My students, post-docs and I study population genetics and molecular evolution. We are studying invasive species as models for the evolution of geographic range expansion. We also study how evolution is influenced by the fact that populations are distributed in space (population structure). Several projects focus on how selection at one level or organization subsumes, or is subsumed by, selection at higher levels of organization...so-called "levels of selection". This has led us into studies of genetic conflict such as epidemics of selfish genes within natural populations and mitochondrial diseases that result from the accumulation of parasitic organelles within cells. Our work involves a wide variety of methods: phylogenetics & molecular population genetics, field experiments, greenhouse experiments & crossing studies, theory.

For more information on research interests, see my lab webpage.

Keller, S.R. and D.R. Taylor. 2008 History, chance, and adaptation during biological invasion: separating stochastic phenotypic evolution from response to selection. Ecology Letters (in press).

Sloan, D.B., C.M. Barr, S.R. Keller, M. Olson and D.R. Taylor. 2008 Evolutionary Rate Variation at Multiple Levels of Biological Organization in Plant Mitochondrial DNA. Molecular Biology and Evolution 24:1783-1791.

Taylor, D.R. and S.R. Keller. 2007. Historical range expansion determines the phylogenetic diversity introduced during contemporary species invasion. Evolution 61, 334-345.

Taylor, D.R., C. Zeyl and E. Cooke. 2002. Conflicting levels of selection in the accumulation of mitochondrial defects in Saccharomyces cerevisiae. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. 99:360-3694.