Lauren Petrullo

Positions and Education:

• Assistant Professor, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, University of Arizona, 2023-present
• Postdoctoral Research Fellow, Psychology, University of Michigan, 2020-2023
• PhD, Anthropological Sciences, Stony Brook University, 2015-2020
• MA, Biological Anthropology, New York University, 2013-2015
• BA, Biological Anthropology, New York University, 2008-2012

Honors and Awards:

• National Science Foundation Postdoctoral Research Fellowship in Biology, 2020-2023
• AGEP-T Frame Fellowship, Stony Brook University, 2015-2020
• Dr. W. Burghardt Turner Fellowship, Stony Brook University, 2015-2020

Research Interests:

The Petrullo lab seeks to understand how animals respond to their environments and why they vary in these responses. We investigate both the proximate mechanisms of this variation by leveraging physiological tools related to hormones and the microbiome, as well as evolutionary explanations for this variation by integrating theoretical frameworks from anthropology, evolutionary biology, ecology, and psychology. We study both captive and wild mammals, and our work can be summed up into three major themes: 1) eco-physiology, or the study of how ecological conditions impact animal physiology, 2) maternal effects on variation during development, and 3) the evolution of phenotypic plasticity.