Welcome to the Hicker-lab
The research in our lab is at the interface between population genomics, community ecology and conservation biology.
Our research involves developing computational tools to analyze multi-species population genomic data, with the goal of uncovering community-level patterns of range expansion, colonization, admixture and isolation. To enable testing hypotheses about community assembly and co-evolution, these tools incorporate uncertainty and variability among species and genes while allowing correlated histories across species.
The field of phylogeography draws on population genetics, community ecology, and systematics to understand the evolutionary history of species and communities. Analysis of genetic variability within species and communities can provide insights into how communities are established and how species within those communities evolved. It can also suggest how species and communities may respond to changes in climate, invasions, and possible outcomes of combining species into communities that have no current or historic analogs. Our lab now includes two PhD students and four undergraduates who contribute to this tool development as well as conduct their own empirically based research.
Queens College - City University of New York
Biology Department
room SB E321
65-30 Kissena Blvd
Flushing, NY 11367
718-997-3415