Samantha Bock

My research integrates field ecology, developmental biology, and comparative genomics to understand how diverse animal life histories emerge and evolve. Using reptiles and fishes as study systems, I focus on two interrelated axes of variation: (1) the mechanisms of sex determination, which link developmental environments to reproductive outcomes, and (2) the environmental and genomic drivers of aging, which shape variation in survival and longevity. Ultimately, my work seeks to uncover the mechanistic underpinnings of organismal fitness to improve predictions regarding species resilience in the face of environmental change.