Noah Leith

Dr. Noah Leith is a National Science Foundation Postdoctoral Research Fellow. His work combines computational, experimental, and field-based approaches to understand how animals respond to global environmental change. He specifically focuses on how climate change affects reproductive behavior, and the consequences of this behavioral plasticity for sexual selection, metabolic adaptation, and even the spread of infectious diseases. His current research uses North American spiders as model systems to understand how the thermal sensitivity of mating behavior shapes the environments where species often hybridize, and whether hybridization helps to preserve or deteriorate biodiversity. 

Education

BS, Biology, Saint Louis University, St. Louis, MO, 2019

PhD, Biology, Saint Louis University, St. Louis, MO, 2024

Research Lab

Elias Lab

Selected Publications

• Leith NT, Macchiano A, Tenhumberg B, Smith I, Woods JP, and Fowler-Finn KD (2025). Carryover effects on reproduction can buffer against mortality-driven population declines at elevated developmental temperatures. Ecology Letters28 (11), e70264.  

• Moore MP, Leith NT, Fowler-Finn KD, and Medley KA (2024). Human-modified habitats imperil ornamented dragonflies less than their non-ornamented counterparts at local, regional, and continental scales. Ecology Letters. 27, e14455.

• Leith NT, Miller EA, and Fowler-Finn KD, (2024). Thermoregulation enhances survival but not reproduction in a plant-feeding insect. Functional Ecology. 38, 1344-1356.

• Leith NT, Fowler-Finn KD, and Moore MP (2022). Evolutionary interactions between thermal ecology and sexual selection. Ecology Letters. 25, 1919-1936.

View more publications at Google Scholar.

Selected Honors and Awards

• National Science Foundation Postdoctoral Research Fellowship in Biology 

• University of Pittsburgh Ecology and Evolution Postdoctoral Fellowship

• Animal Behavior Society Warder Clyde Allee Award for best student research