Rate My Professor Hayley Lanier

Hayley Lanier is an Associate Professor in the School of Biological Sciences at the University of Oklahoma and Associate Curator of Mammalogy at the Sam Noble Oklahoma Museum of Natural History. She received her Ph.D. in Biological Sciences from the University of Alaska Fairbanks in 2010, where her dissertation focused on the phylogeography, ecogeographic variation, and evolutionary history of the collared pika under the supervision of Link E. Olson. Lanier earned her B.S. in Ecology and Evolutionary Biology from the University of Kansas in 2004, graduating with departmental and university honors after completing an honors thesis on variation in Pleistocene and recent North American red fox mandibular morphology. Following her doctorate, she completed a postdoctoral research fellowship at the University of Michigan Museum of Zoology and Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology from 2010 to 2013, advised by L. Lacey Knowles. She then served as Assistant Professor in the Department of Zoology and Physiology at the University of Wyoming from 2013 to 2017 before joining the University of Oklahoma in 2017 as Assistant Professor and Assistant Curator of Mammalogy.

Lanier's research examines the role of global change in shaping mammal biodiversity across broad temporal and spatial scales, integrating data from museum collections, fieldwork, and genomics to predict responses to climate change, habitat loss, and other threats. Her lab's work spans biogeography, conservation, genomics, and mammals, with emphasis on small mammals including pikas, voles, marmots, and chipmunks. Notable publications include Marková et al. (2023) 'Local adaptation and future climate vulnerability in a wild rodent' in Nature Communications; Marske et al. (2023) 'Integrating biogeography and behavioral ecology to rapidly address biodiversity loss' in PNAS; Theriot et al. (2023) 'Harnessing natural history collections to detect body size change as a response to warming' in Methods in Ecology and Evolution; Allen et al. (2022) 'Competitive release during fire succession influences ecological turnover in a small mammal community' in Ecology; and Lanier et al. (2015) 'Colonization from divergent ancestors: glaciation signatures on contemporary patterns of genomic variation in collared pikas' in Molecular Ecology. Lanier has secured funding from the National Science Foundation, OU Research Council, Wyoming INBRE, and others. Awards include a Fulbright U.S. Scholar Award for 2025–2026 to conduct evolutionary genomics research at the Czech Academy of Sciences, NSF Graduate Research Fellowship Program Honorable Mention (2004), Alaska EPSCoR Graduate Fellowship (2005–2006), and Science Initiative Summer Institute for Scientific Teaching Faculty Fellow (2016). She co-chaired the IUCN/SSC Lagomorph Specialist Group from 2016 to 2020 and reviews for journals such as Evolution, Global Change Biology, and Conservation Genetics.