Boston University Department of Biology

Faculty Profiles

Current Research

The Buston Lab, in conjunction with an international group of collaborators, grapples with some of the biggest questions in evolutionary ecology and marine biology.

Our first line of research focuses on the formation and maintenance of animal societies. Animal societies are one of the most remarkable products of evolution, and they have been a focus for tests of evolutionary theory ever since Darwin pointed out the difficulties that some features of societies posed for his theory of natural selection. The existence of societies requires that genetically selfish individuals come together and reproduce as part of a group. In these groups, there will be potential conflict between individuals over the allocation of reproduction. This potential conflict must be resolved for these groups to be stable. Thus, the key to understanding societies lies in understanding how and why reproductive conflicts among individuals are resolved, and this is where we focus our research.

Our second line of research focuses on the patterns, causes and consequences of marine population connectivity. Population connectivity, or the rate at which larvae exchange between populations, is the big black box of marine ecology. Determining population connectivity is, however, a major goal of 21st century marine ecology because it holds the key to understanding population dynamics, population divergence and designing effective networks of marine reserves. Population connectivity is influenced by factors operating at the population of origin, the population of destination, and in the intervening habitat. Thus the key to understanding population connectivity lies in simultaneously understanding each of these elements, and we focus our research on systems where this is tractable.

Our research combines long-term observations of marked populations in their natural habitat, with experimental manipulations, mathematical modeling, molecular genetics and GIScience. We use these tools, and a strong inference approach, to address fundamental questions at the interface of individual behavior, population ecology and evolutionary biology. Please visit the Lab’s website for more information.

We welcome inquiries from undergraduate students, graduate students and postdoctoral researchers interested in joining us to pursue independent or collaborative research in the lab.

Courses Taught

• BI 260 Marine Biology
• BI 519 Theoretical Evolutionary Ecology

Selected Publications

• Buston P, Jones G, Planes S & Thorrold S. (2012.) Probability of successful larval dispersal declines fivefold over one kilometer in a coral reef fish. Proceedings of the Royal Society of London, Series B. Online.
• Buston P & Elith J. (2011.) Determinants of reproductive success in dominant pairs of clownfish: a boosted regression tree analysis. Journal of Animal Ecology 80: 528-538.
• D’Aloia CC, Majoris JE & Buston PM. (2011.). Predictors of the distribution and abundance of a tube sponge and its resident goby. Coral Reefs 30: 777 - 786.
• Buston P, Fauvelot C, Wong M & Planes S. (2009.) Genetic relatedness in groups of the humbug damselfish, Dascyllus aruanus: small, similarly-sized individuals may be close kin. Molecular Ecology 18: 4707- 4715.
• Buston PM & Zink AG. (2009.) Reproductive skew and the evolution of conflict resolution: a synthesis of transactional and tug-of-war models. Behavioral Ecology 20: 672-684.
• Buston PM, Bogdanowicz S, Wong M & Harrison RG. (2007.) Are clownfish groups composed of relatives? Analysis of microsatellite DNA variation in Amphiprion percula. Molecular Ecology 16: 3671-3678.
• Buston PM, Reeve HK, Cant MA, Vehrencamp SL & Emlen ST. (2007.) Reproductive skew and the evolution of group dissolution tactics: a synthesis of concession and restraint models. Animal Behaviour 74: 1643-1654.
• Buston PM. (2003.) Size and growth modification in clownfish. Nature 424: 145-146.
  
  (pdfs available upon request)