Rebecca (Becky) Fuller

Contact Information

Becky Fuller   104 Shelford Vivarium 606 E. Healey Street Champaign, IL 61820

email: fuller@life.uiuc.edu phone: (217) 333-9065 fax: (217) 265-0056

Fuller Lab Folks

Technicians

Leslie Noa - Leslie Noa is the head laboratory technician in my laboratory.  Although her heart belongs to birds, she has undertaken a critical role in the lab, and helps keep the experiments moving forward. 

Dex Angeles - Dex is another technician in my laboratory, and is in charge of our molecular work.  This is saying something given that I am not really a molecular biologist.  Luckily, Dex does lots of trouble-shooting for me!

Graduate Students

Emma Berdan - Emma is a Ph.D. student who hails from the East Coast.  Her project focuses on speciation between bluefin and rainwater killifish and the role of salinity on behavior.  Despite being a cephalopod enthusiast, she is taking well to fishes.

Daniel Welsh - Daniel is a Ph.D. student who also hails from the East.  Before coming to the University of Illinois, he received a Master's Degree from Bowling Green where he worked on smallmouth bass.  He has now seen the light, and is working on killifishes!  :)  His project focuses on multi-modal communication in fishes.

Undergraduates

Note - We have many undergraduates that work in the lab, but the few listed below are either doing research projects or are working for us.

Ben Sandkam - Ben, despite having grown up in the Chicago-area, loves warm weather and tropical fishes.  He is currently interested in micro-habitat choice in killifish.  In addition, he spent this last summer conducting a large paternity experiment.

Christina Jovanovic - Christina is an undergraduate who found her way to our lab via my ichthyology course.  She is currently conducting an experiment that examines morphometrics between bluefin and rainwater killifish and their hybrids. 

Reid Strellner - Reid Strellner was an REU last summer in our laboratory.  His project focused mainly on foraging preferences in fishes and the role of lighting environment on preferences. 

Abhi Sarup - I'm not quite certain how Abhi ended up in our lab.  He is an MCB student who is doing a senior honors thesis on robots!  Despite this, he is a very valuable member of our lab.

1) To what extent do complex genetics and/or complex neurophysiology act as constraints on the evolution of behavior - particularly on the evolution of female mating preferences?

This line of questioning focuses on the sensory bias model of sexual selection.  This model posits that males evolve traits to match the underlying neurobiology of the female sensory system that, in contrast, does not evolve via sexual selection.   Despite the fact that sensory bias appears well accepted in evolutionary biology, many of its critical features are untested.  This paradox arises from the fact that sensory bias has been used to explain two different phenomena.  First, it has been used as a hypothesis about signal design – that is, which types of traits males should evolve.  Second, sensory bias has been used as an alternative to traditional hypotheses for explaining the evolution of female preference itself.  My research focuses on this second facet.  Sensory bias predicts that female sensory systems (and, therefore mating preferences) evolve as a correlated response to natural selection on other behaviors that share a common sensory system.

In my previous work research, I asked the following question: How evolvable are sensory systems?  My study system was the bluefin killifish, Lucania goodei, a freshwater fundulid found across a range of environmental conditions.  I first compared the vision physiology of individual L. goodei from two habitats with fundamentally different lighting environments and found ample evidence for variable sensory systems.  Next, I performed a paternal half-sib breeding experiment and found evidence for both environmental and genetic variation within populations in sensory systems.  My results indicate that sensory systems are readily evolvable traits that should respond to both natural and sexual selection.  The next questions to be addressed in this line of research are the following:  Do differences in sensory system physiology actually lead to differences in animal behavior?  How strong is natural and sexual selection on sensory system physiology?

In our current experimental work, we are addressing the degree to which variation in sensory system physiology leads to variation in animal behaviors.  The sensory bias/exploitation hypothesis assumes that female mating preferences evolve as a correlated response to natural selection on other non-mating behaviors.  The critical assumption is that mating preferences are genetically correlated with non-mating behaviors due to the fact that they share a common sensory system.  Despite the fact that this hypothesis was originally proposed 20 years ago, there have been no tests of this fundamental assumption.  In our current work, we are examining the correlations between vision physiology and animal behaviors in the bluefin killifish, Lucania goodei. Specifically, we measure vision physiology and animal behavior across multiple families raised in different environments to determine the extent to which mating behaviors (female preference and male competition) and non-mating behaviors (foraging) are correlated with one another and with basic properties of the sensory systems.  We also investigate the extent to which the map between physiology and behavior varies as a function of the environment, and the extent to which variation in vision physiology and behavior lead to differences in the direction of sexual selection.  

2) What accounts for the maintenance of genetic variation within populations?

Selection should erode the standing genetic variation in fitness and fitness related traits within populations.  Yet, in many study systems there is appreciable genetic variation within populations in traits that affect fitness.  In L. goodei, I have found large amounts of genetic variation in color pattern expression and also in the plasticity of color pattern expression.  How is all of this variation maintained?  Across 30 study populations, there are a minimum of 2 male color patterns and as many as 10 color patterns present in every population.  I am currently performing an experiment to test whether negative frequency dependence (i.e. rare male advantage) and whether color morph specialization on different microhabitats (deep vs. shallow) contributes to the maintenance of genetic variation.  The next question in this research is what maintains genetic variation in the plasticity of color pattern expression.

3) What makes animals conspicuous?

Theory predicts that males should evolve signals that maximize conspicuousness given the environmental conditions under which signaling takes place, the sensory system characteristics of receivers, and the costs of those signals.  Yet, what makes an animal “conspicuous” is not clear.  My work with L. goodei showed that blue males were found in conditions under which UV and blue wavelengths do not transmit well and in which conspecifics were less sensitive to those wavelengths.  Clearly, evolution has not maximized male brightness.  However, it may have acted to maximize contrast against the surrounding background.  I am currently analyzing spectral data in tandem with data on the sensory system in order to compute the brightness and contrast of male color patterns.  The next questions in this line of research are the following:  When do animal rely on brightness versus contrast in assessing visual information?  Do brightness and contrast contain different information about the signaler?  Is one more reliable than the other?  These issues are important because brightness is often considered as a condition-dependent trait, where males with “good genes” signal their condition through color.

4) Speciation in Killifish and the Role of Adaptation to Salinity.

The goal of this project is to determine the extent to which ecological selection can result in multiple forms of reproductive isolation and cause genetic incompatibilities between populations.  Ecological speciation posits that divergent selection to different environmental conditions results in reproductive isolation between populations/species.  The hallmark of ecological speciation is the finding that hybrids have reduced fitness in the parents’ native habitats (e.g. ecologically dependent post-zygotic isolation).  However, ecological speciation can also result in intrinsic post-zygotic isolation, pre-zygotic isolation and/or gametic isolation.  Despite the fact that barriers may have arisen via ecological selection, the strength of these isolating barriers need not vary with the environmental conditions under which they are measured – making the assessment of the importance of ecological selection a challenging task. 

In this project, we are investigating the role that adaptation to salinity has played in the divergence between bluefin killifish, Lucania goodei, and its closest relative, the rainwater killifish, Lucania parva.  This system is intriguing because L. goodei is adapted to freshwater whereas L. parva is euryhaline and can tolerate fresh, brackish, and full-strength marine water.  There is a fair amount of overlap in the ranges of the two species in Florida, and hybrids have been documented in some populations.  Thus far, we have documented pre-zygotic isolation between the two species and their hybrids, as well as post-zygotic isolation in the forms of early egg survival and hatching success.  We hope to determine the extent to which natural selection as a function of salinity has contributed to these forms of reproductive isolation through the use of selection experiments.  In addition, we hope to determine the relative importance of each type of barrier for overall reproductive isolation. 

Opportunities for students

    1.  Undergraduates -  I am happy to have undergraduates work in my lab.  I have many small projects that could become independent, undergraduate research projects.  These range from studies examining the evolution of salt tolerance in fish to understanding the visual system of some of the local fish species to performing molecular genetic studies to understand the timing of photoreceptor cell proliferation in the retina.   Interested students should e-mail me at fuller@life.uiuc.edu.

    2.  Graduate students - I will be looking for motivated graduate students that are looking to start in Fall 2006.  Students may apply through the Department of Animal Biology or through the Program in Ecology, Evolution, and Conservation Biology.   Interested students should e-mail me at fuller@life.uiuc.edu.

I.  Recessive lethal alleles

wild-type (bottom) and recessive lethal phenotype (top) -- both are the same age and from the same clutch

The deleterious mutation rate is a critical parameter in models of the evolution of sex, inbreeding depression, sexual selection, conservation biology, and mutation-selection balance.  Yet, measuring this rate is notoriously difficult even for mutations with drastic effects.  In my earlier work, I used a classic method to estimate that individual L. goodei carry slightly less than 2 recessive lethals per 2N genome, a number similar to estimates in those few other vertebrates that have been studied.  Yet, work on invertebrates using a marker-based method has found that animals carry at least 6X as many lethals.  This inconsistency may be traceable to different methods or may reflect real differences between taxa.  I plan to address this question in the future by comparing the estimated number of recessive lethal alleles detected using three different methods: (1) counting lethal phenotypes, (2) estimating the number of lethal equivalents, and (3) screening for lethal alleles based on molecular markers.  The ultimate goal of this research is to understand the dynamic between the origin of deleterious alleles and their removal from populations.

 

Publications

Research Papers

Fuller, R.C., McGhee, K.E. & Schrader, M. 2007.  Speciation in killifish and the role of salt tolerance.  J. Evol Biol. 20: 1962-1975.  pdf

McGhee, K.E., Fuller, R.C. & Travis, J.  2007.  Male competition and female choice interact to determine mating success in the bluefin killifish.  Behav Ecol. 18: 822-830. pdf

Fuller, R.C.  In press.  A test for a trade-off in salinity tolerance in early life-history stages in Lucania goodei and L. parva.  Copeia.

Fuller, R.C. & Noa, L.  Accepted pending revision.  Distribution and stability of sympatric populations of Lucania goodei and L. parva across Florida.  Copeia.

Fuller, R.C., Houle, D. & Travis, J.  2005.  Sensory bias and the evolution of female mating preferences.  Am Nat.166: 437-446.    pdf

Fuller, R.C., Baer, C.F. & Travis, J. 2005. How and when selection experiments might actually be useful.  Integr Comp Biol. 45: 291-404.  pdf

Fuller, R.C., Carleton, K.L., Fadool, J.M., Spady, T.C. & Travis, J.  2005.  Evolvable sensory systems in the bluefin killifish, Lucania goodei: genetic and environmental variation in opsin expression .  J Evol Biol 18: 516-523. pdf

Fuller, R.C., Carleton, K.L., Fadool, J.M., Spady, T.C. & Travis, J.  2004. Population variation in opsin expression in the bluefin killifish, Lucania goodei: a real-time PCR study.  J Comp Physiol A.  190: 147-154. pdf

Fuller, R.C. & Travis, J.  2004. Genetics, lighting environment, and heritable responses to lighting environment affect male color morph expression in bluefin killifish, Lucania goodei.  Evolution 58: 1086-1098. pdf

Fuller, R.C.  2003.  Disentangling female mate choice and male competition in the rainbow darter, Etheostoma caeruleum.  Copeia 2003: 138-148. pdf 

Fuller, R.C., Fleishman, L.J., Leal, M., Travis, J. & Loew, E.  2003. Intraspecific variation in retinal cone distribution in the bluefin killifish, Lucania goodei.  J Comp Physiol A. 189: 609-616. pdf

Fuller, R.C. & Houle, D.  2003.  Inheritance of developmental instability.  In: Developmental Instability: Causes and Consequences.   (M. Polak, ed), pp. 157-181.  Oxford University Press, Oxford. pdf

Aresco, M.J., J. Birdsley, R. C. Fuller, M. S. Gunzburger &  J. Travis.  2003.  Pseudemys concinna concinna (Eastern river cooter).  Geographic distribution. Herp Rev 34: 261.

Fuller, R.C. 2002.  Lighting environment predicts relative abundance of male color morphs in bluefin killifish populations.  Proc R Soc Lond Ser B. 269: 1457-1465. pdf

Fuller, R.C. & Houle, D. 2002. Detecting genetic variation in developmental instability by artificial selection on fluctuating asymmetry.  J Evol Biol 15: 954-960. pdf

McCune, A.R.*, Fuller, R.C.* Beck, A.A., Dawley, J.M., Fadool, J.M., Houle, D., Travis, J. & Kondrashov, A.S.  2002.  A low genomic number of recessive lethals in natural populations of bluefin killifish (Lucania goodei) and zebrafish (Danio rerio).  Science 2002: 2398-2401.  * these authors contributed equally to this work  pdf on McCune's website - click here

Fuller, R.C.  2001.  Patterns in male breeding behaviors in the bluefin killifish, Lucania goodei: a field study.  Copeia 2001: 823-828. pdf

Fuller, R.C. & Travis, J.  2001.  A test for male parental care in a fundulid, the bluefin killifish, Lucania goodei.  Environ Biol Fish 61: 419-426. pdf

Fuller, R.C.  1999.  Costs of group spawning to dominant, primary males in the rainbow darter, Etheostoma caeruleum.  Copeia 1999: 1084-1088. pdf

Fuller, R.C.  1998.  Sperm competition affects male behaviour and sperm output in the rainbow darter.  Proc R Soc Lond Ser B 265: 2365-2371. pdf

Fuller, R.C.  1998.    Fecundity estimates for rainbow darters, Etheostoma caeruleum, in southwestern Ohio.  Ohio J of Sci 98: 2-5. pdf

Rettig, J., Fuller, R.C., Corbett, A. & Getty, T.  1997. Fluctuating asymmetry indicates competition in leaves of an even-aged poplar clone. OIKOS 80: 123-127. pdf

Fuller, R.C. and Berglund, A.  1996.  Behavioral responses of a sex role reversed pipefish to a gradient of perceived predation risk.  Behav Ecol 7: 69-75. pdf

Fuller, R.C. and Joern, A.  1996.  Grasshopper susceptibility to predation in response to vegetation cover and patch area.  J Orthopt Res 5: 175-183. pdf

Fuller, R.C. (In revision)  Multiple mating events reduce female choosiness: a model and its implications for experimental design.

Curriculum Vitae

EDUCATION

2003-2005: post-doctoral scientist; Florida State University ; School of Computational Science; Tallahassee, Florida

1998-2003: Ph.D.; Florida State University; Biology, Ecology & Evolution Tallahassee, Florida 

1997: Organization for Tropical Studies (OTS) Summer Tropical Ecology Course; Costa Rica

1994-1998: M.S.; Michigan State University; Zoology; Kellogg Biological Station; Hickory Corners, MI

1993-1994: Fulbright Scholar; Uppsala University; Department of Animal Ecology; Uppsala Sweden

1989-1993-Bachelor of Science, University of Nebraska; Biology; Lincoln, NE
 

HONORS AND GRANTS

       2006            Young Investigator Award - American Society of Naturalists

      2004-2008   National Science Foundation Grant - Fuller lead PI

      2000-2002   National Science Foundation Dissertation Improvement Award

      1995-1998   National Science Foundation Graduate Fellowship

      1998-1999   Graduate Women in Science Scholarship

      2000-2003   University Research Fellowship Florida State University

       2003            Florida State University Publication Award, Marget Menzel Award

      1994-1995, 1997-1998 Michigan State Distinguished Fellowship

  1993-1994  Fulbright Scholarship - Uppsala University, Sweden

SERVICE

2002, 2005: Young Scholar Program, Mentor

2002-2004: Member member, Lake Jackson Ecopassage Alliance

2001, 2003: Volunteer Judge for the Capitol Regional Science Fair, Tallahassee, Florida

PROFESSIONAL AFFILIATIONS

Society for the Study of Evolution
American Society of Ichthyologists and Herpetologists
Animal Behavior Society
International Study for Behavioral Ecology
Sigma Delta Epsilon (Graduate Women in Science)

Society of Integrative and Comparative Biology

American Society of Naturalists

Sammy & Cecelia!

Click below to see cute pictures of my kids!

Sam playing drums (May 2006)

Sam with Mom&Dad (Spring 2006)

Sam Catching Fish (January 2007)

Sam at Halloween (October 2007)

Fuller-Birdsley Family (November 2007)

Cecelia after a bath (November 2007)

Cecelia with Grandma (November 2007)

Links

 

Lake Jackson Ecopassage - visit this site to learn more about this conservation effort started  by one of my former labmates at FSU.

Original Site Design by Margaret Gunzburger

Site last updated
4 Dec 2007

Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed on this website are strictly those of the author, Rebecca Fuller, and in no way represent those of University of Illinois, nor the State of Illinois.