ECR Spotlight – Rachel Thayer

Abstract

ECR Spotlight is a series of interviews with early-career authors from a selection of papers published in Journal of Experimental Biology and aims to promote not only the diversity of early-career researchers (ECRs) working in experimental biology during our centenary year but also the huge variety of animals and physiological systems that are essential for the ‘comparative’ approach. Rachel Thayer is an author on ‘ A meta-analysis of butterfly structural colors: their color range, distribution and biological production’, published in JEB. Rachel conducted the research described in this article while a PhD student in Nipam Patel's lab at University of California Berkeley/Marine Biological Laboratory, USA. She is now a Postdoctoral Fellow in the lab of David Begun at University of California, Davis, USA, investigating the genetic basis of complex, adaptive traits, evolutionary innovation and the relationship between microevolutionary and macroevolutionary processes and their diversity.