Environmental Futures Seminar - Erica L Westerman

Mate selection is a key biological process across a wide range of species, and animals exhibit great diversity in what traits they use during the mate selection process and in what they find attractive. Here, the Westerman lab uses a range of genetic, developmental, and behavioural techniques to uncover mechanisms driving mate preference diversity, using butterflies as a model system.

Dr Erica Westerman is an Associate Professor at the University of Arkansas. Erica received a BSc (2003) in Ecology & Evolutionary Biology from Yale University in 2003 and then an MSc. (2007) in Zoology at the University of New Hampshire, where she studied climate change and invasive species. Erica earned a PhD in Ecology & Evolutionary Biology from Yale University in 2012, and then spent four years working as a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Chicago. 

Erica has spent the last 15 years studying butterfly behaviour and genetics and utilizes both on campus butterfly facilities and natural and nearby semi-natural environments. She is interested in butterfly diversity, and the mechanisms underlying behavioural diversity, with a focus on butterfly visual behaviour.