Erin Brandt is currently a doctoral candidate in Damian Elias' lab. Her work focuses on how temperature impacts sexual communication, physiology, and movement ecology in Habronattus jumping spiders. Erin is interested in asking questions that span levels of analysis and range from the biomechanical and physiological mechanism of behavior, to the ultimate evolutionary consequences. Erin's fieldwork takes place primarily in the Sky Island mountain ranges outside of Tucson, AZ and a large part of her dissertation is in understanding how small-scale environmental factors in these desert habitats influence the behavior and evolution of animals and their communication systems.
