients. To investigate this, I integrate tissue O₂ profiling, electrophysiological recordings, and spatial transcriptomics to understand tissue function at high spatial resolution. These approaches allow me to obtain an integrative understanding of physiological processes from the genomic to whole organismal level and understand how those processes differ in space within heterogeneous organs.

In addition to using the classic single-species approach to understand integrative physiological mechanisms, my research also appreciates the physiological diversity between species and applies phylogenetic comparative methods to address how complex physiological traits have originated, diversified, and interacted across macroevolutionary timescales. Thus, instead of using a single model organism in my studies, I select a model clade - i.e., a group of phylogenetically related species that differ with respect to the trait of interest, and I apply the same experimental methods to all species within the clade. Using information about the species’ phylogenetic relationship, I can then identify how physiological systems changed in the phylogenetic intervals that bracket major transitions in animal evolution. This multi-species approach to physiology allows me to understand the evolution of respiratory systems, the compromises between gas exchange and other physiological functions, and how those tradeoffs have been prioritized during animal evolution.