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My research integrates behavioral, ecological, and genomic information in a comparative context to understand the evolutionary consequences of seasonal migration and dispersal.

Dispersal and migration involve tradeoffs: staying vs leaving, traveling long vs short distances, exploring new areas vs staying with familiar ones. I am interested in how these tradeoffs influence the evolution of species' movement behaviors and biogeographic patterns, and how these evolutionary processes leave signatures in the genome.

I defended my PhD in the lab of Dr. Ben Winger at the University of Michigan in 2023. Beginning in fall 2024, I am an NSF Postdoctoral Fellow co-sponsored by Dr. Scott Edwards at Harvard University and Dr. Nathan Senner at UMass Amherst.

​Birds often make awe-inspiring journeys during dispersal and migration.

Equally intriguing are cases where birds that can fly far instead choose to stay in one place or to return to the same places repeatedly, as many migratory birds do.
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My research is motivated by curiosity about how movement strategies evolve in different species and how they influence other aspects of biology. 

All images © Teresa Pegan