Rate My Professor Emily Behrman

Emily L. Behrman serves as Assistant Professor of Biological Sciences at Dartmouth College, where she joined the faculty in 2024. She earned her BA in Biology from Williams College and her PhD in Biology from the University of Pennsylvania. Behrman is a member of the Molecular and Cellular Biology Graduate Program, the Integrative Neuroscience at Dartmouth Graduate Program, and the Ecology, Evolution, Environment and Society Graduate Program. Her research employs the fruit fly Drosophila melanogaster to address core questions in evolutionary biology, specifically how behaviors evolve through changes in genes and neurons. This is integrated with field ecology studies to examine how behavioral traits influence evolutionary processes in natural populations. Her investigations cover a spectrum of evolutionary timescales, ranging from rapid adaptations over seasons to divergences between species, revealing the genetic and neural constraints and flexibilities in behavioral evolution.

Behrman's scholarly output has substantially influenced the study of rapid evolution and adaptation in Drosophila. Among her prominent publications are "Genomic evidence of rapid and stable adaptive oscillations over seasonal time scales in Drosophila" published in PLoS Genetics in 2014, which has garnered 598 citations; "Broad geographic sampling reveals the shared basis and environmental correlates of seasonal adaptation in Drosophila" in eLife in 2021 with 181 citations; "Seasonal variation in life history traits in two Drosophila species" in the Journal of Evolutionary Biology in 2015, cited 152 times; and "Comparative population genomics of latitudinal variation in Drosophila simulans and Drosophila melanogaster" in Molecular Ecology in 2016 with 146 citations. Additional significant works include studies on adaptive dynamics of cuticular hydrocarbons (2017), rapid seasonal evolution in innate immunity (2018), and recent preprints on tools for Drosophila research such as the Janelia Atalanta plasmids (2023). Through these contributions, Behrman has advanced understanding of the genomic and neurobiological bases of behavioral evolution and its ecological implications.