All organisms inevitably experience stress. A central unresolved question in biology concerns the long-term behavioural and fitness consequences of short-term exposure to stressors. Does stress necessarily produce negative effects? Or does behavioural plasticity allow animals to adaptively respond to stress and mitigate the costs? If so, how and under what conditions does behavioural plasticity buffer individuals against the negative effects of stress? Could some exposure to stress even enhance fitness in animals? My research has addressed these questions across a broad range of stressors including environmental cues of danger and social stress.

        Currently, my postdoctoral work examines how nutritional stress influences the development of morphological traits, behaviour, and life-history strategies in the leaf-footed cactus bugs (Narnia femorata), a weapon-bearing insect. Poor early adult diet produces structurally inferior hind-limb weapons: while similar in size, nutritionally stressed males develop hind limbs with thinner exoskeletons and reduced muscle volume. I am now testing whether nutritionally stressed males behaviourally compensate for their functionally inferior fighting structures by shifting their signalling, fighting, and mating strategies.