Abby Robinson of the Mullen Lab received the 2025 Belamarich Dissertation Writing Award. This award complements the Belamarich Award, and is given to support an outstanding PhD student through the dissertation writing stage.
Abby’s research focuses on understanding the ecological and evolutionary factors that allow mimetic butterflies to persist in natural environments. Specifically, whether a mimic is protected from predation is determined by the relative abundance and toxicity of models and mimics, and how predators learn and respond to these signals. While theoretical expectations for mimetic survival are well established, how mimetic phenotypes persist in nature where prey occurrence, density, frequency, and palatability are constantly in flux remains unclear. Abby’s work combines field and rearing experiments, chemical ecology, and hierarchical ecological models to bridge this gap in temperate and tropical mimetic butterflies.
Congratulations Abby!