Shreya Banerjee

I am interested in understanding how organisms respond to environmental stress at different levels of biological organization. I will evaluate species-level climate-driven range shifts, population-level adaptation to environmental gradients, and differences in organismal thermal tolerance in ribbed limpets. Together, this work will help understand and predict how species respond to rapid environmental change.

In the face of environmental stress, organisms can move, adapt, tolerate, or die. These responses can occur at the species, population, or organismal level. In natural systems, it is likely that organisms use these different strategies simultaneously. The morphologically indistinguishable pair of sibling species, ribbed limpets (Lottia digitalis and Lottia austrodigitalis), are an ideal model system in which to examine range shifts, adaptation, and thermal tolerance simultaneously. In my dissertation, I will evaluate species-level climate-driven range shifts, population-level adaptation to environmental gradients, and differences in organismal thermal tolerance. I will sequence limpets from 30 sites up and down the coast from 2008 and 2024 to assess how the species of ribbed limpets have shifted their ranges and how populations have adapted to changes in climate over time. I am also conducting thermal tolerance experiments to evaluate differences in organismal thermal tolerance. By integrating across ecological, evolutionary, and physiological responses to environmental change within a single species complex we can generate a framework for how these mechanisms interact.