Sarah Guindre-Parker is a behavioral ecologist whose research integrates across ecology and physiology to understand how animals cope with changing environmental conditions. In particular, her research has focused on how fluctuating environments shape reproduction, survival, and life-history trade-offs. Sarah was a part of the team from 2017-2019 as an NSERC Postdoctoral Fellow where she was supervised by Ben Dantzer (University of Michigan) and Andrew McAdam (University of Guelph).
When Sarah was a post-doc in the Dantzer Lab, she studied how fluctuations in population density and food abundance have shaped the physiology and fitness of North American red squirrels (Tamiasciurus hudsonicus) as a part of the Kluane Red Squirrel Project. A long-term food-supplementation manipulation in our study population has eliminated the drastic fluctuations that typically occur in squirrel density, and Sarah tested whether this experimental natural selection alters physiology and fitness. Her work also explored potential carryover effects of living under constant vs. fluctuating density by looking at parental and grandparental effects of density and food abundance on offspring growth, physiology, and fitness.
Publications during time as member of Dantzer Lab
Guindre-Parker S, McAdam AG, van Kesteren F, Palme R, Boonstra R, Boutin S, Lane JE, Dantzer B. 2019. Individual variation in phenotypic plasticity of the stress axis. Biology Letters 15, 20190260.
Sarah is now an Assistant Professor at Kennesaw State University. Visit Sarah’s Website if you are interested in working with her!