Assistant Professor
Indiana Molecular Biology Institute
Center for the Integrative Study of Animal Behavior
(812) 856-1468
armin@indiana.edu

See also: My lab home page

• Ph.D., Department of Biology, Duke University, Durham, NC, 2002
• M.S., Zoology Julius-Maximilians University, Würzburg, Germany, 1996

My lab addresses a fundamental question in biology: how do novel phenotypic traits originate and diversify in nature? We use a wide range of approaches to address this question from different perspectives and on different levels of biological organization. We use behavioral and ecological approaches in the lab and field on experimental and natural populations to understand when and how ecological processes can drive phenotypic evolution. We employ a wide range of developmental techniques and growth manipulations to address physiological mechanisms of phenotype formation and evolution. Lastly, we rely on an increasing diversity of developmental genetic and molecular tools (in-situ hybridization, immunohistochemistry, EST libraries, RNAinterference) to investigate the genetic and genomic regulation of phenotype expression and diversification. While each of these approaches has provided valuable insights, it has been most of all the integration across these levels of analyses that has proven most informing and fascinating. Our study organisms have been primarily beetles in the genus Onthophagus. We have also begun begun to address related questions in other organisms, in particular ants and termites, and are open to add additional organisms to our repertoire.

Moczek AP 2006. Integrating micro- and macroevolution of development through the study of horned beetles. Heredity in press.

Moczek AP 2005. The evolution and development of novel traits, or how beetles got their horns.
BioScience 11: 935-951.

Moczek AP, Nagy LM 2005. Diverse developmental mechanisms contribute to different levels of diversity in horned beetles.
Evolution & Development 7: 175-185.

Moczek AP 2003. The behavioral ecology of threshold evolution in a polyphenic beetle.
Behavioral Ecology 14: 831-854

Moczek AP, Nijhout HF 2003. Rapid evolution of a polyphenic threshold.
Evolution & Development 5: 259-268

Moczek AP, Nijhout HF 2002. Developmental mechanisms of threshold evolution in a polyphenic beetle.
Evolution & Development 4: 252-264

Moczek AP, Emlen DJ 2000. Male horn dimorphism in the scarab beetle Onthophagus taurus: do alternative reproductive tactics favor alternative phenotypes?
Animal Behaviour 59: 459-466