Lauren Buckley

About

Lauren Buckley is a professor in the Department of Biology at the University of Washington. Her research combines modeling, field and laboratory collection of ecological and physiological data, and ecoinformatics to examine how biological traits such as morphology, physiology, and life history influence an organism’s ecological and evolutionary responses to environmental change. Her work integrates approaches from physiological ecology, evolution, population and community ecology, and biogeography, with a focus on characterizing how organisms experience and respond to fine-scale spatial and temporal environmental variation. Her recent research involves repeating functional experiments and observations on montane insects after several decades of climate change to assess ecological and evolutionary responses and to test predictive models. She leads projects like the TrEnCh project, which develops computational and visualization tools to translate environmental change into organismal responses, thereby enhancing ecological and evolutionary forecasting. Her questions include understanding how local adaptation influences responses to climate change, how thermoregulatory behavior affects thermal tolerance evolution, and how developmental plasticity impacts phenology and demography in changing environments. Her extensive publication record reflects her contributions to understanding the impacts of climate variability and change on ecological and evolutionary processes.

Research topics

• Biology
• Ecology
• Environmental science
• Environmental resource management
• Political Science
• Sociology
• Computer Science
• Engineering ethics
• Physics
• Engineering

Selected publications

• Mechanistic forecasts of species responses to climate change: The promise of biophysical ecology

  Global Change Biology · 2022 · 187 citations

  A core challenge in global change biology is to predict how species will respond to future environmental change and to manage these responses. To make such predictions and management actions robust to novel futures, we need to accurately characterize how organisms experience their environments and the biological mechanisms by which they respond. All organisms are thermodynamically connected to their environments through the exchange of heat and water at fine spatial and temporal scales and this…

  DOI

• Ontogenetic variation in thermal sensitivity shapes insect ecological responses to climate change

  Current Opinion in Insect Science · 2020 · 114 citations

  Senior authorCorresponding
  DOI

• Evolution of Thermal Sensitivity in Changing and Variable Climates

  Annual Review of Ecology Evolution and Systematics · 2021 · 83 citations

  1st authorCorresponding

  Evolutionary adaptation to temperature and climate depends on both the extent to which organisms experience spatial and temporal environmental variation (exposure) and how responsive they are to the environmental variation (sensitivity). Theoretical models and experiments suggesting substantial potential for thermal adaptation have largely omitted realistic environmental variation. Environmental variation can drive fluctuations in selection that slow adaptive evolution. We review how carefully f…

  DOI

• Priorities for synthesis research in ecology and environmental science

  Ecosphere · 2023 · 23 citations

  Abstract Synthesis research in ecology and environmental science improves understanding, advances theory, identifies research priorities, and supports management strategies by linking data, ideas, and tools. Accelerating environmental challenges increases the need to focus synthesis science on the most pressing questions. To leverage input from the broader research community, we convened a virtual workshop with participants from many countries and disciplines to examine how and where synthesis c…

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• A Framework for Modelling Thermal Load Sensitivity Across Life

  Global Change Biology · 2025-07-01 · 22 citations

  articleOpen access

  Forecasts of vulnerability to climate warming require an integrative understanding of how species are exposed to, are damaged by, and recover from thermal stress in natural environments. The sensitivity of species to temperature depends on the frequency, duration, and magnitude of thermal stress. Thus, there is a generally recognized need to move beyond physiological metrics based solely on critical thermal limits and integrate them with natural heat exposure regimes. Here we propose the thermal…

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

Recent grants

• Collaborative Research: Incorporating Physiological Variation in Mechanistic Range Models for Ecological Forecasting

  NSF · $181k · 2013–2016

• Collaborative Research: Incorporating Physiological Variation in Mechanistic Range Models for Ecological Forecasting

  NSF · $212k · 2011–2013

• CAREER: Computational and visualization tools for translating climate change into ecological impacts

  NSF · $1.2M · 2014–2022

Frequent coauthors

• Joel G. Kingsolver

  36 shared

• Pippa J. Moore

  Newcastle University

  21 shared

• Benjamin S. Halpern

  University of California, Santa Barbara

  21 shared

• Anthony J. Richardson

  University of Queensland

  20 shared

• Carlos M. Duarte

  King Abdullah University of Science and Technology

  20 shared

• César R. Nufio

  Howard Hughes Medical Institute

  20 shared

• T. Jonathan Davies

  University of British Columbia

  18 shared

• John M. Pandolfi

  University of Queensland

  17 shared

Similar researchers at University of Washington

• Julie Therioth-89
• Daniel E. Schindlerh-78
• Cecilia B. Moensh-76