Nick Polizos
Neurobiology & Behavior in Miami, he/him
About
I am a PhD Candidate at the University of Miami. Currently study learning and memory using the fruit fly (Drosophila melanogaster) as a model system. I use a combination of in vivo neuroimaging techniques and behavioral assays to study how organisms sense the word around them, integrate that information, and then use that information to inform future behaviors.
Projects
Side Projects
Fluctuating environmental pressures can challenge organisms by repeatedly shifting the optimum phenotype. Two contrasting evolutionary strategies to cope with these fluctuations are 1) evolution of the mean phenotype to follow the optimum (adaptive tracking) or 2) diversifying phenotypes so that at least some individuals have high fitness in the current fluctuation (bet-hedging). Bet-hedging could underlie stable differences in the behavior of individuals that are present even when genotype and environment are held constant. Instead of being simply ‘noise,’ behavioral variation across individuals may reflect an evolutionary strategy of phenotype diversification. Using geographically diverse wild-derived fly strains and high-throughput assays of individual preference, we tested whether thermal preference variation in Drosophila melanogaster could reflect a bet-hedging strategy. We also looked for evidence that populations from different regions differentially adopt bet-hedging or adaptive-tracking strategies. Computational modeling predicted regional differences in the relative advantage of bet-hedging, and we found patterns consistent with that in regional variation in thermal preference heritability. In addition, we found that temporal patterns in mean preference support bet-hedging predictions and that there is a genetic basis for thermal preference variability. Our empirical results point to bet-hedging in thermal preference as a potentially important evolutionary strategy in wild populations.
Exhibitions
Speaking
Writing
Awards
Work Experience
BIL 150: General Biology, 2020
BIL 151: General Biology Laboratory, 2018
BIL 161: Evolution & Biodiversity Laboratory, 2019, 2021
BIL 153: Introductory Biology/Chemistry Laboratory I, 2021
BIL 163: Introductory Biology/Chemistry Laboratory II, 2022
BSC 2011L: Principles of Biology Laboratory II, 2019, 2020
CHM 2210L: Organic Chemistry I Laboratory, 2019
BIOL 110: Introduction to Evolution & Biodiversity Laboratory, 2013-2015
BIOL 120: Introduction to Cell Biology & Physiology, 2014-2015
BIOL 312: Animal Behavior, 2015-2016
BIOL 329: Histology, 2015-2016